Promotion/Relegation from non playable leagues

Alright, so my real life team is in 5th league in Belgium, which is only playable until 3th. I gave them a sugar daddy and some good players to influence there chances of getting promoted from 5th to the playable 3th league.

Did the same with some Polish teams from 4th league (Poland is only playable until 2nd).

Now I have simulated 15 years and all teams are still in their respective leagues, none have promoted to the playable leagues.

Then it hit me, matches are not played in those leagues. That's why you can save/reload at the League reset date and get different promoted teams from non-playable to playable leagues. So it's completely useless to give loads of money and good players to those teams, because it all comes down to luck at the end of the season anyway.

So, my question, is there anything else that influences promotion from non playable to playable besides mere luck? Has it even been enabled in the database that a team can be promoted through two unplayable divisions before knocking on the gate of playable leagues?

The Belgian team already has 3-4 times the reputation of the teams in it's league, and 2 times the reputation of the teams in the 4th tier and even in the playable 3rd tier it would rank among the topteams with this reputation, so reputation also doesn't seem to have a major influence. Anything else?

Reputation is the primary factor in selecting which teams are promoted, think of it as a weighted lottery where the more reputation points a club has the more tickets they are given.

The issue you might have with a team from the 5th tier is whether the core data allows for teams from that level to be promoted to the pool of 4th tier clubs so that they have a chance of being selected to be promoted to the playable 3rd trier.

The issue you might have with a team from the 5th tier is whether the core data allows for teams from that level to be promoted to the pool of 4th tier clubs so that they have a chance of being selected to be promoted to the playable 3rd trier.

Well, I've checked it and so far I've found teams who effectively promoted from 5th to 4th tier, so I don't know why it shouldn't be possible for those teams to promote onwards to 3rd division.

Edit: I just found a team which started in 5th tier with my own team, albeit with reputation 3 times lower, and they have managed to grow onwards. They have been able to promote to 3th tier, got relegated to 4th and got promoted to 3th immediately again.

So it is possible. And either they were very very lucky, or there is some factor involved which is not money, players or reputation.

Promotion in non playable leagues are determined by reputation plus a random factor. So for example...

Team A has a reputation of 500.

Team B has a reputation of 400.

There are 2 promotion spots.

It can be looked at like this...

Team A has 500 chances to be randomly selected.

Team B has 400 chances to be randomly selected.

Teams C to Z have the same number of chances to be randomly selected as to their reputation.

So like Barside side, it's like a lottery with the teams with a higher reputation having more tickets to win.

Promotion in non playable leagues are determined by reputation plus a random factor. So for example...

Team A has a reputation of 500.

Team B has a reputation of 400.

There are 2 promotion spots.

It can be looked at like this...

Team A has 500 chances to be randomly selected.

Team B has 400 chances to be randomly selected.

Teams C to Z have the same number of chances to be randomly selected as to their reputation.

So like Barside side, it's like a lottery with the teams with a higher reputation having more tickets to win.

And yet my team with a reputation 3 times higher than others didn't manage a single promotion in 15 years :'(

Even when I used the in-game editor and changed it to 8.000 and save/reloaded twice they didn't promote. Totally bonkers

There are a number of issues with promotion from non-playable leagues. If nothing is influencing the reputation of the teams, then they can basically be stuck forever. The problem is quite apparent in Germany where if you take a smaller club to the top, their II-team is still stuck on their starting reputation, and simply won't budge, pretty much making them have no chance of ever being promoted.

SI are aware of that though, and it seems to be a case of balancing what can and can't be done without slowing down processing times.

Also note that as you're going from tier 5 to 3, that may also be the problem, as in game they do seem to be assigned a league, so they'd have to first be promoted to tier 4, before they're eligible to be promoted to tier 3, and I'm unsure of the mechanism in place to allow that to happen.

Best choice at the present time: download a user-created expanded database for Belgium. I know that there has been difficulty with exactly duplicating the Belgian structure, but at least you'd be able to select your team and have some sort of save.