[FM22] (Update: 14-01-2022) British State Championship Revamp

[forameuss]

For a while now I've been interested in building a British version of the State Championships you get in Brazil.  There's something about the completely different format that really interests me, as there is nothing that I find more tedious than a straight "x teams play each other y times" formats you get in the "popular" leagues.  

Initially this started life as a purely Scottish update.  Splitting clubs into their "states" (drawn along local council lines) and having a separate competition for each one in the early part of the year, with a more traditional league season being crammed into the latter part of the season.  However, on starting to work on it, I decided to take things up a notch and rip up a number of countries to build a truly British solution that will destroy replace league systems in multiple countries rather than just the one.  So the British State Championships were born.

Honestly, if you don't like pointlessly elaborate detail, stop reading here.  I'm what you might call verbose.  I'll attach the current version of the file to the post, so might be worth a download to investigate for yourself.

The Format

Bring on the Excel!  

Well, the non-Union equivalent of Excel - Google Sheets!  Key is (I Hope), self explanatory.  I've marked where the Cup games are set to play (but may get rescheduled with the crazy schedule) and where league games will likely fall.  Numbers correspond to the round of the cup (P = Preliminary, 16 = Last 16 etc etc).

Autumn/Winter

In the Autumn and Winter, clubs take part in their individual regional Championships.  The format differs between each one in terms of numbers of games, but you're looking at between 14 and 20 games in the group stages, then if you qualify, some further knockout games to decide a champion.

In terms of general notes, every single Championship has the same squad rules - 5 subs from 12 named, a minimum of 3 homegrown players in your squad, 3 Under 21s, and at least 1 homegrown player in your starting 11.  Fairly arbitrary, but I wanted to encourage some player development, particularly as clubs are going to be playing *a lot* of games.

In some rare cases you might find clubs that don't actually exist with reputation 1.  This is to make things easier for numbers in dividing teams, but with their tiny reps it's unlikely they'll ever make it into the playable leagues.  They will make up the numbers in the State Champs though, and likely get absolutely battered regularly.

Scotland

These are largely split across council lines where possible.  However, in some cases there are just too few teams to make a proper competition, so some have been rolled up into larger ones.  I've also split some of the larger examples up across regions if needed, like in Glasgow or Fife.  In all Nations and competitions listed below, I've largely gone by the local region set for clubs within the editor.  This has led to things being a bit more generalised, but far easier to work with (2248 I think is the overall club count, and I'm not going to do the Wikipedia route for every single one).

Northern Ireland

This is where it gets a bit more woolly, as I'm going from a mix of the editor and wikipedia to get the right clubs and regions.  However, there are less regions in play, and less clubs.  So we have...

Wales

And this is where things get *really* woolly.  There's a big divergence between what Wikipedia seems to think is a Welsh council region, and what the FM editor does.  I should have gone for the former, but instead I'm going for the latter.  This might mean that clubs appear in regions they perhaps shouldn't, or I could subdivide things a little better.  I may do that for a later version but for now, they're staying where they are.

Like with Scotland, there are a few competitions created that don't match specific regions to bring numbers down.  Particularly Anglesey Town.

England

This is probably the one best aligned with actual councils as it was mostly done with Wikipedia.  Might be some exceptions of course.

Christmas

I've tried to build in a small break, with the last potential State Champs game always taking place on either 8th or 9th December for those that make it to the final.  Group stage teams will finish on 1st December.

At the moment there's nothing planned between 9th December and 8th January.  I did want to make a Champion of Champions style competition between all State winners, but the editor doesn't seem to want me to do that anymore, so as things stand it's a free month for teams to patch themselves up after potentially 22 games.

Only potential problem that I've yet to test is what happens for World Cup 2022.  I *think* with this big gap we'll probably be OK, but remains to be seen.  Might kill some players.

Spring/Summer

So on 8th January, everything starts up with the proper league system kicking off.  These are a lot more regimented (for ease of building) with 10 levels of competitions with promotion and relegation between them.  Structure isn't finalised, but there's basically 5 levels completely unregionalised, before you split into North and South for two levels, then from there it breaks down into being regionalised by country

1 - British Premier League (16)
2 - British Championship (16)
3 - British National League One (16)
4 - British National League Two (16)
5 - British Regional Conference One
    Northern Conference One (18)
    Southern Conference One (18)
6 - British Regional Conference Two
    Northern Conference Two (18)
    Southern Conference Two (18)
7 - Regional Premier Leagues
    Scottish Premiership (18)
    English Premiership (18)
    Welsh Premiership (18)
    Northern Irish Premiership (18)
8 - Regional Championship
    Scottish Championship (18)
    English Championship (18)
    Welsh Championship (18)
    Northern Irish Championship (18)
9 - National Regional League
    English Conference North (20)
    English Conference South (20)
    Northern Irish Conference A (20)
    Northern Irish Conference B (20)
    Scottish Conference North (20)
    Scottish Conference South (20)
    Welsh Conference A (20)
    Welsh Conference B (20) 
10 - Regional Amateur Leagues
    English Amateur North A (20) 
    English Amateur North B (20) 
    English Amateur North C (20) 
    English Amateur North D (20) 
    English Amateur South A (20) 
    English Amateur South B (20) 
    English Amateur South C (20)
    English Amateur South D (20) 
    Northern Irish Amateur A (20) 
    Northern Irish Amateur B (20) 
    Northern Irish Amateur C (20) 
    Northern Irish Amateur D (20)  
    Welsh Amateur A (20) 
    Welsh Amateur B (20) 
    Welsh Amateur C (20) 
    Welsh Amateur D (20) 
    Scottish Amateur North A (20) 
    Scottish Amateur North B (20) 
    Scottish Amateur South A (20) 
    Scottish Amateur South B (20) 
11 - Regional Lower Leagues
    Scottish Lower Leagues (UNPLAYABLE)
    English Lower Leagues (UNPLAYABLE)
    Welsh Lower Leagues (UNPLAYABLE)
    Northern Irish Lower Leagues (UNPLAYABLE)
    

Cups

If all that wasn't enough, we also have a set of cup competitions for each team to get involved in.  There's an overall British Cup with every single club involved - including an absolutely monster first round with 1024 ties - and then individual country cups

Summary

If you've made it this far, I salute you.  I've attached the latest file if anyone's interested, and happy to take any comments.  I expect I've missed a lot of the details that others would notice, so happy to make those changes for any future versions.  If it's minor stuff, feel free to make the changes on your end if that's what you want to do.  Just please don't upload it anywhere else without my say so.  I've spent far too long screaming at this awful editor for that to happen.

CountyChamps v3.1.fmf

Edited January 14, 2022 by forameuss

[MJB1986]

It looks amazing but how does the Champions and Europa League and Conference qualifying work? Is it the top 4 of the British Premier League?

[forameuss]

So that's an interesting point.  I'm sure when I've done this before, it uses Based Nation fairly rigidly.  Scotland get x places, so the x highest clubs based in Scotland get the spots, same with Wales and Northern Ireland, and then England carries on largely as normal given we're based there.  However, from earlier tests it looks like this isn't the case anymore, and every club in the system is fighting it out for England's spots.  All the clubs that qualified from the last real life season took part as normal in the first, but then the likes of Rangers and Celtic were without European football in the 2nd.  I wonder if that's down to the other leagues being extinct, so the country doesn't technically exist, not sure.  I'm also not sure who ends up replacing them in the spots.  The other countries still exist in the coefficient table (although they posted low points totals, and will probably fall to the bottom on a long enough timescale.

Ultimately, short answer is that yes, we're essentially all fighting it out for England's spots.  I need to do a really long term test to make sure of a few things like that. 

[forameuss]

As a slight update, my desire to always be working on something and it never being finished has hit, as on looking at tests, I'm not happy with how the states are divided.  There's different problems in each country, with only Northern Ireland really good how it stands.  Wales was always the one I was least happy with, and I'd like to update that to something more resembling real life.  Scotland I want to cut down the number of individual competitions, bring it more in line with real life and stop the cases of having very small competitions full of absolute diddies.  With England, it's probably along the similar lines, removing some of the extra regionalisation and building bigger state champs competitions.  

For example, we currently split Glasgow down the middle, East and West.  This means that Rangers and Celtic, for example, will never meet in the Championships, always being separated.  That is better for smaller clubs, as it gives more of a chance to climb higher, but it does artificially boost the number of competitions, and makes them a lot less interesting in my opinion (although in last night's test, Queen's Park won the East competition, beating Celtic in the final...lol).

No timescales yet.  If anyone is downloading and wanting to have a go, please don't hesitate to let me know if you notice anything odd.  Happy to take a look and update.

[Wolf_pd]

I remember setting my logging to verbose. Got me a whole load of logging

Busy with my own project, but when that one is finished (whenever) I will take a good look. I have been looking to implement a similar idea in Germany as their competition is already quite well setup for a Bundesländer state competition.

[Rob 396]

Oh lord. I. Am. Erect.

Checking this out now. Beautiful.

[samjohpos]

Been wanting to make a database like this for years. More worldwide but same concept. I would love to give this a try, 

I'll let you know. 

[forameuss]

Slight update to come, with (but not limited to) the following changes...

• Continental Cup Nation wasn't set properly for any club outside of England, which explains why no other teams were qualifying.  I'll set this properly, which should mean the likes of Rangers/Celtic/Connah's Quay/Linfield get their spots back.  Should.  Still needs tested.
• Emirates State Championships competition has been removed.  This was meant to be a competition where all winners of the individual competitions faced each other.  I can't seem to add winners of previous competitions in the basic rules now though, unless I'm missing something.  Plus it would just be more games on top of the 50-60 already played, so it was deleted.  Otherwise it'll appear near the top of competition rep list, despite not existing
• Stage names not set properly for some competitions
• National Cup finals are ALL taking place at Wembley, rather than Hampden/Windsor Park/Principality Stadium.  This has been changed
• Wales has been redone almost completely to reflect proper counties rather than the sort of half-right version used earlier.  Does mean more competitions (19 instead of 18) but it's a bit better divided (in theory)
• Scotland has been similarly redone, removing the "fake" regionalisation and making things a bit more realistic.  Just 12 competitions in the country now, and each one is a bit more populated
• England hasn't changed much, but the four regional London competitions are now one big one

Think that's the main ones.  I'm rubbish at doing any sort of long-term testing, so I suspect the one thing that may be problematic is finances.  Just glancing at transfers, it looks as though there might be too much money sloshing around, but it's hard to tell.  At the moment every club gets broadcasting money, but no prize money.  Not sure if that's going to make things too unbalanced for relegated sides

[forameuss]

Updated file attached with the above changes.  Early tests seem fine, so unless anyone notices anything wild it's probably good to get started with

 

CountyChamps v3.3.fmf

Edited January 14, 2022 by forameuss

[forameuss]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2718866067

Steam page for the file is above. Will probably do any updates via that, seems surprisingly streamlined. But if anyone here notices any issues, feel free to update here. About to embark on (hopefully) a long term save using it soon, which means I expect I'll notice the first major issue in a few days time.

[Shrew82]

You need to test this thoroughly before you role it out mate.  I've just tried to verify it as there's an issue with the dates.... teams are on holiday during the playoffs.  You need to amend/adjust the dates to get to a point where this works.

[forameuss]

Well I did say that I was hoping to get people to notice these things and that it wouldn't be anywhere near perfect.  I haven't worked on anything this large to completion, and I'm not going to notice the problems that others more experienced with it would.

I'll take a look at the dates.

[Dallan]

On 11/01/2022 at 13:00, Wolf_pd said:

I remember setting my logging to verbose. Got me a whole load of logging

Wait, how do you set logging to verbose?

But as for OP: now that the continental qualification thing has been fixed I cannot wait to try this out with my next save, excellent idea

[forameuss]

As others have said, just be careful about a long-term save with this in case of any issues.  I'm trying to do more targeted ones, but I doubt I'll catch everything.  There's issues with the dates of the playoffs, and I'm looking to see how to fit in all the fixtures AND get the playoff dates right AND not affect things during tournament summers.  I wouldn't recommend starting just yet for those reasons.

[lucasnake]

Hope you update this, really like the idea.

[Bannside of Killowen]

Looks good, cant wait to play it on FM23 (giving you time to debug, etc) is the U23/U21 does the 4 nations full under the EPPP?