Factors determining the CA of players generated for a newly created league

[ThatFMDude]

Good day everyone, I'm not sure if this belongs here or in the General Discussion Forum but - well, here we are.

Suppose you create a brand new competition in the Editor (whether it's an 8th tier in England to add to the existing tree or a division in an entirely new league structure) and fill it with clubs but don't populate the club with any players. Instead you rely on the game to add players to playable clubs. Which factors then determine the (current) ability of those generated players? I assume league reputation factors in but, based on the players I've seen generated, it might be based mainly on Competition Level. Then again I assume a Latvian 3rd level division will have a lower average player ability than, say, a Spanish 4th level division. Is there a quantitative rule? Or at least a semi-quantitative guideline?

Thanks in advance for any helpful replies!

[krlenjushka]

Club reputation and youth settings under stadium are crucial here.  You can test and see is there any changes for clubs with same settings in leagues with different reputation or level.

[llDracoll]

From what I've noticed the game needs some kind of reference to generate players. I've tried this by making a database where I erased every person:

1) The first big thing I noticed is that grey players always had the same stat distribution. Outfield players, no matter the position, had a vast majority of their stats at the same value, and two or three had another value.

2) If I set up the "Add players to playable leagues" option, you'd be hard-pressed to find players above mid-Championship level in the first season, even on football superpowers. And lower-league teams are likely to have some players that are better than yours - again, even on football superpowers.

[BMNJohn]

31 minutes ago, llDracoll said:

From what I've noticed the game needs some kind of reference to generate players. I've tried this by making a database where I erased every person [...]

The CA for generated players caps at 115; any software tool will tell you as much. You may see some youngsters with high PA but obviously low PA, but no player with good CA. For some reason, after the world cup (maybe tied with season update day), I've experienced on FM18 that several players with world class CA (160-175 and higher) get generated. It was not the case in FM17 and anterior: you had to wait for a good half-decade or even a whole decade for things to settle. That said,  it only served to highlight how reputation determines a lot of things: even with comparable players, teams will choose their tactics based on the opposition they face.

If I could try to explain it better, it means that even if they have equivalent players to Real Madrid (around 115CA), Leganés will use a conservative approach (Defensive or Contain) when facing Los Merenges. As such, usually within a loaded league, big clubs remain big and small clubs remain small; even if it's not rare that a given club will "outperform" the expectations set by its reputation if things go their way.  Usually such clubs are mid-table/upper mid-table clubs that don't "fear" most of the other clubs and don't line up with very conservative tactics against everyone because reputation says so.

Also, I know that in the past, the ability of grey players is tied to the club's reputation as well. So when you start an empty db with few leagues enabled, those active clubs can get outperformed by clubs in non-loaded leagues in continental competition because the grey, "virtual" players loaded for these non-loaded clubs will be stronger than the 115CA players in fully loaded competitions. It's extremely prevalent with clubs that have great reputations but are in smaller leagues, usually clubs that regularly dominate their league, qualify often for continental competitions but usually don't do much besides that.

But these only are my observations; feel free to chime in.