Additional custom continental competition, causes teams/leagues involved reputation to plummet. [FM23]

[CurnRaisin]

Bit of info first, I'm making a custom Irish league system, alongside other changes there is a substantial bump in reputation of leagues/clubs and lots of extra money added in, this is spread between prize money, TV money, and reoccurring sponsorships/grants to every team in my league pyramid (both renew income and fix values ticked). At game start Ireland's top league reputation sits about 10th in the rankings, so similar to the Scottish premiership. I also have another editor file to use alongside it that adds in a additional continental competition between Ireland, N.Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, called The Four Nations. My initial idea with this was for it to be mini continental competition that these smaller teams could actually partake in and win opposed to being knocked out early in the Champions/Europa League, I had hoped to get it working in a way that if a team was in another continental competition they wouldn't be eligible to qualify, so for example Celtic where in the Champion League, they would be ineligible and their place moved down to the next team and so on, until only teams not in other continental were taking part.  I could never get this working so settled for it just working as is and running along side everything else, so teams like Celtic, might be in both CL groups and Four Nation groups.

My problems is that once I have the Four Nations active and running, it causes the league reputations to plummet down, which then causes knock on effects on transfers, wages and other things. For example in 3-4 tests where I holidayed past 2050, with the Four Nations turned on the top Irish and Scottish leagues start around 10th and by 2050 they are way down below 80th or 90th in the rankings. Last night I loaded all the same editor files bar the Four Nations, and not only did the Irish premier league not drop but it actually climbed up to 7th place.

I'm not sure if there is something wrong with how I have things set up or if its just down to the fact that the AI can't balance their squads and with the extra 6 to 11 games involved being in the Four Nations just caused too much fatigue/injury which affected their champions/Europa league performances so much it caused a knock on effect of the league reputations plummeting. The drop seems much too dramatic for this but I guess it could be.

 

Additionally I had this same league system with the Four nations in place for a long term save in FM 19 and I never noticed this problem happening, in that save I remade the Irish league system but left the reputation as is and as I played and had success I managed to pull the Irish league up to 10th position, so this FM23 save is a spiritual successor to that game. 

 

[themodelcitizen]

Does it think those top teams aren't involved in their domestic leagues anymore or something? Is it under continental rules? As an aside, you can get it to ignore CL teams, just use the "teams" line "get best teams in competition" for the CL and "ignore teams" checked. Then the next line can have "get best teams from division" for, say, the SPL and it will skip anyone in the competitions you've already listed. Only works if the setup date for the CL has already happened, obviously (so your tourney needs a later setup date)

[CurnRaisin]

1 hour ago, themodelcitizen said:

Does it think those top teams aren't involved in their domestic leagues anymore or something? Is it under continental rules?

Thanks for the replay. Been busy the last few days so had no time to sit for a while and try things out. I want to check is the top teams performances in the other continental cups, and then check their cosponsoring  coefficients, maybe playing in the Four Nations is invalidating their CL/EL scores in some way,

Quote

As an aside, you can get it to ignore CL teams, just use the "teams" line "get best teams in competition" for the CL and "ignore teams" checked. Then the next line can have "get best teams from division" for, say, the SPL and it will skip anyone in the competitions you've already listed. Only works if the setup date for the CL has already happened, obviously (so your tourney needs a later setup date)

Thanks for this I had a poke around. Where exactly do you put this? Under the following path I have two places that if could enter them options

• Advance Rules --->Show Rules for "The Four Nations"--->List--->The Four Nations--->Teams.

1. Qualified Teams---->Qualified teams
2. Team Pool.

If I could get this to work then that might fix my other issue, as the top teams will only be in their CL/EL and not the four nations. Meaning any interaction wouldn't happen.

[themodelcitizen]

Ahh yeah I have heard of coefficients "breaking". If you have the continental qualifying set up using "nations" under that tab, delete all of that list of countries, it's just gonna confuse the game and possibly write over their existing European coefficient stuff.

To get the teams, use the competition itself, team pool isn't necessary here, but you can put the list of qualified teams in "qualified teams" like you noted, with the "ignore teams" instructions always coming first (followed by, like, "get best teams from division" - max 2 - Scottish Premier League. It's quite intuitive when you think about it, you're telling it to skip active teams in the CL, which will include Celtic et al, when it's "getting best teams from division").

Then in the first "stage", under "teams", use "lowest seeded qualified teams" or one of the instructions relating to qualified teams. You can sort these by reputation, or by seedings which you can assign in "qualified teams", or keep it random.

You can also just put the list of teams (same as above, including the "ignore teams" instructions) straight in the stage setting "teams", and skip the wider competition setting "qualified teams" completely, but I think "qualified teams" might have advantages for how certain news items, Board behaviour etc is handled (and opens up new potential for seedings and usage of team pools)

[CurnRaisin]

9 hours ago, themodelcitizen said:

Ahh yeah I have heard of coefficients "breaking". If you have the continental qualifying set up using "nations" under that tab, delete all of that list of countries, it's just gonna confuse the game and possibly write over their existing European coefficient stuff.

To get the teams, use the competition itself, team pool isn't necessary here, but you can put the list of qualified teams in "qualified teams" like you noted, with the "ignore teams" instructions always coming first (followed by, like, "get best teams from division" - max 2 - Scottish Premier League. It's quite intuitive when you think about it, you're telling it to skip active teams in the CL, which will include Celtic et al, when it's "getting best teams from division").

Then in the first "stage", under "teams", use "lowest seeded qualified teams" or one of the instructions relating to qualified teams. You can sort these by reputation, or by seedings which you can assign in "qualified teams", or keep it random.

You can also just put the list of teams (same as above, including the "ignore teams" instructions) straight in the stage setting "teams", and skip the wider competition setting "qualified teams" completely, but I think "qualified teams" might have advantages for how certain news items, Board behaviour etc is handled (and opens up new potential for seedings and usage of team pools)

Thanks for the help, and yeah a lot of it does make sense after you figure out what option you have to pick but the problem is there is no help or indication pointing to where/what option/setting you want to change, and usually there are a handful of places you can put in the same settings. Anyway after completely breaking it to the point it was no getting though the editor tests I think I might be on to something. I did holiday one season and while it did ignore some teams correctly it definitely grabbed one that it shouldn't have. Need to holiday till 2050+ again now see if the leagues no longer plummet, and if it is successfully grabbing the correct teams from each nation/league.

Can I specify the teams it ignores are only ones qualified to the group stages of the CL/EL? I had a quick look and while there does seem to be some options that could be what I want I can't seem to get  working. I suppose with the new Format change happening in a few years even if I get this working, it will just break at that point.

 

EDIT: Definitely not working as intended, some teams are ignored correctly not being added in, while others are still in both the Four Nations and other Continental comps. It also doesn't seem to move down correctly once a team is ignored, rather than being the 4 highest placed teams not in other continental comps a few times I noticed its a much lower placed team. Going to leave it on holiday for now to see if the reputations/rankings are still affected.

 

Edited September 8, 2023 by CurnRaisin

[themodelcitizen]

Want to post your file and someone can check? But yeah, "ignore teams" will only work if the setup date of your competition is after those tournaments like CL, UEL etc have already drawn, obviously. You might be able to use a different option than "get best teams in competition", like "get qualified teams", but the first one will work for you when dates have been sorted out.

If you just want group stage teams, make sure your setup date is after the CL group draw date, and set "max teams" to 32. For this line, you can put an end year of the last year that UEFA is using the current format (2024/25? So 2024), and add the same line again but with no end year and the "start year" 2025 (assuming that's when the new CL format kicks in). In this new line change max teams to 38 (or however many are in the new group stage)

And yeah, the redundant options can be annoying but likely do serve some kind of function, in the absence of an explainer from SI you just have to learn by looking at how default comps are set up (either in a nation's advanced rules or by doing the tricks to edit continental and international comps)

Edited September 8, 2023 by themodelcitizen

[CurnRaisin]

Quote

Want to post your file and someone can check?

No harm uploading it I guess, but be warned it is probably a mess, before this month it's been years since I spent any notable time in the editor. Also I tend to work with trial and error and stumble upon work-around solutions that barely work, and while I always have the best intentions of going back and tidying things up, it rarely happens. My long term save in FM 19 was actually meant to be a 1-2 seasons beta test of sorts for my edited files and I ended up just rolling with it and played it on and off for the last few years.

I think I tried to change the start date to be October which I assumed was well after the other cups setup, but looking again I'm certain I didn't change the correct option, also noticed a few strange looking values I probably need to fix/change.

While I'd love there to be a proper instructions from SI, at least they provide the editor at all. With the way games/companies are in the modern day I could see plenty of Devs/publishers cutting something like the editor, or trying to monetize it a lot more than just the ingame editor we have. 

 

 

 

4nat2.fmf

Edited September 10, 2023 by CurnRaisin

[themodelcitizen]

Right now your setup date is June 11. That's too early, the UCL season update day is June 13, so it might be taking the teams from last season. You probably want a season update day and/or setup date to be shortly after that so you can get the right teams excluded but still get the pre-season competition expectations etc from the Board.

Other than that it doesn't look that messy! Haha, I might specify group dates if I were you to have more control, but if its managing to squeeze the games in then you could leave it. You could consider using the same matchdays as the UCL or Europa League, logic being that leagues are already built to accommodate teams being away in Europe those matchdays

[CurnRaisin]

On 10/09/2023 at 23:38, themodelcitizen said:

Right now your setup date is June 11. That's too early, the UCL season update day is June 13, so it might be taking the teams from last season. You probably want a season update day and/or setup date to be shortly after that so you can get the right teams excluded but still get the pre-season competition expectations etc from the Board.

Other than that it doesn't look that messy! Haha, I might specify group dates if I were you to have more control, but if its managing to squeeze the games in then you could leave it. You could consider using the same matchdays as the UCL or Europa League, logic being that leagues are already built to accommodate teams being away in Europe those matchdays

Thanks for your help , been busy so haven't got to sit down to make changes then test then adjust and retest so basically just been doing 1-2 changes then leaving game on holiday over night and getting a quick look at it the following day. Seems that I'm nearly there just a few odd teams being included. EG It ignores the top 4/5 spots in the league as they are in other European comps, then rather than take the next 4 as expected it takes, 2 or 3 then skips a team then takes more to make it up to 4. Been looking to see any pattern to why teams are skipped but nothing obvious is jumping out at me. I'm wondering if some of the leagues are running different schedules or are having a 2nd stage or play-offs that cause them not to end in time so its pulling teams from the previous seasons places.  Pretty happy with how it is though even if it isn't perfect. I'll be managing a team that is getting CL football so I won't really notice an odd occurrence like this in a competition I'm not actively part of. 

 

Do you happen to know when the pre-season competition expectations are generated? Assuming it is tied to each league/nation structure your part of.

 

Slightly off topic question too, I have two files, my Four Nations one and then my custom league one. When I start a new game with both active, which one takes priority for database changes?

Edited September 11, 2023 by CurnRaisin

[rusty217]

6 hours ago, CurnRaisin said:

Slightly off topic question too, I have two files, my Four Nations one and then my custom league one. When I start a new game with both active, which one takes priority for database changes?

Whichever one is at the bottom of the list (based on alphabetical order). The game applies them in order so the changes in the last file will be the final changes applied. That said, if you don't change any of the same things it won't matter anyway.

[CurnRaisin]

13 hours ago, rusty217 said:

Whichever one is at the bottom of the list (based on alphabetical order). The game applies them in order so the changes in the last file will be the final changes applied. That said, if you don't change any of the same things it won't matter anyway.

Good to know, I'm pretty sure I never changed much of the database in the Four Nations one, but better knowing how it loads it to be safe.