[WIP] Scotland - 8 Levels Restructured, Responsored and Reimagined

Purely a personal enjoyment thing because I enjoyed someone elses rebuilding of Scotland in FM14. Thought I'd share, see what input people may have.

Eight Tiers of Scottish Football, Bigger Divisions, Improved Sponsorship, Promotion Playoffs In/Relegation Playoffs Out.

Leagues By Sponsor

***

Still work to do, but works nicely thus far.

TV money spread down to conference level.

Win/Draw Money introduced at all levels, less heavy league placing payouts. Spread of income.

To do list:

Regional League Element - going to pot. Not massively fussed, but names like North and South are pointless without some level of regional glue. (Help?)

Cup Dates Tweaked. They work, but they all start at same time and need spreading out.

Johnnie Walker Scottish Football Association Cup needs several preliminary rounds adding else the SPL are in there by October.

Advanced Editor Changes to tweak draws and rules

All teams sorted by reputation in database - might need a tweak.

Colours were all changed to match sponsor colours for each cup and league - something is breaking that. Either from Susie or Metallic Logopack.

Cup Venues - advanced editor work to do.

To be continued...

Very interesting this mate

Having a mare with the Scottish Cup. Whilst the editor sorts 395 into rounds nicely, it only does so over 6 or 7 rounds which means insufficient rounds and bigger clubs involved too early. Less fixture congestion, but also less lower league cup run opportunities.

Best thing to do is have the the top 2 divisions have a bye to the last 64 and the last 2 divisions (within your jonnie walker league) come in 2 rounds before

Good luck with this mate - this would be perfection for me. I'm currently doing my first FM15 save with Strathspey Thistle but that far too high up the pyramid for my liking!

At the lowest levels will you be creating clubs? In my FM14 save I was AFC Jura thanks to a great file posted here. What are your plans for the lowest levels of the Highlands & Islands? What rep will the lowest clubs be andwhat CA/PA range for the players?

One thing that always gets to me about adding real world sponsors to something like this is that they never seem to fit the league they're assigned to. BT Sport sponsoring the Junior leagues?! Just a minor annoyance though, file otherwise looks great. Obviously the real life structure doesn't really lend well to the sort of extension that England has in their pyramid, so something like this is very interesting.

A wee bit of help re the Regional Leagues:

1) Open the league in the editor

2) Scroll down to where the North/South/East/West Boundary options are

3) Choose a "south" boundary for northern leagues, a "west" boundary for eastern leagues etc. For example, in my Scottish Pyramid (real life) file I put the south boundary of the Highland league as Dundee

I'll give this a go when ready, sounds interesting. It's always fun to see how different people imagine Scotland's league system in future!

Please try and put Lewis and Harris FC into any 'North' or 'Highland' regional league.

I can supply any info you need on them - home ground, players, managers or anything you need.

Based in Stornoway and won the recent North Caledonian cup.

Good luck with this mate - this would be perfection for me. I'm currently doing my first FM15 save with Strathspey Thistle but that far too high up the pyramid for my liking!

At the lowest levels will you be creating clubs? In my FM14 save I was AFC Jura thanks to a great file posted here. What are your plans for the lowest levels of the Highlands & Islands? What rep will the lowest clubs be andwhat CA/PA range for the players?

So, at present, I've literally used all 395 clubsin the editor. There are 19 clubs in that bottom amateur league, purely based on reputation in the vanilla editor. In theory, I'd like to add a handful of clubs to make the amateur level larger. Lowest Reps in there are 50, tho I believe a couple of clubs have a rep of 1. Most of them end up regen filled. I've not looked at CA/PA yet, still getting stuff to run cleanly. which it is, but I'm ironing annoyances.

One thing that always gets to me about adding real world sponsors to something like this is that they never seem to fit the league they're assigned to. BT Sport sponsoring the Junior leagues?! Just a minor annoyance though, file otherwise looks great. Obviously the real life structure doesn't really lend well to the sort of extension that England has in their pyramid, so something like this is very interesting.

Yeah, agree. Have literally taken a list of Scotlands larger companies, likely that BT Sport will sponsor the conference and Highland Spring will support Junior Football. I'm open to idea's here. It's all fictional, but I'd like it to be enjoyable for others even if I did start out making it for me.

A wee bit of help re the Regional Leagues:

1) Open the league in the editor

2) Scroll down to where the North/South/East/West Boundary options are

3) Choose a "south" boundary for northern leagues, a "west" boundary for eastern leagues etc. For example, in my Scottish Pyramid (real life) file I put the south boundary of the Highland league as Dundee

I'll give this a go when ready, sounds interesting. It's always fun to see how different people imagine Scotland's league system in future!

Ah, thank you Morrissey. I liked your file, but hate the current setup. Once I started meddling with the SPL I realised I'd have to do everything from scratch.

I'll look at the regional suggestions. I have 8 leagues at Junior level feeding into 4 conference leagues and in turn into the Highland/Lowland. Part of me wants a varied non-regional setup, part of me wants the local rivalries between smaller Edinburgh, Dundee and Stirling clubs.

Please try and put Lewis and Harris FC into any 'North' or 'Highland' regional league.

I can supply any info you need on them - home ground, players, managers or anything you need.

Based in Stornoway and won the recent North Caledonian cup.

Mate, if you provide me with whatever you have, I'll happily add them into the Amateur league unless you think they belong in a junior league?

At present monitoring prize monies, histories and promotion/relegation while tweaking some fixture rules.

You've given me some food for thought there Morrissey on the Regional Front.

Going to review the bottom three tiers and break them into North and South from Highland/Lowland down.

I will still be renaming and dismantling the existing leagues, but a complete N/S/E/W regional breakdown using Stirling and Dundee as the boundarys between E/W and N/S respectively.

I will in due course be looking for some extra teams to add, so if anyone has any idea's post them here. I'll get back to you in a day or so with a list of info I need.

I was looking at the website of new club Spey Valley yesterday - you get ideas for sponsors from the local websites. At tht level they're usualy local plumbers and pie factories.

For new clubs, I'm an island boy so I'd definitely welcome storneyboy's club and other real teams such as Rothesay Brandane and a team from Orkney and

Skye. For a bit of fun, how about rep 1 made-up clubs from Islay, Jura, Mull etc?

Yeah, agree. Have literally taken a list of Scotlands larger companies, likely that BT Sport will sponsor the conference and Highland Spring will support Junior Football. I'm open to idea's here. It's all fictional, but I'd like it to be enjoyable for others even if I did start out making it for me.

It wasn't really a massive criticism, so apologies if it came out like that. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things - personally I think the real life situation with the English Conference Leagues ends up with some stupid sounding leagues - I mean, the Vanarama Conference? Wit?!

If I was doing it, I would put BT Sport at the top - maybe have it so that they've driven this reform after Sky continued their complete dingying of the Scottish leagues. They get full coverage on TV of the league (maybe put some additional TV game times as a result) and first dibs on anything below it. The sponsors below them are pretty much interchangable IMO, although I'd keep RBS up high. Once you regionalise things, I'd put local companies, like phnompenhandy says. I know it contradicts what I said earlier about Vanarama, but who wouldn't want to play in the "Tam and Effie's Stovies Northern Junior League Division 1"?

It wasn't really a massive criticism, so apologies if it came out like that. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things - personally I think the real life situation with the English Conference Leagues ends up with some stupid sounding leagues - I mean, the Vanarama Conference? Wit?!

If I was doing it, I would put BT Sport at the top - maybe have it so that they've driven this reform after Sky continued their complete dingying of the Scottish leagues. They get full coverage on TV of the league (maybe put some additional TV game times as a result) and first dibs on anything below it. The sponsors below them are pretty much interchangable IMO, although I'd keep RBS up high. Once you regionalise things, I'd put local companies, like phnompenhandy says. I know it contradicts what I said earlier about Vanarama, but who wouldn't want to play in the "Tam and Effie's Stovies Northern Junior League Division 1"?

Tam and Effie's

Having done my research of the lower leagues for my real-life DB, the sponsors further down are McBookie.com (local bookies), HRL (waste management), Stagecoach (buses/coaches) and other companies with a national profile while the cup sponsors are much more localised. Plenty of creative scope there!

I demand a league/cup sponsored by Brewdog! Haha.

How do i download this?

A wee bit of help re the Regional Leagues:

1) Open the league in the editor

2) Scroll down to where the North/South/East/West Boundary options are

3) Choose a "south" boundary for northern leagues, a "west" boundary for eastern leagues etc. For example, in my Scottish Pyramid (real life) file I put the south boundary of the Highland league as Dundee

I'll give this a go when ready, sounds interesting. It's always fun to see how different people imagine Scotland's league system in future!

The real life boundary is Arbroath, they are the furthest south active team that could fall into the Highland league! Good luck to them with a trip to Wick on a Tuesday night!!

So, I'm going to post where I got to with this as I've had some funeral arrangements ruin my focus.

A little time playing and I may update a little.

It is what it is at present, a fantasy, purely for my enjoyment, but hopefully of interest to some others who find the current SFA arrangements to be a little dull.

I will look at Sponsors, want to find a logo maker first. BT Sport at the top is a fine idea forameuss, I am looking at that. There WILL be a small update next week.

Link is here... Steam Workshop

Great stuff LCpl, I'm following with great interest - and patience.

I've just downloaded this mate. Thank you for all your hard work. I know how long this stuff takes and the hours of frustration that comes with it!

Looking forward to playing a far more interesting Scottish setup now :-)

I was looking at the website of new club Spey Valley yesterday - you get ideas for sponsors from the local websites. At tht level they're usualy local plumbers and pie factories.

For new clubs, I'm an island boy so I'd definitely welcome storneyboy's club and other real teams such as Rothesay Brandane and a team from Orkney and

Skye. For a bit of fun, how about rep 1 made-up clubs from Islay, Jura, Mull etc?

I must admit it would be awesome to play with the Rothesay Brandanes as I am from Rothesay myself!

Having played a few months into the season my only gripe would be the Match rules. Very high % of home grown and trained players needed making it hard to buy anyone in for the smaller clubs. I've edited the numbers down but otherwise enjoying it throughly.

Having played a few months into the season my only gripe would be the Match rules. Very high % of home grown and trained players needed making it hard to buy anyone in for the smaller clubs. I've edited the numbers down but otherwise enjoying it throughly.

Yeah, i changed that as well.. defo too high

This looks fantastic, I'd love to give it a go and start from the amatuer leagues.

Someone did something similar to this but for Northern Ireland (to tier 11 I think) and it was way back in FM10...I miss it, literal pub teams!