Baseball Mogul 2006 Preview Thread (Yes, Virginia, there ARE lefties and righties!)

[Bee]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

Skydog

Thanks for the Equalize Cities test..

Seems like if you have that enabled, it gives more teams a chance to win the world series with any team. with it on , it feels like you have a chance to build a team and win a world series.

IF you dont use Equalize cities, than NY Yankees will dominate too much 63 championship in 100 years. And only very few teams has a chance to win a world series. i think that needs to be tweak. No team in any sport will have a run winnning 60% championship wins in 100 years

.

Based on the info that SD provided, it looks like it wouldn't be that difficult to edit league and city data to balance the game to the user's preference. Not the "ideal" solution IMO, but something that would be manageable to do if it's that important to the user.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by CraigSca

I hate to beat the drum on this one - but are the Yankees, with the astronomical payroll, the only teams doing this? Do other teams have a large contract guy playing in the minors? If that's the case (and therefore there's no logic to prevent this) then yes, there will be additional challenge when playing a team that can afford it, and less of a challenge when it comes to a team like the Royals (who can't afford to stick a $10 million contract in the minors).

Again, there should be some roster/lineup logic that takes into account salary...just a slight modifier - it's really no big deal.

First off, a comment: I gotta tell you, it sure is easy to look this sort of stuff up with this interface. I didn't get the purpose of the Team-->Roster screen at first, but I'm finding it *incredibly* useful. I could call up every player in the league, sort on salary, and also put the column right next to it that indicates their roster slot. (e.g. "Starter #2", "#7/LF", "(AAA)")

Looking at these guys, only the Mets, Yankees, and Dodgers--the three teams that can carry the highest payrolls--have $10M-salaried players in AAA. There are three $10M players on other teams (Tor/SF/Tex) who aren't starting, but in all three cases, it is a guy in the latter half off a long-term deal who got replaced by someone who put up star or near-star numbers. The three situations where $10M vets aren't starting???

TORONTO--DH Jason Miller ($316K, 92/93 ratings) was .249-33-98, and SS Rauel Allende was .266-52-126, elbowing out defensive whiz Mario Ordillas (.331-6-64 was his best offensive season, and he has 95 range at SS). Ordillas came in a bunch of games as a defensive replacement, I'd imagine, as he was in 88 games and got 108 AB's.

SAN FRANCISCO--3B Martin Semrow was .294-35-105 and above average defensively, as he replaced 37-year-old $15.4M man Dennys Gagnon, whose ratings have dropped to 73/76 and only hit .251 in 235 AB's this year.

You have to go down to the $5.8M mark to find a player not on NYY/NYM/LAD who is rated above 75 and is in the minors, and he's only rated 76/76. He also didn't exactly light it up at AAA this year (9-8, 5.52 ERA).

So, it looks like the "who should start" AI is heavily ratings-based, rather than taking salary into account. Again, this isn't necessarily realistic, but it definitely makes the AI teams stronger.

TEXAS--Donald Spaulding (76G/264 AB's/42GS) played a decent amount, but the 37-year-old is down to 66/69. Bart Naumann (.242-43-98, 141 G, 505 AB's, 91/92) started 115 games at catcher

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Bee

Based on the info that SD provided, it looks like it wouldn't be that difficult to edit league and city data to balance the game to the user's preference. Not the "ideal" solution IMO, but something that would be manageable to do if it's that important to the user.

Not ideal, but it would be danged easy. Just a matter of editing two relatively small .csv files and running some tests--and of course in this game the tests go a LOT more quickly than in any other I've seen. I'm not a fan of the user having to customize the game, but this one seems pretty simple. Someone could probably knock this one out in a couple of hours, and provide the edited CSV files to the community for all game startups.

[Jeff Olsen]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

Do players sometimes play well into their 40s?

They do play into their 40s, yes, but earlier versions had mandatory retirement at 44. I don't know if this is the case with 2K6.

I once had a pitcher forced into retirement when he was still going strong. He had 6610 strikouts; I would have liked to keep him around to see if he could reach 7000.

[hoosierdude]

I am seeing a lot of people leaving at 41 in the latest build. Maybe the ceiling is 41 now?

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by hoosierdude

I am seeing a lot of people leaving at 41 in the latest build. Maybe the ceiling is 41 now?

I've got 2 42-year-olds in my current universe.

[Bee]

I have some free time tonight, so I downloaded the beta and am going to run a basic test on editing city data and see what kind of results I get over 100 years. I did notice while quickly glancing through the city data that the regional population for the NY teams is around 21 million while most other major league cities are in the 3-7 million range. That could be a major culprit for the number of championships that people are seeing by the Yankees.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Bee

I have some free time tonight, so I downloaded the beta and am going to run a basic test on editing city data and see what kind of results I get over 100 years. I did notice while quickly glancing through the city data that the regional population for the NY teams is around 21 million while most other major league cities are in the 3-7 million range. That could be a major culprit for the number of championships that people are seeing by the Yankees.

Before you do it, let me report in on a test I've got running. I changed the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, and Angels to 10 million. (LA and Anaheim were at 16M). I was just looking haphazardly. Since it sounds like you're going to do it more carefully, I just stopped my siim right where it was, at 2070. After 65 seasons...

• Yankees won 14 titles, 22 pennants, made playoffs 45 times, but still have some 3rd and 4th place finishes thrown in there
• Yankees are on a really strong run right now: 6 titles in seven seasons, averaging nearly 120 wins during that run.
• Houston actually made the playoffs more times than the Yanks: 46, but only 3 titles and 7 pennants
• Florida, Milwaukee, and Tampa Bay never made the playoffs.
• a total of 11 teams won 3 or more World Series
• 16 different teams won it all

I didn't make any other changes other than lowering those three cities. Hope that helps with your more directed tests.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Before you do it, let me report in on a test I've got running. I changed the Mets, Yankees, Dodgers, and Angels to 10 million. (LA and Anaheim were at 16M). I was just looking haphazardly. Since it sounds like you're going to do it more carefully, I just stopped my siim right where it was, at 2070. After 65 seasons...

• Yankees won 14 titles, 22 pennants, made playoffs 45 times, but still have some 3rd and 4th place finishes thrown in there
• Yankees are on a really strong run right now: 6 titles in seven seasons, averaging nearly 120 wins during that run.
• Houston actually made the playoffs more times than the Yanks: 46, but only 3 titles and 7 pennants
• Florida, Milwaukee, and Tampa Bay never made the playoffs.
• a total of 11 teams won 3 or more World Series
• 16 different teams won it all

I didn't make any other changes other than lowering those three cities. Hope that helps with your more directed tests.

Actually my test was going to be basically the same thing. I decided to do a quick test of lowering the NY and LA teams and then raising Boston to the same regional population level. Over 20 seasons, the Yankees won 1 series and made the playoffs 6 times. The Red Sox won 5 series and made the playoffs 11 times. Initial results seems to indicate that someone could address some of the balance issues pretty easily by just adjusting the regional populations. I'm going to do a quick look through and try to balance the markets a little better and see what kind of results I get.

[henry296]

I wonder if the city size is appropriately accounting for two teams in the same city. Therefore the Mets/Yankees are operating as if they were the only team in the market instead of sharing the fan base with each. Therefore, Chicago, NY, LA should be cut in half.

Todd

[jbmagic]

Bee

that great news.

now it just coming up with a good market for top to bottom. Maybe have the top 5 markets get a certain % for population, next 5 markets gets a certain % population, so there a difference between top market and low market teams but not too much of a big gap like it is on default.

but at least it seems like it can make the game great

i still hope Clay adjusted some of it for default. some people dont like messing around editing things too much, etc.

[Bee]

Well, I simmed through 50 years and here's the highlights:

Boston won the most series with 8 out of 11 appearances. (I upped them a little and should probably drop them back a touch).
The Yankees won 3 out of 6 series in 50 years. (They were second in the AL followed by several teams who won 1 or 2 series).
The Dodgers won 7 out of 10 world championships from the National League (I only dropped them to 12 million regional pop, perhaps I should have gone to 10 million?).
Chicago won 3 out of 5 and Philly won 2 out of 7. Several other teams won 1 or 2.

I think overall the balance was pretty reasonable but could be tweaked a little. There were five teams that never made the playoffs though (Colorado, Florida, SD, KC and TB). I suspect some of these lower level teams should have their regional populations increased slightly just to allow them to be occasionally competitive. Otherwise, I thought it was a reasonable breakdown. I'm guessing someone with more time could whip up something in just a matter of a few hours that would give really good results.

[Ben E Lou]

Just noticed something else. The "Standings" screen is customizable, with a lot of pretty neat stuff. A number of these fields (like "farm batting/pitching/defense") are actually given as ratings, so you can see at a glance, for example, who has good hitting down on the farm, which clubhouses are happy/unhappy, etc. Pretty cool.

EDIT: forgot to include screenie...

[Bee]

The customizable screens are really nice and impressive. Being able to customize things like the free agents list just makes things so easy to sort and find what you are looking for. I'm really hoping Clay will add an "Almanac" feature. While the data is saved to a text file, it would be great to have access to all that information via customizable screens in-game.

[Jeff Olsen]

Originally Posted by henry296

I wonder if the city size is appropriately accounting for two teams in the same city. Therefore the Mets/Yankees are operating as if they were the only team in the market instead of sharing the fan base with each. Therefore, Chicago, NY, LA should be cut in half.

When I was preparing my stadium database to be bundled with 2K6, I noticed that two fields had been added since I first compiled the data. One of these fields is "Fan Base" but I don't know how it works. How far above or below average, maybe? For 2005 it has the Angels, Orioles, Reds, Indians, Brewers, A's, Pirates, and Blue Jays at -100; Boston: +400; Cubs: +150; White Sox and Royals: +100; Tigers, Marlins, Mets, Devil Rays, and Rangers: -200; Dodgers: -150; Twins: -50; Yankees: +200; Braves and Phillies: +50; Cardinals: +350. Everyone else is 0.

Also, every year has an entry and the game will have the capability to automatically import data at the start of every season, accounting for not only all dimension and capacity changes but changes to the fan base as well. Historic fan data is not in yet.

[henry296]

Originally Posted by Jeff Olsen

When I was preparing my stadium database to be bundled with 2K6, I noticed that two fields had been added since I first compiled the data. One of these fields is "Fan Base" but I don't know how it works. How far above or below average, maybe? For 2005 it has the Angels, Orioles, Reds, Indians, Brewers, A's, Pirates, and Blue Jays at -100; Boston: +400; Cubs: +150; White Sox and Royals: +100; Tigers, Marlins, Mets, Devil Rays, and Rangers: -200; Dodgers: -150; Twins: -50; Yankees: +200; Braves and Phillies: +50; Cardinals: +350. Everyone else is 0.

Also, every year has an entry and the game will have the capability to automatically import data at the start of every season, accounting for not only all dimension and capacity changes but changes to the fan base as well. Historic fan data is not in yet.

Jeff,

To me at appears as though they are multipliers to convert population to fan base. It makes the Yankees and Red Sox much bigger than their market's population would suggest while the Tigers, Marlins, Mets take a hit relative to their market.

I wonder if those values are overinflating the success of those teams with a large plus like New York and Boston. Especially if the Yankees +400 is based on the entire New York market. I think these values hold the key to protray market size and resources correctly to make sure the Yankees are not always the biggest resource team.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by henry296

Jeff,

To me at appears as though they are multipliers to convert population to fan base. It makes the Yankees and Red Sox much bigger than their market's population would suggest while the Tigers, Marlins, Mets take a hit relative to their market.

I wonder if those values are overinflating the success of those teams with a large plus like New York and Boston. Especially if the Yankees +400 is based on the entire New York market. I think these values hold the key to protray market size and resources correctly to make sure the Yankees are not always the biggest resource team.

It's hard to tell if the balance issue is coming from the fan base numbers mentioned above or the regional population numbers (or both), but in either case I think it could be resolved by adjusting either or both of those numbers. I suspect the fan base number will be the easier to balance, hopefully someone will test this out and see if they can get balanced results by modifying the fan base numbers.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Jeff Olsen

When I was preparing my stadium database to be bundled with 2K6, I noticed that two fields had been added since I first compiled the data. One of these fields is "Fan Base" but I don't know how it works. How far above or below average, maybe? For 2005 it has the Angels, Orioles, Reds, Indians, Brewers, A's, Pirates, and Blue Jays at -100; Boston: +400; Cubs: +150; White Sox and Royals: +100; Tigers, Marlins, Mets, Devil Rays, and Rangers: -200; Dodgers: -150; Twins: -50; Yankees: +200; Braves and Phillies: +50; Cardinals: +350. Everyone else is 0.

Also, every year has an entry and the game will have the capability to automatically import data at the start of every season, accounting for not only all dimension and capacity changes but changes to the fan base as well. Historic fan data is not in yet.

Looks like it matches up with this:

Originally Posted by SkyDog

FANATIC (+20%)
Boston

DEVOTED (+15%)
St. Louis

LOYAL (+10%)
New York Yankees

INDIFFERENT (-10%)
Detroit
Florida
New York Mets
Tampa Bay
Texas

[Ben E Lou]

Before y'all get to testing this too much, Clay posted this a few minutes ago in the Baseball Mogul Online forums...

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...&postid=349820

Originally Posted by Clay Dreslough

Agreed. The Yankees' Payroll is over $250 Million in 2005 (in real-life) but that doesn't make for fun gameplay. So we're scaling back the big-market payrolls in BB2K6 and will be doing the same in BMO when we update the code next month.

It's been argued that we added SOME of the realism to BMO (like big TV contracts for the Yankees) without adding the realism that helps small teams (like the luxury tax).

Good point, but we also left out things like merchandising (e.g. selling T-Shirts and Jerseys) where the Yankees do MUCH better than teams like the Royals. The fact is that in real-life the Yankees payroll could go over $300 million if they really wanted to.

So, for the health of BMO and BB2K6, I'm scaling this back. Now if only MLB would do the same...

Clay

P.S. Prospect talent is also significantly tweaked in BB2K6 and will be in BMO soon.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Before y'all get to testing this too much, Clay posted this a few minutes ago in the Baseball Mogul Online forums...

http://www.sportsmogul.com/vbulletin...&postid=349820

Interesting. I kind of liked the idea of trying my wits at winning with Tampa Bay.


Todd

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Interesting. I kind of liked the idea of trying my wits at winning with Tampa Bay.


Todd

I think, as things were, it would have been pretty much impossible.


Reading Clay's post also made me think of this question: what were the Yankee payrolls in 2003 and 2004?

[Jeff Olsen]

Adding up the available salaries listed at baseball-reference, 2004 was in the neighborhood of $203 Million.

[Swaggs]

I want this game now.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by Swaggs

I want this game now.

Fanboy.

[Ben E Lou]

The latest build, which came out last night, addressed the financial imbalance. Here is the update:

With 7.74:

quote:

---

I ran a 100-year sim with 7.74, and the Yankees made the playoffs 95 times, won 62 pennants, and 49 world titles. Add the titles won by Toronto, the Mets and LA to that, 86 of the 100 world titles were won by just four teams. The Yankees only had 7 seasons in which they did not win 100 games, and have averaged 118.5 wins per year over the past 30 seasons. On the other hand, Tampa Bay only has 7 seasons in 100 years in which they didn't lose over 100 games. Four other teams (Cin/Fla/Mil/Pit) never made the playoffs in 100 years, and 2 others (SD-1, Cle-2) seem to only have made it on flukes. I realize that big-market teams dominate baseball, but they shouldn't be able to dominate THIS much, imho.

---

I ran another 100-year sim with 7.75. This time, the Yankees won 35 championships, 50 pennants, and made the playoffs 89 times. IRL, the Yankees have won 39 pennants and 26 championships in 84 years, which would extrapolate out to 31 and 46 over the course of 100 seasons. 35 and 50 seems much, much more reasonable. However, it could probably still stand another small tweak: they still go on 20-30 year runs where they win over 100 games each season, and had a couple of decades in which they averaged in the 115-win range.

As far as other teams, here are a few tidbits...

• Five other teams made the postseason 50 or more times: Ana, Chisox, LA, NYM, StL.
• Six other teams won 10 or more pennants: LA, NYM, Phi, StL, Ana, Tor
• A total of twelve teams won multiple championships: Ari, LA, NYM, Phi, SF, StL, Ana, Bal, Bos, NYY, Tex, Tor
• Twelve teams never won a championship, although two of the twelve, (Col and CWS) had some pretty hard luck: the Rockies made the playoffs 28 times and went to the Series five times, and the Chisox made the playoffs fifty-one times, yet only won two pennants and no titles.
• Seven teams had less than five playoff appearances: Cle(2), KC(2), TB(0), Cin(1), Mil(0), Pit(0), SD(3)
• 20 teams made the playoffs at least 10 times.
• TB had less than 20 seasons in which they lost under 100 games, and never won as many as 80.

I went by my office last night and started both computers there on 100-year sims as well (one historical), so I can give some more data when I get there in a bit, but those are some data points to consider. Things seem much better with this build at first glance, though.

[JasonC23]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Twelve teams never won a championship, although two of the twelve, (Col and CWS) had some pretty hard luck: the Rockies made the playoffs 28 times and went to the Series five times, and the Chisox made the playoffs fifty-one times, yet only won two pennants and no titles.

As a White Sox fan, sad to say, I find this very realistic.

Sounds like it's getting better. Not perfect (IRL, only 2 teams have ever won 115+ games in a season), but better.

[Ksyrup]

I remember in the old, old version of BBM, I could regularly take my teams to between 125-135 wins a season. Looks like that hasn't changed enough, if the AI is routinely winning 120+ games with the best teams.

Ahhhh, memories. Jose Cruz Jr., was a lock for 800+ HRs in that game.

[miked]

I was playing around and am becoming more of a fan of the game (except I can't seem to win, which is good). Is there a way to just auto-sort the minors? I don't feel like constantly checking who's doing well in AAA, AA, A, R to see who to promote/demote..but when I hit auto-sort, it removes guys from my ML roster I want to keep. It's kind of a small issue I suppose, just easier for me and didn't know if I was missing something.

[Galaril]

SkyDog are you still helping out Clay with this? I am curious if you have run anymore tests with the 7.75 build nad if it is more solid than before. Are the leftover amateurs from the draft going into the free agency now?

[Bee]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

The latest build, which came out last night, addressed the financial imbalance. Here is the update:

With 7.74:

quote:

---

I ran a 100-year sim with 7.74, and the Yankees made the playoffs 95 times, won 62 pennants, and 49 world titles. Add the titles won by Toronto, the Mets and LA to that, 86 of the 100 world titles were won by just four teams. The Yankees only had 7 seasons in which they did not win 100 games, and have averaged 118.5 wins per year over the past 30 seasons. On the other hand, Tampa Bay only has 7 seasons in 100 years in which they didn't lose over 100 games. Four other teams (Cin/Fla/Mil/Pit) never made the playoffs in 100 years, and 2 others (SD-1, Cle-2) seem to only have made it on flukes. I realize that big-market teams dominate baseball, but they shouldn't be able to dominate THIS much, imho.

---

I ran another 100-year sim with 7.75. This time, the Yankees won 35 championships, 50 pennants, and made the playoffs 89 times. IRL, the Yankees have won 39 pennants and 26 championships in 84 years, which would extrapolate out to 31 and 46 over the course of 100 seasons. 35 and 50 seems much, much more reasonable. However, it could probably still stand another small tweak: they still go on 20-30 year runs where they win over 100 games each season, and had a couple of decades in which they averaged in the 115-win range.

As far as other teams, here are a few tidbits...

• Five other teams made the postseason 50 or more times: Ana, Chisox, LA, NYM, StL.
• Six other teams won 10 or more pennants: LA, NYM, Phi, StL, Ana, Tor
• A total of twelve teams won multiple championships: Ari, LA, NYM, Phi, SF, StL, Ana, Bal, Bos, NYY, Tex, Tor
• Twelve teams never won a championship, although two of the twelve, (Col and CWS) had some pretty hard luck: the Rockies made the playoffs 28 times and went to the Series five times, and the Chisox made the playoffs fifty-one times, yet only won two pennants and no titles.
• Seven teams had less than five playoff appearances: Cle(2), KC(2), TB(0), Cin(1), Mil(0), Pit(0), SD(3)
• 20 teams made the playoffs at least 10 times.
• TB had less than 20 seasons in which they lost under 100 games, and never won as many as 80.

I went by my office last night and started both computers there on 100-year sims as well (one historical), so I can give some more data when I get there in a bit, but those are some data points to consider. Things seem much better with this build at first glance, though.

The balance issue still needs work IMO. Using the default settings, I ran a couple 50 season tests and 2 or 3 big market teams are completely dominating (3 teams won 44 and 42 series in 50 years - mostly the Yankees). I then ran a 20 year test playing as the Nationals to see how difficult it would be to build up a team. In those 20 years starting in 2005, the Yankees won the series 17 times, Boston twice and the Angels once. That's with the 7.75 build.

[Galaril]

Yankees 17 times in 20 years oh dear

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Galaril

Yankees 17 times in 20 years oh dear

As noted earlier, it can be easily adjusted by the user. The default settings are still way off IMO though.

Something that bothers me even more is looking through other test runs and the one's I've done, there are a handful of teams that never seem to even make the playoffs. It just seems to me that there should be at least a chance that those teams could put together enough talent to make the playoffs out of the hundreds of years that I have seen results for. Again, that can be addressed by the user to get a better balance but the default settings should be a lot less unbalanced before release IMO.

[henry296]

How often is the best time in the Regular Season winning the World Series. I wonder if this is contributing to the high # of World Series for the Yankees, especially with 100+ win teams in the regular season. I wonder if there isn't enough randomness in the game engine outcomes, that would allow for a Florida Marlins team to win a 7 game series against the Yankees like 2 years ago.

Todd

[Ksyrup]

I ran a quick 20 years last night starting from 2005 with equalized cities, and the Red Sox were the best team and almost always won the World Series when they made it. I haven't looked at it in-depth to determine if they always had the better record, but when they made it, they won it nearly every time.

One problem I'm seeing, and it was this way 5 years ago as well, is too many super teams, and correspondingly, too may super bad teams. Way too many 115+ wins teams, and way, way too many 115+ loss teams. Here's an example - I took the Devil Rays in my 20 year quick-sim, and routinely lost 110-120 games a season, yet finished 4th nearly every year. I forgot that there was even a 5th place until I finished in 5th one year.

So I started thinking, how in the hell could you have 2 teams with 110+ losses in the same division?!?! I figured it was because the Sox and Yankees were both in the AL East, and a combo of my Devil Rays, the Blue Jays, and the Orioles were getting pummeled. Turns out it was the Yankees!!!! They quickly fell to pieces in my game, losing 90 games by 2007, then went into the tailspin to end all tailspins for the next decade, losing 100 games every year, including several years in a row in which they barely won 35-40 games! I need to look at it again tonight because I'm not feeling good and maybe I saw something that wasn't there, but I could swear that in one season, they went 22-140!!!

Now, putting aside my feelings about the Yankees, that just shouldn't be happening in the game, and certainly not with regularity.

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

I ran a quick 20 years last night starting from 2005 with equalized cities, and the Red Sox were the best team and almost always won the World Series when they made it. I haven't looked at it in-depth to determine if they always had the better record, but when they made it, they won it nearly every time.

One problem I'm seeing, and it was this way 5 years ago as well, is too many super teams, and correspondingly, too may super bad teams. Way too many 115+ wins teams, and way, way too many 115+ loss teams. Here's an example - I took the Devil Rays in my 20 year quick-sim, and routinely lost 110-120 games a season, yet finished 4th nearly every year. I forgot that there was even a 5th place until I finished in 5th one year.

So I started thinking, how in the hell could you have 2 teams with 110+ losses in the same division?!?! I figured it was because the Sox and Yankees were both in the AL East, and a combo of my Devil Rays, the Blue Jays, and the Orioles were getting pummeled. Turns out it was the Yankees!!!! They quickly fell to pieces in my game, losing 90 games by 2007, then went into the tailspin to end all tailspins for the next decade, losing 100 games every year, including several years in a row in which they barely won 35-40 games! I need to look at it again tonight because I'm not feeling good and maybe I saw something that wasn't there, but I could swear that in one season, they went 22-140!!!

Now, putting aside my feelings about the Yankees, that just shouldn't be happening in the game, and certainly not with regularity.

With equalized cities, I can see that happening. I don't think you'll get anything close to realism going that route beyond the first couple seasons.

[Ksyrup]

But the alternative isn't very realistic, either, with the Yankees winning 60% of the World Series. I can understand it bringing them down by taking away a significant advantage, but I'm not sure I understand why equalizing cities would make them (or any other team) any more likely to lose 120+ games than without equalized cities.

[henry296]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

But the alternative isn't very realistic, either, with the Yankees winning 60% of the World Series. I can understand it bringing them down by taking away a significant advantage, but I'm not sure I understand why equalizing cities would make them (or any other team) any more likely to lose 120+ games than without equalized cities.

I think with the equalize cities on it forces the Yankees to make some drastic changes to their roster to deal with less revenue. Therefore, they are forced to release or trade most of their star players and perhaps cut their scouting budget as well. It is the equivalent of being in salary cap hell in football. This creates a horrible team on the field as they adjust.

Todd

[Bee]

Originally Posted by Ksyrup

But the alternative isn't very realistic, either, with the Yankees winning 60% of the World Series. I can understand it bringing them down by taking away a significant advantage, but I'm not sure I understand why equalizing cities would make them (or any other team) any more likely to lose 120+ games than without equalized cities.

I agree the default alternative isn't very realistic either at this point in the beta. If you edit the LA and NY regional populations you can get decent results in the beta though, so I'm guessing the balance issue can be greatly improved before release.

I don't think equalized cities results in teams being more likely to lose 120+ games, but I think it is more likely for big market teams to fall apart like the Yankees did in your game. I would guess the equalized market would hurt those teams with huge payrolls more than other teams, but I haven't tested that. In any case, it seems to me that equalized cities would make the failure/success of teams much too random.

Edit: What Todd said.

[Ben E Lou]

Good thoughts. It would certainly help if y'all pass this stuff on to Clay in his beta forums. It can't hurt for stuff to come from sources other than me.

[Ksyrup]

I see where you're coming from. Make sense.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Good thoughts. It would certainly help if y'all pass this stuff on to Clay in his beta forums. It can't hurt for stuff to come from sources other than me.

I've been meaning to signup there, darn it. Maybe I'll have some time tonight.


Todd

[OldGiants]

Anybody else seeing lots of huge multi-player trades? I'm talking 10 for six types. I watched the Giants deal 23 players for 9 new guys in three deals in 2007. Seems like AI trades use 6 or more players more often than not. It could be random noise, that's why I'm asking.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by OldGiants

Anybody else seeing lots of huge multi-player trades? I'm talking 10 for six types. I watched the Giants deal 23 players for 9 new guys in three deals in 2007. Seems like AI trades use 6 or more players more often than not. It could be random noise, that's why I'm asking.

Trades are FUBAR, imo.


Todd

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by MizzouRah

Trades are FUBAR, imo.


Todd

i dont like the trades so far. it just seems random, no AI logic at all.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

i dont like the trades so far. it just seems random, no AI logic at all.

Good job of communicating that in the beta forum.

[jbmagic]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Good job of communicating that in the beta forum.

i am not the only one here that mention about the trade logic of the AI.

[miked]

Originally Posted by OldGiants

Anybody else seeing lots of huge multi-player trades? I'm talking 10 for six types. I watched the Giants deal 23 players for 9 new guys in three deals in 2007. Seems like AI trades use 6 or more players more often than not. It could be random noise, that's why I'm asking.

Not hard to believe when every other trade...of the 5000 I'm proposed...is some 5-2 or 5-1 deal...usually the same ones over and over again with one player different.

[Ben E Lou]

Originally Posted by jbmagic

i am not the only one here that mention about the trade logic of the AI.

You're the only one that has registered and posted in the beta forum that I've seen, though. At least the others have the excuse of not having registered.

If I were Clay, I'd be quite frustrated that someone would download the beta, get updates to it, then post things that aren't working properly in another forum without mentioning it in the beta forum.

[MizzouRah]

Originally Posted by SkyDog

Good job of communicating that in the beta forum.

Going there now.


Todd

[MizzouRah]

dola,

Baseball Mogul 2006

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Todd