(FM20][WIP] France down to level 6 (for now).

[sporadicsmiles]

I have been working (quite extensive while I wait for the new database to update my Africa file) on extending the French league system as low as possible. The French pyramid looks as follows.

The game currently goes down to level 4 (I think it was anyway, I have played with this file so much I forgot). As I said, I want to extend this as low as possible, with as close to real rules as I can get.

The issue is that the French leagues quickly regionalise quite extensively, so the base of the pyramid is extremely fat. There are 12 divisions at level 5 and I think it was 39 at level 6. We are probably closing in on 100 at level 7.

Currently I have added leagues down to level 6, and this is probably as far as I will get for a while, because the next level is a monster to add and will have to be done very slowly and carefully. I will give a quick summary of what I have done so far.

• Team names and short names have been changed to reflect how they are referred to in France (according to club websites where possible, but if you find errors let me know).
• The National 2 has been properly added to the game so it is playable (I think it is not playable by default in vanilla).
• National 3 has been added with correct regions and promotion.
• The Regional 1 leagues have been added. All thirty odd of them. This involved creating a few teams, adding stadiums and kits (although likely I have missed some kits). Promotion is not fully finished for this yet, I need to work out what playoffs there are within départements.
• All playable teams have the correct regional divisions set so by and large they should end up playing in the correct division of the correct region when promoted/relegated. This will of course not be perfect, especially for regions within the départements.
• 5 of the 6 départements outre-mer (Guadeloupe, Guyane, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion) are added in the Régional 1. This is where their their leagues lie within the French pyramid, and they are part of France after all. There is currently no relegation in these leagues because I need to better sort out the level 7 sides so we do not get oversea teams competing in mainland leagues. Saint-Pierre et Miquelon is not included because it only has 3 teams and I do not see anyone wanting to manage there for the 7 games a season you would get.
• The Coupe de France has been entirely remodeled to reflect reality a bit better. In real life the first 6 rounds of the French cup are entirely regionalised per département for leagues below Ligue 2. Each département has a certain number of teams that then qualify for the 7th round of the cup. This includes oversea territories. While the default competition did a good job of this, I did not want to have to have to deal with thousands of teams in a single competition and making sure it regionlized them all properly. So I did the following.
  • Created regional cups for the first 6 rounds of the Coupe de France in each Département (except SPM). The number of qualifiers are based on this season. Not sure if it ever changes, but we live with what we have.
  • Teams should enter roughly where they are supposed to (so higher divisions enter later). There are not enough teams in the database to fully create the entire Coupe de France from round 1. A total of 7044 teams take part, so maybe I will never get there. This means it is hard to create exactly the competition, but I do the best approximation I can.
  • The teams who win in R6 then enter the Coupe de France proper. Which then uses the vanilla rules as in the database originally (no point to change this, they are correct).

All that I describe above is working fine. All the leagues are properly regionalized (I spent a lot of time on regional divisions to ensure this) and no funky stuff happens. The database is entirely stable. the Coupe de France works exactly as intended. So in principle this should be more or less ready for release. There are a few things I need to optimize better though.

• Add stadiums and regional divisions for every team in the database below level 6. The regional divisions is critical to teams going in the right leagues if they advance up the pyramid. The stadiums is just because I do not want to have incomplete information. There are a hell of a lot of teams though, and it is pretty dull to do this. I am plodding through but it could take some time to make sure every single side is okay.
• I want to check for any promotion playoffs or such things in the Regional 1. I suspect they exist, but it is not easy to find good info at this low level for what is actually happening. The FFF provide excellent information about every league and club, but less about actual league rules. I am certain that for multi-pool regions, there is either a playoff for second place teams for promotion, or the team with the best record is promoted. I want to find out which and add it.
• I would like to add as many managers as I can to the lower league sides. I dislike that almost all clubs start without a manager, as it severely clogs the job screen on starting a new game. How feasible this is I have not found. This is not critical, it is more cosmetic than anything else.

And voilà. I will keep you guys updated about the progress I am making on this. I have not really seen anyone giving this a proper go in the same way England gets (I assume on French speaking forums someone has done this in far better detail than I) I do this for fun though, so I do not mind! As long as some people get some enjoyment from my work, I am happy. I'll post some screenshots tonight.

[Wolf_pd]

That's quite the hobby!

[sporadicsmiles]

15 hours ago, Wolf_pd said:

That's quite the hobby!

Fire up FM, play on one monitor. Fire up the editor, edit on the other. Stick something on the TV or a nice podcast and I have a wonderfully cosy night!

[Wolf_pd]

1 hour ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Fire up FM, play on one monitor. Fire up the editor, edit on the other. Stick something on the TV or a nice podcast and I have a wonderfully cosy night!

I don't have to explain you  why I work with three screens on my desktop

[Bigpole]

6 hours ago, sporadicsmiles said:

Fire up FM, play on one monitor. Fire up the editor, edit on the other. Stick something on the TV or a nice podcast and I have a wonderfully cosy night!

remember that there's a child competitions limit around 130-150.

[sporadicsmiles]

34 minutes ago, Bigpole said:

remember that there's a child competitions limit around 130-150.

Indeed. I plan to get around this by using one big competition that is split into groups for each département, rather than a separate competition for each division. Hopefully that means I should never hit any limits.

[sporadicsmiles]

Well, so far the update has broken the selection of teams for the regional sections of the French cup. It is still selecting correct regional sides but it is ignoring the team pool and selecting all the teams from the Ligue 1 and 2. Which has the feel of a bug to me (I will report it as such directly after this). 

If this is not something that can be resolved I will have to find an alternative way to properly select teams. Which will set this project back. If it cannot be fixed, I guess we wait for FM21 and hope.