[WIP][FM13] Northumbrian Nation & League

Top: National Flag of Northumbria

Bottom: Flags of Cumbria, Mann, and County Durham

Overview: This will be the 2013 edition of my Northumbrian nation and league database: something that I have been working on, intermittently, since Football Manager 2005. I've belatedly purchased FM13, so it seems fair to assume that this trend will continue! At present, I only have plans to release this for the default database - I never play with the January transfer updates so it's not logical for me to create from it. However, if it's easy enough to update the file (as I've never done this I'm not sure what it actually entails) I'll consider making a version for the 13.3 database too.

Current progress: Cities, players and clubs extracted from parent nations. Database holiday-tested for five years with England, Scotland, and Wales without any issue: Northumbria's national side stabilises between 35th and 55th in the world rankings, which seems fair. I'm presently working on Northumbria's nation rules for the leagues; when these are done there'll be some proper league testing before I start adding in more clubs and competitions to give the whole file more of a complete feel. Hopefully I'll have something cobbled together for people to test or play in the next week or two, as I don't predict many changes from my successful FM10 version.

Disclaimer: This is my interpretation of a Northumbrian nation. Anyone with deep-rooted conflicting ideas or thoughts is welcome to create their own system and boundaries, and I wish anyone luck with their own interpretations. However, any impartial critique, advice, interest or offers of help would be greatly appreciated as I may have started something that could become too-large in scale to finish as an individual.

Left: Boundaries of the Six incorporated Regions and Single Autonomous State

Right: Northumbrian settlements. Major towns are highlighted

This is the Territory of Northumbria; a new constituent country of the United Kingdom within the Pretannic Isles. It is placed in the UK & Ireland region and plays in all relevant International tournaments: it has a national reputation and league standard similar to that of Wales and Scotland respectively. The nation's Dominion includes: the North-East-England region and the county of Cumbria; the Scottish regions of Dumfries & Galloway and the Borders; the City of Lancaster district; and the electoral wards of Richmond & Scarborough from North Yorkshire. Total population is around 4M, comparable to that of Scotland.

My borders are loosely based on the ancient kingdom of Norþanhymbra and its dependencies, although I have restricted these boundaries quite extensively: the actual frontiers would include all lands from Liverpool and Sheffield along the M62 to Glasgow and Edinburgh along the Antonine Wall. These areas have their own distinct identities now - not to mention Edinburgh already being the capital of Scotland - so it's unlikely they would join a modern Northumbria. Additionally, including all these locations, players and clubs would be a massive challenge given the amount of data that would need to be edited, and at the end of this I would end up with what could be, arguably, the strongest footballing nation in the UK. This is not my intention; I am trying to create a more-balanced set of home nations.

Seven local regions have been created, edited from those already present in the game. Clockwise on the first map image, these are: Bernicia (Red), Novocastria (Burgundy), Vinovia (Orange), Deira (Yellow), Cumbria (Turquoise), Mænavia (Green), and Caledonia (Blue). The first two fall under the greater region of Bernicia, the second two under Deira, and the final three under Cumbria. The first four areas are considered Nordic and the latter three considered Celtic both in location and relative culture. All these place names are real for each particular area, although they are somewhat asynchronous: however, that is irrelevant in modern terms and is an analogue of the 'Africanisation' of place-names in newly-independent African states throughout the last 80 years. In terms of populations, an optimistic projection places Bernicia at 1.65M, Deira at 1.35M, and Cumbria at 1M.

All relevant in-game cities have been moved from England and Scotland into Northumbria, along with a host of additions. Geographical co-ordinates, altitudes, and citizen ranges are either added or corrected for all Northumbrian locations, and the remaining cities in England that didn't have a region set have been amended. At present, there are 214 places listed. This is likely to increase as I add ever-more obscure clubs, and in any event I will be aiming towards 250 locations in total. It may not add a whole lot to the game, but it certainly makes my location map draw fairly accurate boundaries and dense centres of population!

Economy & Finance: Taxation similar to England; club reputation, attendance and financial boosts planned. Full information to follow.

Finally, two new weather systems have added to the database; Nordic Northumbrian and Celtic Northumbrian. Both of these are based upon the in-game English Northern weather template, with additional rainfall added to one and a higher wind percentage added to the other. These changes are to emphasise the climactic differences between the east and west coasts of Northumbria, and to help give a sense of scale and depth to the nation.

A future addition may be that of a renamed Scots Language, with that itself being a modern descendant of the Northumbrian branch of Old English.

Competitions:

League and cup structures to follow. The above league tree is taken directly from my 2010 edition, and while the 2013 edition will be similar, tweaks are required before this can be considered final: most notably the inclusion of a pre-season Super Cup for the league and cup winners, expansion of the regional cups, and reworking the reserve/youth set-up. The Exhibition Cup may be removed, depending upon how glitchy mixing international and club teams is in this version of the game.

Awards:

To follow. Will be based on English awards.

Clubs:

All in-game clubs moved and replaced from the English and Scottish pyramids, with a working total of 119 teams. This includes extinct clubs, although some of these are erroneously attributed as such by the game: this will be fixed once I start adding teams from below Level 10 of the English pyramid. My target is 256, to fully flesh out an FA Cup competition - but only 60 will theoretically be playable entities. Stadia for all playable teams will be included, however those outside the playable system will likely be given a generic 'county playing field' to roughly tie down their location in order to save time.

Players:

All moved from their respective countries, to give a working total of 1131 people. All previous international caps have been reset to zero. It's likely that only Adam Johnson, Stuart Downing and Michael Carrick would reject such a move in-game, as everyone else is either on the very fringes of the England set-up or not involved at all. I've gone with a clean sweep to keep things simple and consistent. In time, I may add key staff and players to clubs without current personnel, to push the total beyond 1250 people.

WIP captures to follow.

See also: FM13 Regional Databases Thread

Good luck with this, a classic from a few years ago making a return.

:O gl mate!

Thank-you for your support!

Hit my first road-block today; I tried to be clever with using regional leagues as other divisions and I got a crash dump at the end of the second season. Not sure what that's all about, surely it would've broke at the end of the first season? I'd ran an older version for three years without issue, so I'll just go back to that and hope for the best, haha.

Will play this when you release... great work!

One questions, why did you go with 11 team leagues?