Adding / Removing Leagues in 12.2

First off, does it work now without unforeseen consequences?

My actual question is: I started a savegame in the 6th tier (which has about 40 divisions) but now I'm in the 3rd tier, so I thought about removing the lowest tier and adding the top levels of some other countries instead. Let's say I add 7 new top level leagues from other countries and remove the 6th tier (as I said, about 40 leagues). Would the game be faster afterwards because the game saves processing for about 30 divisions or slower because the teams in the 6th tier are not removed from the database and still take processing time, as do the newly added teams and leagues?

Not totally sure if anything has changed for 12.2 but I doubt it. On the last patch I ran a database with around 47,000 players at the start, I removed about 5 countries and added around 6, this meant my save added too many players. On the player search there are now 150,000 players in the game making it tremendously slow. I think adding leagues adds way too many players and despite removing some it slows the game down.

Thanks AcidBurn! Maybe I will save before the start of a new season and make a holiday-savegame test run.

Adding leagues crashes my save, across multiple saves. I don't recommend it to anyone, I lost a save due to a badly timed auto save and the backup was too old.

I have heard others say it crashed their save but that has never happened when I have tried it.

So is it usually recommended that one avoids the "add/remove leagues" feature? I never played FM11 and am just starting out FM12 so don't know much about this feature.

My 10-season Bradford save is now all but unplayable. I started it adding 65000 players. Then I got Morton in Scottish first division as a feeder club and so I added their division to improve av.r realism. There are now 125000 well-known players in my save, and the speed has slowed to a halt. I could live with that but I had several crashes as well lately, so yes if it indeed is the add/remove leagues feature that has ruined my save (and that is what it looks like) I would refrain from using it.

Same here. I'm into my 10th season, I started with a medium database with just 19,000 players. I've used the add/remove leagues feature a few times in those 10 seasons and now have less leagues active than when I started but my database contains 225,000 players !! - making the game unplayable with frequent application errors and crashes.

The add/remove leagues feature is a save game killer imho. Avoid it if you want to play long term games. :thdn:

I'm actually trying to get some of those 225K players to retire using FMRTE in an attempt to salvage my game

Thank you for this info. I was just about to start a long-term save actually and at some point was contemplating about removing some leagues, but now I wont bother. It's really unfortunate though as from a glance it seems like such as useful and great idea to be able to add and remove leagues at will. Guess we'll have to wait at least until next FM for SI to tune this feature so it actually works properly without detrimental effects on the save games.

I've luckily managed to salvage my game using FMRTE. I've got around 50% of the generated players to retire out of my game and its back to playable again with no crashes so far.

Hopefully SI will have a proper fix for this soon so we don't have to rely on third party programs (again!) to work around game-ruining issues.

I'm in the same boat unfortunately, 2026 and 250,000 players. I think I've only added and removed a few leagues but the game has become much slower and prone to crashing- oddly it only seems to be when I have scored a hatful of goals in the game beforehand (though that may just be my misperception!). One think that I am certain of, the quality of the players is much much lower than i'd seen previously. In the last two years there have been none of the regens that have a potential of over 3.5 stars, not one, despite my looking at hundreds of them.

I started with something like 65k players but I added the Swedish league and now I have well over 100k players in 2018, wait, what?

Hmm.. thanks for your feedback! So does removing leagues also destabilise the game or are the crashs caused by the huge amount of players after adding leagues?

Hmm.. thanks for your feedback! So does removing leagues also destabilise the game or are the crashs caused by the huge amount of players after adding leagues?

It'd be a guess but i'd suspect the number of players is the cause of the crashes, and you get that by adding/removing leagues.

According to genie I have 138,332 players, where have these come from ffs? My recommend limit is something like 125,000 but I prefer it well under the recommendation.

That's over/around double what I started with.

I've been doing the challenge where you have to win all 5 Champions Leagues (North & South America, Asia, Africa and Europe), so I've added and removed a few leagues in my game so far. Currently on 283,389 players. It's a bit slow..

I wouldn't recommend adding or removing leagues in the nation your playing in. I did it on my Dortmund save and had no league fixtures the next season, ruined my save.

I wouldn't recommend adding or removing leagues in the nation your playing in. I did it on my Dortmund save and had no league fixtures the next season, ruined my save.

According to genie I have 138,332 players, where have these come from ffs? My recommend limit is something like 125,000 but I prefer it well under the recommendation.

That's over/around double what I started with.

If you have fmrte there's a possible way to reduce the numbers, but I'd only recommend it as a last resort, i.e. if your game becomes unplayable due to constant crashes. Once my database exceeded 200,000 I couldn't continue my save since it crashed during every match. But I've got it down to 131,000 players now and its working like a charm once more.

I reported this as a bug some two months ago. I have now just the EPL running as playable but have 170,000 players. i don't think this will be remedied until FM13 judging by the response I received from Neil Brock so this feature should be used with caution.

I wouldn't recommend adding or removing leagues in the nation your playing in. I did it on my Dortmund save and had no league fixtures the next season, ruined my save.

i guess that has nothing to do with the adding or removing the leagues feature.

using third-party databases always bear the risk of crashing your save. this was most probably because of the regionalliga file you were using.

bad luck though...

btw i never had crashes using this feature

Same here. Can't be as simple as just adding/removing leagues as I've moved continents four times loading completely different leagues in the process across 26yrs - still got no more than 80000 players. There must be a catalyst other than just using the feature.

Same here. Can't be as simple as just adding/removing leagues as I've moved continents four times loading completely different leagues in the process across 26yrs - still got no more than 80000 players. There must be a catalyst other than just using the feature.

I can assure you it is. My game is unedited and I have not used any third party tools. If you read my post above you will see that I have reported this as a bug and had Neil Brock confirm that there is an issue which SI are aware of.

I think as long as you remove a league as you add one you can keep the numbers down. I started with about 20k and now have 45k, comfortably in my limits and everytime I have added a league I make sure to remove one which I'm not using.

I understand that this may not work so well for career games though.

I think as long as you remove a league as you add one you can keep the numbers down. I started with about 20k and now have 45k, comfortably in my limits and everytime I have added a league I make sure to remove one which I'm not using.

I understand that this may not work so well for career games though.

Didn't work for me I removed one and added one and still ended up with 150,000 players.

Possibly this could work although I'm not sure. Just to be clear I was told that once players are added they won't be removed until they retire which means eventually the database will go back down but it may take a fair few seasons.

Didn't work for me I removed one and added one and still ended up with 150,000 players.

That's fair enough, it might just sneak up on me because I am going for speed so only have a maximum of 2 leagues loaded at a time. I wouldn't have thought that it would've killed your game that much though.

Shame. Will be a great feature in future but it just has a few teething problems.

That's fair enough, it might just sneak up on me because I am going for speed so only have a maximum of 2 leagues loaded at a time. I wouldn't have thought that it would've killed your game that much though.

Shame. Will be a great feature in future but it just has a few teething problems.

I guess it all depends on how you like to play I have a fast PC but usually only load 50,000 players at the start so I can play as fast as possible. My game was playable but too slow for me and the challenge I was doing would have required me to add more leagues so I decided to quit and start again.

I've got less leagues loaded in season 2021 than I had in season 2011, yet there's ten times as many players in the database now. Once the players are added, they stay there, wether you remove those leagues or not.

Not only that, but clubs from leagues I never even loaded or added are full of players, and not the normal "grey" players but proper players that have full histories that seem to be constantly updated. For example, I've never loaded Kazakhstan on my game, ever, yet looking through clubs from that country they're all full or proper players with histories. Its the same for every nation, wether I added them or not.

I suspect the add/remove feature was only supposed to create proper players with histories only for the actual nation/leagues you add, but it seems its created players for every nation in that continent.

Once the leagues are removed you will have to wait for the added players to retire which, obviously, is going to take a few years.

I've got less leagues loaded in season 2021 than I had in season 2011, yet there's ten times as many players in the database now. Once the players are added, they stay there, wether you remove those leagues or not.

Not only that, but clubs from leagues I never even loaded or added are full of players, and not the normal "grey" players but proper players that have full histories that seem to be constantly updated. For example, I've never loaded Kazakhstan on my game, ever, yet looking through clubs from that country they're all full or proper players with histories. Its the same for every nation, wether I added them or not.

I suspect the add/remove feature was only supposed to create proper players with histories only for the actual nation/leagues you add, but it seems its created players for every nation in that continent.

Yeah, I reckon that I haven't noticed any hangs or crashes because I am still comfortably within my recommended limits when it comes to players. I have started an LLM save with 80k players though and intend to add leagues so I may just be reporting back with my tail between my legs soon enough.

i guess that has nothing to do with the adding or removing the leagues feature.

using third-party databases always bear the risk of crashing your save. this was most probably because of the regionalliga file you were using.

bad luck though...

btw i never had crashes using this feature

I don't use any 3rd party databases or FMRTE, this happened after I added the 3rd league that's already in the game.

I've luckily managed to salvage my game using FMRTE. I've got around 50% of the generated players to retire out of my game and its back to playable again with no crashes so far.

Hopefully SI will have a proper fix for this soon so we don't have to rely on third party programs (again!) to work around game-ruining issues.

How exactly did you do it ? Mass edit them to be X years old ? does the game create new players (in unrealistically huge numbers) every year or is it a one-time operation ?

Say i add the Eredivise and the number of players balloons from 60 k to 100 k after 1 season, if i then retire all regen players with sub-50 PA (when i tested that were about 30k), will that mean i´ll be at 70 or does it mean i´ll be at 100 again/still ? (- 30k retiring, + 30k newly created)

I start in the lower league with about 10-12 leagues loaded. As I get promoted I eliminate the lower leagues & add the same number (never more) of the higher leagues. Never had any problems with speed. All worked out fine.

How exactly did you do it ? Mass edit them to be X years old ? does the game create new players (in unrealistically huge numbers) every year or is it a one-time operation ?

Say i add the Eredivise and the number of players balloons from 60 k to 100 k after 1 season, if i then retire all regen players with sub-50 PA (when i tested that were about 30k), will that mean i´ll be at 70 or does it mean i´ll be at 100 again/still ? (- 30k retiring, + 30k newly created)

If you look at post #35 in this thread it explains what I did...

http://community.sigames.com/showthread.php/303953-Should-I-bother-starting-a-save-on-FM-2012-or-is-it-too-broken

I'm not sure how many players it creates when you add a league, or if new players are created for clubs in that league long after you've removed it again (although I suspect thats what is happening). Its still too early for me to tell at the moment as I'm only about 1/4 of the way through the season where I've first used this method to reduce players.

All I know is at the begining of my current season (2021), my game had over 200,000 players in it and was at the point of being unplayable since it'd crash everytime I tried to play a match. I then used fmrte to retire approximately 50,000 low PA players which happend gradually over a few weeks of gametime, and my game became playable again.

I probably won't know for sure if I have to keep doing this at the beginning of every new season or not. Won't know until the end of my current season, so all I suggest is making a backup of your current game and giving it a go yourself.