[FM12] American Soccer League Pyramid (Nne Tiers, Twelve+ Cups, Fictional)

[Milo Bloom]

Hey everyone.

Since last summer I've spent a lot of individual time and effort creating a fictional tiered American Soccer league pyramid. Now I'm approaching the finish line. It started from inputting the latitudes, longitudes, and weather of hundreds of American cities to creating original(and uncreative) stadium names for clubs in those cities to creating hundreds of referees.

Now, what am I close to finishing? A giant American soccer pyramid that at its height is on par with the other great domestic leagues and at its bottom is comparable to the lower leagues available around the Football Manager world. Oh, and don't forget the cups.

Here is some more detail:

- A nine tiered pro/reg pyramid ranging from the American Premier League to regional divisions. Over 300 teams participating in active and playable leagues. Below that, a giant inactive league that functions as a feeder for another 100+ created clubs to feed into the bottom division.

The Tiers are divided into this (# Divisions/ # Clubs in EACH division)*:

*Example: (2/16) = 32 clubs in that tier. Sixteen clubs divided into two divisions

American Premier League (1/18)

American National League (1/18)

American Federal League (1/18)

NSA Championship (2/16) East/West

NSA League One (2/16) East/West

NSA League Two (2/16) East/West

Patriot League Elite (4/15) North/South/Central/West

Patriot League One (4/15) North/South/Central West

USS Regional Premier Leagues (8/9) Northeast/Mid-Atlantic/Southeast/Midwest/Great Plains/Southwest/West/Northwest

*Inactive Lower League feeds into Regional Premier (200+ clubs)

The Cups

The National Cups (Clubs involved):

A newly revamped U.S. Open Cup (All created clubs, even in inactive feeder league)

Soccer Bowl (Pre-season one-off between U.S. Open Cup and American Premier League winners)

President's Cup (Tiers 1-3)

Lamar Hunt Trophy (Tiers 3-6)

Patriot League Invitational Cup (Tiers 7-8)

Federal Cup (9+Inactive Leagues)

And the Regional Cups (Region):

Northeast Regional Cup(Northeast) * Not yet named, more on this later

Colonial Cup (Mid-Atlantic)

Dixie Cup (Southeast)

Great Lakes Trophy (Midwest)

Great Plains Cup (Great Plains)

Sun Belt Trophy (Southwest)

Rose Cup (West)

Cascadia Cup (Northwest)

Customized and regionally based Youth and Reserve Leagues.

The Clubs

560 is the current total. One club per American city, with the exception being New York, which also has its Burroughs represented(although, they start in the inactive leagues). Every U.S. state is represented, even Alaska.

Every club has a unique stadium and reserve stadium.

Every team has its own home/away/goalkeepers uniforms. So now Red/Blue blandness.

Here are a couple clips:

[video=youtube;dcOvUx4fSak]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcOvUx4fSak&feature=g-upl&context=G2ee1973AUAAAAAAAHAA

[video=youtube;1P-7bCqmSek]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1P-7bCqmSek&feature=g-upl&context=G2e945e3AUAAAAAAABAA

Major note: The boundaries can be a little dodgy. They seem to work 98% of the time, but for some reason, some clubs and leagues are prone to odd moves and changes. It's rare compared to most of the movement in the database, and it seems to be nothing I can do about it as the long/lats are correct.

LINK

Thanks to Lawlore for his great effort in creating logos and making his own alterations. Here is his post and a link to his work:

I'm pleased to be able to announce the release of the first logopack for this database, along with a slightly modified version of Milo's database.

Available now at: http://charthero.com/Projects+Logopack.zip

Any issues, suggestions, please feel free to hit me up.

There will be a release for FM 13. Most importantly it will be recreated from scratch which will hopefully eliminate most crashing issues.

[Toronto Blizzard]

That's a lot of work, Milo! This is similar to a structure I've been working on (eerily so - down to having regional cups and 18 teams in the top divisions) for the USA and a second separate structure for Canada (though they're mirrored, to an extent).

I would love to provide some input, but, then it would conflict with my own (pending release)... actually, the release is stalled because SI has disabled the advanced editor. But, I certainly hope people contribute. You might want to loop into the *Be a Player* thread on here as well - a number of people have contributed data to it and you could probably tweak starting clubs and add them to your structure (with permission, of course).

Good luck!

[Milo Bloom]

And a side note. Once this is completed(hopefully before the new year with the help of everyone here). I will begin a similar, but much smaller scale Canadian version to run parallel with this database.

[Toronto Blizzard]

Ah, healthy competition - may the best fictional North American system win!!! ;-)

[Milo Bloom]

Ah, healthy competition - may the best fictional North American system win!!! ;-)

Weird timing on your post,Toronto. It seems we are on the same wave length, a shame I didn't post earlier in the process where we could have worked together. I wish we still could? I don't see this as conflicting interest.

In my original plans, this was going to be a cross Canadian/American league similar to almost every other "American" league, but I dropped the process in favor of later going back and doing a Canadian revamp.

Luckily, I have not used the Advanced Editor. I didn't use it because I am terrible at any sort of programming and I wanted to limit crash issues as much as possible.

[Toronto Blizzard]

As a Canadian I wanted a separate structure for nationalist reasons (not that I have anything against Canadian teams playing in American leagues - it just makes sense on so many levels), but didn't think it'd be realistic to have a multi-tiered Canadian system next to the current American system.

Anyway, in terms of club names, et cetera, I found googling defunct "American/Canadian football/soccer clubs" resulted in a wealth of pretty neat names. In addition, Wikipedia often lists nicknames for cities on the city page, which formed the basis of a decent number of club names for me.

[Milo Bloom]

For those curious as to what the top league and the bottom league look like in terms of what cities, here is Tier 1(APL) and Tier 9(North East Division)

I believe most of these screenshots are 1-2+ months old, so some changes/tweaks likely have been made:

[Milo Bloom]

Minor update. Thanks to suggestions/feedback from here and other sites, I'm inching closer to the release.

About 1/4th of the clubs are now finished. Christmas Day is looking more and more possible.

[Milo Bloom]

I've gotten a few messages about testing, so I'm going to post the database for all those that want to check it out.

Note: Not all the teams have been completed, and 1/2 of the teams don't have a youth or reserve league structure. The Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Mid-West/Great Lakes region all have the youth/reserves set-up. The clubs from the Great Plains, Southwest, West, and Northwest regions do not(and this includes top tier clubs like Los Angeles).

Here is the database. Please let me know if you are having issues.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=EJK924U0

Edit:Again, this is the unfinished/untweaked database. It's entirely playable from Tiers 1-9, but I've put almost no work into scheduling, the awards are incomplete, etc, etc.

Also, the reputations of competitions like the CONCACAF Champions League are wrong and skewed. I've been altering them to test league/club reputation.

I would also recommend turning Add Players on Staff before starting a game.

[Milo Bloom]

Also, I've gotten a few messages about club reputations/attendances at the top flight.

It's a completely fictional/fantasy database.

The idea behind this database is the hypothetical if soccer/football in the U.S. was on equal footing with the other major sports like American football, baseball, and basketball. The top flight is supposed to be on par reputation wise with the top leagues in Europe and the attendances similar to those seen in American football and baseball. The bottom flight should be on par with some of the lower available leagues in Football Manager.

There is a strong possibility that after this database is released a second, alternative, database featuring the same structure will be released, with updated reputations on-par with the current/real-life American clubs.

[dim13]

Milo:

I downloaded your database, gave it a try and wow, you've done a fantastic job !!! Really good work !! Thank you for sharing. I'm looking forward to future updates.

[mikemagnum4311]

Ah, healthy competition - may the best fictional North American system win!!! ;-)

Yes, Indeed lol

[Milo Bloom]

Milo:

I downloaded your database, gave it a try and wow, you've done a fantastic job !!! Really good work !! Thank you for sharing. I'm looking forward to future updates.

Thanks, I appreciate it. Currently getting close to completing the clubs.

That would just leave awards, referees, scheduling, and format/rule tweaks before the 1.0 will be released.

[Stromson]

I can help with team names, but I have a question:

Do you want "traditional" soccer names (things like "United", "Rovers", etc) or more American style nicknames (or a healthy mix of the two)?

[Milo Bloom]

I actually like the idea of a mixed-bag as long as the name suits the City/State/Team it's referring to. For the number of teams I've named I've ranged from using State symbols(mostly animals) or just browsing wikipedia pages and picking out something that interest me.

For example, the state of Massachusetts has been heavily influenced by Irish immigrants. I tried to incorporate that by naming one team Worcester Rovers, in reference to the Irish club Shamrock Rovers and also another club in a more American style with the Brockton Fusiliers.

And for anyone interested, just because some clubs are named now doesn't mean I'm dead-set on that name. I'm always open to new suggestions. I've really appreciated and tried to include all the ones I've received so far.

[Toronto Blizzard]

Yes, Indeed lol

Yes, Mikemagnum - I see that you're back in the game, too! It's becoming a crowded field.

[Stromson]

Sounds good, are you assigning any specific regions, or do you want me to just PM you an updated database?

[Milo Bloom]

From the editors I've seen, they are all different.

I created a database from scratch, completely fictional from the teams, format, and reputations. There's another one similar to that, which I regret to say I haven't tried out yet, but it looks interesting. I like the way they've separated the top flight.

There's one out there that is a realistic expansion, which took up a majority of my FM time last year.

Then there's another set-up I've seen that is a reformat/restructure with real life teams.

I started creating my database because I wanted to do a fictional "What if the U.S. supported soccer like the other major sports", which I think differs from the other two that are restructures. Mine is a complete hypothetical, fantasy. The last couple years of FM, it's the exact type of database I've always wanted to play, so I took it upon myself to create it. It went from one league and eighteen teams, to the monster project it is now.

[Milo Bloom]

Sounds good, are you assigning any specific regions, or do you want me to just PM you an updated database?

I'm not and just send me your suggestions.

If you are interested in a certain state or region, let me know I can send you a list of all the currently created cities/clubs in that area and you can pick and choose who you want to name.

If there's no particular region, you can just pick and choose what teams you'd like. If there's a city you'd like to see in the database, it's not a big issue adding them as well, especially since I am currently working on the youth/reserve structures which are completely based on regions.

[Stromson]

*shrug* Nothing too specific, but I live in the Mid-Atlantic, so I can handle that group pretty readily.

[Milo Bloom]

Cool.

I might as well just post them here as it may give an idea to people which type of cities/towns are in the database:

The cities/clubs in the Mid-Atlantic region:

DE:

Wilmington

Dover

Newark

Bear

Middletown

DC:

Washington

MD:

Baltimore

Columbia

Germantown

Silver Spring

Waldorf

Glen Burnie

Ellicott City

Frederick

Dundalk

Rockville

Bethesda

Gaithersburg

Towson

Bowie

Potomac

Aspen Hill

NC

Charlotte

Raleigh

Greensboro

Winston-Salem

Durham

Fayetteville

Cary

Wilmington

High Point

Greenville

Asheville

Concord

Gastonia

Rocky Mount

Chapel Hill

Hickory

Wake FOrest

Burlington

Salisbury

Asheboro

VA

Virginia Beach

Norfolk

Chesapeake

Arlington

Richmond

Newport News

Alexandria

Hampton

Roanoke

Portsmouth

Suffolk

Lynchburg

Reston

McLean

Charlottesville

Blacksburg

Manassas

Winchester

Fredericksburg

Harrisonburg

Danville

Fairfax

[CCSUltra]

This is incredible. I created something like this in FM11, but not to this extent. I had a 6-tier national league system for the US and put it on footing with the other American sports and soccer in the rest of the world.

What names do you have for Ohio teams? In my database, I definitely gave Cleveland an edge.

[Milo Bloom]

Here are the clubs/cities from Ohio:

Columbus

Cleveland

Cincinatti

Toledo

Akron

Dayton

Parma

Canton

Youngstown

Lorain

Hamilton

Springfield

Kettering

If you have any suggested names, that would be awesome. I know almost nothing about the Ohio/Great Lakes area.

[Stromson]

On it! I'll have em back in the next day or two, depending on how much free time I get at work. ;-)

[Javier]

I have to say the work you're doing is amazing, Milo Bloom. I'd love to help you but unfortunately my knowledge of American football/soccer (and the US in general) is very limited.

May I ask what is the criteria you are using for choosing what cities are you creating teams for?

[Toronto Blizzard]

Out of curiosity, Milo, what kinds of league/club reputations do you have for the top/lowest tiers?

[Milo Bloom]

@Javier

Thanks, Javier. Very kind.

I used census population numbers that I found online. I would estimate that 80% it was simply taking down every city/town in a state down to a mostly arbitrary population soft cap.

@Toronto

I haven't finalized and fully tested the reputations yet. Currently the top flight clubs all have "parallels" with top European clubs, the reputation of the American Premier League will likely be on equal footing with the Champions League. Los Angeles, New York, and Dallas have been deemed super-clubs by myself, and are comparable to Real Madrid, Manchester United, and Barcelona. though dynamic reputation is making it hard to maintain that. It's one of the main reasons I really need a comparable fictional Canadian league with raised reputations to add more reputable clubs into North American club and international competitions. Same with Caribbean and Central American teams.

Plus, a strong Canadian league will really added another difficulty dynamic to the CONCACAF Champions League, which is currently an underwhelming competition due to the Mexican and U.S. dominance.

The bottom playable league reputation is at 30 currently. The teams all around the 500 mark.

The general idea was to give the widest range of sporting levels I could. At the height, teams should be rich, have massive stadiums(comparable to baseball and football stadiums), and compete for the best players in the world. At the lowest, semi-pro, local teams that can't afford transfer fees, and attendances in the hundreds.

[Toronto Blizzard]

Interesting. That's a bit broader than mine (the top US division is about 130 in reputation, with the clubs between 6000 and 7500, and the lowest division at 35 and the clubs at about 800). You'll certainly have to raise the reputations of other CONCACAF leagues to make the CCL a more compelling competition.

You know, I'd be happy to collaborate with you on Canada - I've actually done all the work (clubs, stadiums, kits, et cetera). Three national tiers with a four-division regional tier (88 clubs in total). It's going to be a part of my (hopefully soon-to-be-released) North American database, but if having it as part of two database releases gets more people playing in Canada, that'd be worthwhile!

There's even a created database that just Canada. The problem is that I don't know if trying to merge the databases would be worth the effort of finding the failed database changes.

You might also want to consider creating Caribbean/Central American super-leagues and raise the reputations of the clubs in those.

That way, there'd be four or five fairly high reputation leagues from which to draw teams into the CCL.

[Milo Bloom]

This is my first real project so I'm an editor newbie.

How would conflicting Unique IDs work? If we both created teams from scratch, would they end up with the same Unique IDs and thus create serious conflict issues?

[Toronto Blizzard]

They can possibly. The editor's gotten better this year because it assigns another random ID when you create something, but it can still happen.

When I was building my database, I did Canada first, then USA in a separate database and then merged them. In addition to failed changes (of which there were quite a few), there were also cases where stadiums became assigned to different clubs, players I had moved had moved again, cities were wrong, et cetera.

I have some base information in an excel document (club name, stadium, kits, some finance info), but then it would have to be entered in again. And after spending pretty much all of November doing that (I had to do Canada again after I realised how many errors and problems there were with the merger), I'm not sure how great my appetite is to do it again...

[Milo Bloom]

Scheduling update. I've set the preliminary scheduling for all first teams. Tried to find the most balance, but there is some fixture congestion, particularly for Premier League teams involved in the CONCACAF Champions League. I believe I avoided all the FIFA dates, and tried to eliminate as many back-to-back Sat-Wed-Sat-Wed structures. But I haven't done any thorough testing with the TV rules.

The basic set-up:

First Week of August: Super Bowl(Super Cup between Premier League and Open Cup winners)

August-May (League)

August - May (Open Cup)

August-December (Tier Cup)

February-May (Regional Cup)

I'll probably just leave the Youth Cups with the default set-up.

[Milo Bloom]

They can possibly. The editor's gotten better this year because it assigns another random ID when you create something, but it can still happen.

When I was building my database, I did Canada first, then USA in a separate database and then merged them. In addition to failed changes (of which there were quite a few), there were also cases where stadiums became assigned to different clubs, players I had moved had moved again, cities were wrong, et cetera.

I have some base information in an excel document (club name, stadium, kits, some finance info), but then it would have to be entered in again. And after spending pretty much all of November doing that (I had to do Canada again after I realised how many errors and problems there were with the merger), I'm not sure how great my appetite is to do it again...

My db has a fair few "failed" after converting the file from 2011, but I've run sims up to 2050 with no crashes. I ran into the same stadium issue, and manually sorted through all of those. I believe I caught most of them which I had to manually go through and add the Reserve Stadium to the manually created Reserve/U-18 sides.

You said there were 88 teams? That's a little over my biggest region in the current database(West has 84). With school out for winter break, I am sure I could do the work of inputting the data since you did all the hard work of creating everything from scratch.

Did you use the advanced editor for your set-up? I haven't touched it at all.

[Milo Bloom]

For those curious to see the current progress, here is the latest database.

http://www.gamefront.com/files/21106803/AmericanProjectsv9.8.dbc

Still have some new names to change to on the back-burner. All of the clubs have been named, but are the generic/wikipedia/random names I've come up with over the course of the last six months. The suggestions I've been receiving have been outstanding and I will continue to change my "default names" if I am sent an alternative.

This database includes the full league structure, including youth and reserves for all 560 teams, including cups. It's missing the awards, referees, squad rules, league rules, and reputation fixes.

Major note: The boundaries can be a little dodgy. They seem to work 98% of the time, but for some reason, some clubs and leagues are prone to odd moves and changes. It's rare compared to most of the movement in the database, and it seems to be nothing I can do about it as the long/lats are correct.

[Toronto Blizzard]

I used the advanced editor to create the league structures, but the database I'm proposing doesn't have any advanced rules or basic rules attached to it - it's just database changes.

When I said 88 teams, I meant for the entire Canadian structure (16 in each of the three national divisions, and four regional divisions of ten teams each). The regional boundaries are all set, so teams (for the most part) promote and relegate between the third and fourth tiers properly.

The other thing you might want to take into consideration is that some of the teams are existing, some are resurrected teams from Canadian soccer history and the rest are figments of my imagination. I know that your US database is all fictional, so I might need to come up with some replacement teams if you want it to be all fiction.

[Milo Bloom]

It's your database, so I'll leave that decision to you.

But if you want to collaborate and make these two databases compliment one-another, I'm all for it. As you can probably tell by my work, I don't mind inputting data, but I'm wary of getting too involved in development process with your work. I can do the grunt work, but I want you to have the creative license.

The one change I would want to make would be a bump in reputation compared to the current Canadian national and club levels, especially the bigger clubs.

[Toronto Blizzard]

At the moment, the top division's reputation is 105, with the best club at 6100 and the worst at about 4000.

I could certainly send you a document that has:

Club name

City

Reputation

Stadium

Stadium Capacity (some I have, some I don't)

Attendance

Training Facilities

Kits

The problem is that I kept somewhat detailed records from the summer when I first conceived all this, but then started to freestyle when I got around to entering data (especially since I expanded things a little). That said, I could also provide you with a database so that you could go and look up anything that wasn't entered in the Excel chart for a particular club.

I've got three national leagues, one regional league (with four divisions), an FA cup, a lower-league cup, six regional cups, a supercup and two pre-season competitions, all with reputations.

[Milo Bloom]

Sounds awesome.

As for reputation:

It's a little under the level of MLS.

It's your database, but in an effort to compliment mine, would you be against a bump in reputations? I was thinking to the 140-160 range, basically in between the level of the French and Dutch leagues with the major clubs paralleling the bigger clubs in those leagues.

I think reputation fixes are simple enough, that it could just be one of several database options.

[Toronto Blizzard]

I'd be fine with bumping it up. Since your premise is "what if soccer was as big in America as the NFL?", I guess I can operate from the "what if soccer was as big in Canada as the NHL?". That would probably bring the league standard up to where you want it. The one issue is that you might have to increase the stadium sizes and average attendances, at least of the bigger clubs. Most of the top division clubs play in fairly large stadiums >25,000 (a lot of CFL stadiums), but only a few over 30,000.

The one difference between my database and yours (I think) is that my clubs are far less geographically dispersed than yours. Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver probably each have between six and eight teams across the four divisions. Some of them, especially in Toronto (which I know best) are quite local. Cities like Ottawa, Calgary, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Quebec City have two to four each, and some smaller Canadian cities have two.

Once again, if that's not a problem for you, it's certainly not a problem for me.

If you wanted to deepen the pyramid a bit, I could probably come up with some more material, too.

[Milo Bloom]

Not at all. That sounds fantastic.

[Toronto Blizzard]

Let me see what I can send you tonight. I can probably post my current database up to one of the file sharing sites, along with the Excel document - then I'll send you a PM with the link...

[CCSUltra]

Columbus: Columbus Crew, has to be that

Cleveland: Crooked River FC (in honor of the Cuyahoga River), Cleveland Admirals

Cincinnati: Cincinnati Royals, Cincinnati Kings

Toledo: Ugh, not sure about Toledo. Maybe just use the Toledo Rockets

Dayton Bombers? SOmething relating to the Air Force base there

Parma Invaders? That's one of the big high schools in Parma. There's a large Serbian and Ukrainian population in Parma, maybe something incorporating that

[Colorado]

Parma Dynamo or Dynamo Parma maybe?

[Milo Bloom]

Thanks, folks.

First full version of the database will be released Christmas Day.

[themodelcitizen]

From the editors I've seen, they are all different.

I created a database from scratch, completely fictional from the teams, format, and reputations. There's another one similar to that, which I regret to say I haven't tried out yet, but it looks interesting. I like the way they've separated the top flight.

There's one out there that is a realistic expansion, which took up a majority of my FM time last year.

Then there's another set-up I've seen that is a reformat/restructure with real life teams.

I started creating my database because I wanted to do a fictional "What if the U.S. supported soccer like the other major sports", which I think differs from the other two that are restructures. Mine is a complete hypothetical, fantasy. The last couple years of FM, it's the exact type of database I've always wanted to play, so I took it upon myself to create it. It went from one league and eighteen teams, to the monster project it is now.

I'm tempted to do something like this but using the NASL as a database -- "what if" the NASL had thrived and developed alongside the other major sports? This might even go as far as assigning fake histories, giving the Comos a dynasty while sprinkling other cup wins throughout the years around the country (and Canada) and adjusting the format to possibly include promotion and relegation.

[mteeters]

I looked into something like this, but with the ASL from the 20s-30s. In the end it seemed like a ton of work, so I dropped it.

Good luck if you proceed.

[dim13]

Milo:

Please check the Detroit Motors team in your database. You have it misspelled as "Detrioit" for both Name and Short Name.

[Milo Bloom]

Milo:

Please check the Detroit Motors team in your database. You have it misspelled as "Detrioit" for both Name and Short Name.

Fixed. Thanks.

[njndirish]

I looked into something like this, but with the ASL from the 20s-30s. In the end it seemed like a ton of work, so I dropped it.

Good luck if you proceed.

Interesting and perhaps random fact, up until the 50's America's soccer leagues were entirely regional. The ASL was Northeast and there were several other leagues that were scattered across the country (Chicago and St. Louis were hubs). The Open Cup was used as a kind of Champions Cup for America.

If you want to have real fun use this site: http://white.sover.net/~spectrum/ perhaps the most in depth American soccer database

[dim13]

Thanks, folks.

First full version of the database will be released Christmas Day.

Milo:

Just wondering about the update ? How's it going ? Thanks

[Milo Bloom]

Sorry, been a very hectic holiday period. This is the first time I've gotten in front my computer since a couple days ago.

Here's the latest and "first release" of the database: http://www.gamefront.com/files/21129180/AmericanProjectsv9.9.dbc

I'm actually starting my first actual playing of the game in a few minutes, so I'm sure I'll make tweaks in the future, but this set-up has everything, including awards and a full reserve/youth structure. I've simmed 30 years into the future with no crashes.

One thing I have noticed is the bottom division is very, very tight with money.

Couple notes:

- For some odd reason, Kenner and Casas Adobes love to jump in to odd divisions. I'm sure others do it, but those two seem to do it early and often. Not sure why, as long/lat check out fine for them.

- My database does not play nice with other databases that created clubs from scratch.

- I would love your feedback. Comments, complaints, suggested tweaks, and fixes will all be kindly appreciated.