Number of leagues: depth versus speed

[decapitated]

I usually play with 30-50+ countries and around 200-300k starting players, but I recently started a game with only England and Spain loaded and I noticed there were pluses and minuses to choosing speed over depth. The pluses were that the game moved at 3 or 4 times the speed it usually did and there was no longer a 2-3 hour slowdown around 31st August/January with the transfer window. The minuses were that there isn't the same depth. I'm playing as Bilbao so there's no point scouting anywhere outside of Spain, but there's a feeling of artificiality in how the game unfolds outside the two leagues that are running. In my current game which is in September 2020, Barcelona and Real Madrid are in a slump (only one Copa Del Rey between them in trophies, and only in 1 season did one of them get to the champion league knockout rounds and both have failed to qualify for it at least once) and Bilbao, Atletico Madrid and Valencia are rising to challenge them. As Spanish football ebbs and flows, and the English league has that potential, everything else is static aside from success in Europe (Porto won the Europa League and have had a big jump in status, and Bayern have massively underperformed but aside from that there have been no changes) Supposing that running a lot of countries is doable for your PC, how many leagues is the best amount to choose to get the right balance do you think?

[ajt]

on my current save i have the top divisions of austria, belgium, bulgaria, croatia, czech republic, england, france, germany, greece, italy, netherlands, poland, portugal, romania, serbia, slovakia, slovenia, spain, switzerland (2 leagues).

i also have the "current international players" & "players with continental reputations" from south america/europe on a small database. 60k players in total.

game runs fast enough so far (in 2025) and the transfer market is fine. i also have found quite a few good staff members from eastern europe.