Ping: DarkCloud, re: WWSM07 & PLA

[Toddzilla]

DC - got a question for you regarding your Premeier League of America...

First of all, I love it - fantastic work all around.

I was wondering if there were any contenental competitions that the PLA were eligible for? I'd like to have the PLA participate as a European Club, with the members eligible for the Champions League, UEFA Cup, and the other competitions that the EPL participate in.

If not, do you have any insight as to how to make this change? Would it be as simple as changing Canada to be in "europe" rather than "north america"?

Thanks!

[Toddzilla]

DC - new question...(also posted on the SI board)

I was very surprised to see 8 major European teams make 1 BILLION dollar transfers of low-leven PLA talent, so I restarted my game and lo-and-behold, it happened again.

Did you pre-load these transfers into the database?

Are there any more surprises like this one?

[Young Drachma]

Oh yeah, sorry. I did that on purpose for my own purposes...because a lot of those teams are too poor in the US league and I wanted to "even" things out a bit. But that's the only surprises I can recall doing with that. I should've put that out there, but I forgot and I didn't "fix" the league to get rid of those surprises before I released it to the public (since I didn't make it with that intent when I adapted it originally..)

So you can go through and change the database pre-game to get rid of those, but I don't even remember what I did when I did them, I just recall when I ran through the first few times, the PLA teams weren't making major purchases and infusing them with cash out of the gate didn't seem to work. But then, I was playing with the European leagues on, so..I can imagine if you have them on, that might be annoying. My bad. :)


And yeah, I've read before from someone else that if you simply change "North America" to "Europe" that the PLA will play in Europe seamlessly. Since it's just the Belgian league redone anyway...I guess that makes sense. I haven't tried it yet, but someone else on this board has and told me it worked great.

So yeah, have at it. :)

[Toddzilla]

Oh yeah, sorry. I did that on purpose for my own purposes...because a lot of those teams are too poor in the US league and I wanted to "even" things out a bit. But that's the only surprises I can recall doing with that. I should've put that out there, but I forgot and I didn't "fix" the league to get rid of those surprises before I released it to the public (since I didn't make it with that intent when I adapted it originally..)

So you can go through and change the database pre-game to get rid of those, but I don't even remember what I did when I did them, I just recall when I ran through the first few times, the PLA teams weren't making major purchases and infusing them with cash out of the gate didn't seem to work. But then, I was playing with the European leagues on, so..I can imagine if you have them on, that might be annoying. My bad. :)


And yeah, I've read before from someone else that if you simply change "North America" to "Europe" that the PLA will play in Europe seamlessly. Since it's just the Belgian league redone anyway...I guess that makes sense. I haven't tried it yet, but someone else on this board has and told me it worked great.

So yeah, have at it. :)Thanks man...I think I can get by - its just strange to see Real Madrid and Man U going into bankruptcy. Man U was just docked 9 points for going into receivership, so that's a nice twist.

And I was the one who told you about the continent switch. I had to change the country, the divisions, and all the competitions, but it's nice to see the PLA champ play in the Champions League. I technically made Canada part of "UK & Ireland" for scouting purposes. So far, it's been a blast. Thanks again for all your hard work.

[Young Drachma]

Sweet. I think I'm gonna give OOTP the heave for now and get back into WWSM and see how the PLA in Europe thing works out now. I'd never done it before.

[Young Drachma]

Dola --

What team are you playing with?

[Toddzilla]

I'm playing 2 teams - D.C. United for the fun of a top-tier team, and 3rd division Northern Virginia - which I changed to the NoVa Grays and put them in a big stadium at GMU here in Fairfax.

FWIW, I instituted a takeover of D.C. United by Daniel Snyder who will provide me with lots of cash, but he's maxed out in interference and expectations. So far he gets on my case every 3-4 months to go sign a high-profile player no matter the cost. :)

If you want - I can send you my updated database. I've made some significant changes to make the game more realistic for me, but maybe not your style:

- Put Canada in Europe, specifically in the U.K.
- Dropped the PLA's prestige to be on par with the English Championship, and the lower leagues accordingly as well.
- Restored the prestige of the other countries to the levels in 7.0.2
- Edited the names and kits of many teams, especially the 3rd and 4th division teams so there is no city overlap.

[Young Drachma]

Yours sounds like the PLA perfected. :)

I got pretty lazy towards the end when I was doing mine, but I'd be totally cool with a PLA that's more 'realistic' in terms of its place in the world. PM sent!

[st.cronin]

Todd, I sent you a pm as well. This sounds like something I'd really enjoy playing with.

[Toddzilla]

Done! I responded to your PMs, but for anyone else who'd like the db, I've uploaded it to rapidshare:

hxxp://rapidshare.com/files/54595508/PLA2.zip

Oh - I forgot to add that I went back and deleted the billion-dollar transfers.

[Young Drachma]

Woo! Thanks!

[Toddzilla]

YW :)

Do you know enough about the other leagues in Europe to know if maybe swapping the US with another country other than Belgium would give us a bigger pool of teams? For example, I know Scotland plays 4 leagues, but they run 10 teams each (ecxept for 12 in the SPL) so thats actually smaller.

[Young Drachma]

Scotland would be a suitable candidate. I've swapped out that league before, for a different project of mine and it worked perfectly okay.

[Young Drachma]

Dola --

I really digged some of the name and color changes you made for places like Oakland and San Francisco.

I'm going to check out the SI boards again and see what leagues were best to edit.

[Young Drachma]

Norway is an option, but it's not for the faint of heart. lol

[Young Drachma]

I've done some more looking around and it seems that maybe Northern Ireland wouldn't be an awful choice. And it could be interesting to say, create another league with American teams in it that's a "rival" league to the PLA or perhaps a second major league with a different structure. I don't know the rationalization for it, but...maybe it'll be IndyCar v. CART or something. Or even the American League v. National League without a merger.

But it could be another opportunity to get more teams into the Champions League from the US and have them distinguish themselves.

Denmark would be easier as it doesn't have as many extraneous Cups and stuff to edit.

Scotland offers the most options, but save for that Wales is okay if you just want one league and Colombia is also a league I've edited before and managed to get somewhere with.

Hmm....I think I'll try something.

[Toddzilla]

Take a look at Sweden - It has 3 levels, but the third division is split up into four (!!) leagues. That's 60 or so teams. Wowwzorz.

[Critch]

Hungary is a good choice for editing. A top division of 16 teams, with a second level split into two regional divisions of 16 teams.

[Toddzilla]

DC - can you give me a quick overview of how you swapped Canada and Belgium and then put the US teams in Canada? A quick list of bullet-points would work - I'm gonna try and use Sweden and see how it works. Thanks!

[Toddzilla]

Sweden Update:

Holy crap - I started a quick game as a manager in Sweden and can't believe how many teams they have:

Premier League = 14 teams

1st division elite = 16 teams - promotion into PL

1st division north = 12 teams
1st division south = 12 teams - both promote to 1st elite

2nd division north = 12 teams
2nd division west g = 12 teams
2nd division mid g = 12 teams
2nd division south g = 12 teams - all promote to 1st N/S
2nd division north s = 12 teams
2nd division east s = 12 teams

Thats 126 teams - plenty for a re-done PLA?

[Young Drachma]

DC - can you give me a quick overview of how you swapped Canada and Belgium and then put the US teams in Canada? A quick list of bullet-points would work - I'm gonna try and use Sweden and see how it works. Thanks!

- You have to change the TLA (three-letter name) of the countries you want to switch and nothing else. This essentially changes the league that country uses to the other one. So in the PLA database, Belgium uses Canada's league structure and Canada uses Belgium's, which enables us to create the PLA in place of it.

- So basically, you can swap the teams in one league for the others, using the 'swap' button under the list of teams in whatever league you're in. That will also change the nation of origin for that team to wherever you move it.

- This can get confusing pretty easily. What you'll need to do is, then, take all of the teams from the Swedish League and put them in the existing PLA structure and then switch the PLA teams into that structure. There will be too many teams in Sweden and so you'll have to just detach them from a country or something so it doesn't crash the game with too many teams being in Belgium.

- Basically, you have to remember when swapping leagues that the league structure has to stay exactly the same (number of teams). That's more important than anything.

[Young Drachma]

Sweden Update:

Holy crap - I started a quick game as a manager in Sweden and can't believe how many teams they have:

Premier League = 14 teams

1st division elite = 16 teams - promotion into PL

1st division north = 12 teams
1st division south = 12 teams - both promote to 1st elite

2nd division north = 12 teams
2nd division west g = 12 teams
2nd division mid g = 12 teams
2nd division south g = 12 teams - all promote to 1st N/S
2nd division north s = 12 teams
2nd division east s = 12 teams

Thats 126 teams - plenty for a re-done PLA?

Shit. That's a lot of teams. Damn. I think perfect for a redone PLA. But damn. I guess with all of the fourth division teams that we didn't use before, it wouldn't even be that bad. And since it's 12 teams apiece, versus those lower divisions in England where you get 60 teams you have to edit or pitch, 12 at a time isn't too bad.

[Toddzilla]

Shit. That's a lot of teams. Damn. I think perfect for a redone PLA. But damn. I guess with all of the fourth division teams that we didn't use before, it wouldn't even be that bad. And since it's 12 teams apiece, versus those lower divisions in England where you get 60 teams you have to edit or pitch, 12 at a time isn't too bad.Thats exactly what I was thinking. I'm probably gonna give it a shot this week given the relative ease of the country switch - thanks a million for the help in your post above.

Where did you get the database you started with? I saw on the SI board that you got the DB elsewhere, so it's not the standard 7.0.2 db.

[Young Drachma]

I got it from here, canadiancreed's db. It's on the WWSM thread on this board somewhere. I downloaded his and started with that one. It's a lot easier to do it when you have a league that's already setup than trying to start from scratch. I spent MONTHS trying to get it together and I've done it, but to get it perfect (right cities, etc.) it takes ages and so, it's easier building off of his, then I added mine and even the work you did after will make it easier.

[Young Drachma]

I lied. It was Bea Arthur's Hip that posted the original db.

http://www.operationsports.com/fofc/showpost.php?p=1480671&postcount=918

[Young Drachma]

But the link doesn't work anymore..so..I dunno.

[Toddzilla]

I was considering taking the 7.0.2 db and going from there, but it looks like even after I get all the teams in the right country, I'd have to then edit all the teams individually, then the competitions, awards, etc. Meh. I may save this for a future project - but Sweeden/PLA match up real well (126 teams vs. 132 teams).

[Young Drachma]

What I might do, is move the PLA to Sweden, then find a third country to come in and turn that country into the old PLA (Belgium).

So in other words, in terms of TLA swaps, it'll be like this:

Canada (SWE)
third country (Jamaica? Puerto Rico? Cuba? US Virgin Islands?) becomes BEL
whatever that third country's TLA is assigned to Sweden.

This way, I can have two parallel leagues running at the same time and that way, I don't have to entirely dismantle the PLA all together. I'm not certain I plan to use the Swedish teams though, since all of the players will be from there to start.

[Young Drachma]

And my thinking was, the parallel league would be more of a corporate US league. So you'd have teams named Reebok and FedEx or Sony or something. But financially the teams would be pretty well off.

[Young Drachma]

If I pull it off, I'll upload it of course.

[Toddzilla]

I was considering taking the 7.0.2 db and going from there, but it looks like even after I get all the teams in the right country, I'd have to then edit all the teams individually, then the competitions, awards, etc. Meh. I may save this for a future project - but Sweeden/PLA match up real well (126 teams vs. 132 teams).I realize, of course, that this wuldn't work since US teams would still suffer from US Soccer rules regarding the salary cap, transfers, etc.

So it looks like the quick way to do this is to swap Sweden and Canada (PLA) and make edits from there. This makes Swedens 3-letter-acronym BEL.

NOTE!

Sweden has a roster restriction of 3-non-EU players per squad!

[Young Drachma]

Ugh. That player restriction sucks.

[Toddzilla]

DC - why did you have to use Canada to stage the teams for the swap with Belgium?

The reason I ask is this: With FM08 around the corner, we're going to have to re-create the PLA if we upgrade (and I'm most likely gonna do it). I *think* you used Canada because by using the USA, you carry over the USA soccer rules into Belguim. The contracts, draft, etc. So I'm thinking it doesn't matter what the restrictions in Sweden are, since the restrictions to your league are based on the country you are originally based in before the swap, not after.

For example, if you switch the US and Sweden, would you be (a) stuck with a salary cap, (b) stuck with a 3-non-EU player restriction, or (c) both?

I think the answer is (a), so by putting the US teams in Canada, then swapping with Sweden, we'll have Canadian rules with a Swedish structure.

And, man, that 4-tier Swedish structure is SWEET.

I'm putting together a spreadsheet of all the variables that will need to change - competitions, teams, awards, etc. If you have a checklist or something else that lists all the things you needed to do when you made the PLA, can you post it here? Thanks!