[FM20] Worldwide Champions League (Update 18/11/2020)

[kayyuenchinup]

Finally, i have loaded a save where BOTH HK Teams Tai Po and Fuli both get through to the CL Q3.  

I think I will start from there.  

 

[Dallan]

Unlike last year, it wasn't possible to get a head start on testing this mod for the new game by using the old version with the beta and seeing what broke - but on the bright side, I was able to use this time to mostly finish a final patch to the FM20 version, with a few bugfixes (scheduling conflicts mostly) and one new feature I've always wanted to include:

Dynamic CL Slot Assignment

Credit to krlenjushka for lighting the way - his trick with hidden league stages didn't work here (it would have required a 211-team league stage, which quite predictably crashed the editor) but I've figured out a way to use team pools to accomplish the same effect - that is, instead of assigning slots and starting positions to each country statically as listed in the OP, we can have them vary based on league reputation so countries can gain or lose slots as the world changes in a long-term game.

Here's the current setup (remember that only the 211 leagues from FIFA members were included, as in the OP):

CL and WL holders: automatically qualify to the group stage and instead play a Super Cup, as before

Leagues ranked 1-10: 7 spots (champion gets an automatic CL group stage spot, cup winner and 2 more spots in Q5, 2 spots in Q4, 1 spot in Q3. )

*League 10 loses one of the Q5 spots and gains one in Q3

Leagues ranked 11-30: 6 spots (champion to group stage, cup winner and 1 to Q5, 2 to Q4, 1 Q3)

Leagues ranked 31-57 4 spots (champion to Q5, cup winner to Q4, 2 Q3.)

Leagues ranked 58 and below: 2 spots (champion and cup winner) starting at various rounds from Q4 (for the champions of leagues ranked 58-64) to Q1 (for the champions of leagues ranked below 121 and cup winners from leagues ranked below 111).

Now, this will be kind of a hack in several ways that I can't avoid or fix, most notably:

• Firstly and most importantly, I'm not sure that dynamic league reputation even WORKS when you're using custom competitions like this one (I'm aware of the longstanding bug with it when you're using custom continental competitions, but maybe custom World competitions might work? We'll see I guess. But it might well end up that I've just done a lot of work to trade one static layout for another (at least until SI let us use these two features together).
• Because this is done by "qualifying" seven teams from every country and then filtering the extra ones out when the qualifying stage is actually set up, some (okay, many) teams may receive inbox items after their domestic season saying they've qualified when they will not even get a spot in qualifying.
• We still don't have access to the normal game UI and messaging for displaying coefficients, informing managers of slot gains or losses, or showing the number of continental slots on your domestic league table, so knowing whether you have actually qualified or how many spots your country has is unfortunately down to guessing and looking at the league reputation screen, or just waiting until the summer and seeing if/where you get added to qualifying.
• Since the actual slots in the competition are handed out by filtering teams by their division reputation, rather than matching the qualifiers assigned directly at the nation level as in the static format, a few weird wrinkles can result:
  
  If a lower division teams gets a spot in the qualifying phase by winning a cup, they might start at an earlier qualifying stage than their nation's top division would qualify them for (because their lower division has a lower reputation), and every cup qualifier between their top division and their actual division in the reputation list will be shifted forward to replace them. 
  
  A similar effect can occur in countries where teams from multiple divisions have access to the "league" slots (eg Belgium) and in this case it may be possible for a lower-division qualifier to that spot to lose it entirely, if their division has a low enough reputation compared to the top divisions from smaller countries. (this can't happen for cups because every national cup winner gets at least a spot in qualifying)
  
  Similarly, if teams from a higher-rep league than the national top division play and win in the national cup (eg Canada), the spot they get from doing so will start at a later qualifying stage than it would technically be entitled to.

All that said, I'm hoping this will work out well. I'm aiming to release it tomorrow after doing some holiday testing overnight.

Edited November 18, 2020 by Dallan

[lukavski]

Wow! Amazing job, Dallan!

 

This file was the best part of all my saves in FM20. And now it has dynamic slots!

It can't get any better.

I will test it as soon as is available for FM21.

 

Thanks, Dallan!

 

[Dallan]

The first few seasons of my holiday testing are in and, while the competition itself works as well as before, there wasn't any visible change in league reputations so I can't tell if the dynamic system is actually working. My guess is that the same bug being discussed over here, which only SI are in a position to change, is freezing league reputations entirely, but it may be that I'm just not watching for long enough. Anyway, even if they're static it's not a huge change from the static version, so I'll post the update and go from there.

Since the FM20 version is now final, I'll also post the static version for anyone who wants to keep it that way, since the dynamic system does have some unavoidable issues and FM20 isn't going to receive any updates that will fix them. 

Changes in the 18 November version:

-Various scheduling fixes to help the game neatly resolve conflicts with domestic league schedules

-Cup tying in the CL/WL now only occurs after a player has played 6 matches for their club

-Slots in the CL and WL are now awarded on the basis of a league's reputation ranking as follows: 

CL and WL holders: automatically qualify to the group stage and instead play a Super Cup, as before

Leagues ranked 1-10: 7 spots (champion gets an automatic CL group stage spot, cup winner and 2 more spots in Q5, 2 spots in Q4, 1 spot in Q3. )

*League 10 loses one of the Q5 spots and gains one in Q3

Leagues ranked 11-30: 6 spots (champion to group stage, cup winner and 1 to Q5, 2 to Q4, 1 Q3)

Leagues ranked 31-57 4 spots (champion to Q5, cup winner to Q4, 2 Q3.)

Leagues ranked 58 and below: 2 spots (champion and cup winner) starting at various rounds from Q4 (for the champions of leagues ranked 58-64) to Q1 (for the champions of leagues ranked below 121 and cup winners from leagues ranked below 111).

 

 

Worldwide Champions League (static).fmf Worldwide Champions League (dynamic).fmf

Edited November 20, 2020 by Dallan
bugfixes

[anitamui]

Will the game still crash at 4/7/2019?

[Dallan]

20 hours ago, anitamui said:

Will the game still crash at 4/7/2019?

It does, yes. It seems to have something to do with moving Q1 and Q2 losers into the World League but only in the first year, subsequent years work fine.  I'll see if I can make another try at fixing it before Tuesday but I'm not expecting to find an answer.

I did catch a bug in the dynamic version (teams ending up in both group stages AGAIN, ugh) and a fix I hadn't made in the static version, so I've reuploaded both of those on this page and in the OP.

[nepejke]

@Dallan hello! playing so much with your update fm19, fm20 skipped. 
so do you will make update for fm21 ? waiting for it

[Dallan]

@nepejkeI literally can't play the game without this edit anymore and if I'm doing it for myself I might  as well share it, so yes I will be updating. 

The work for the 21 version is actually pretty much done, I just haven't had a lot of time to test it yet. But I expect to post it this weekend, or next week at the latest (since I'll have time off from my day job). 

[sphanlon01hc]

Is this still every four years after 2021 like the default tournament? Or is it more frequent?

[Dallan]

11 hours ago, sphanlon01hc said:

Is this still every four years after 2021 like the default tournament? Or is it more frequent?

It stays an annual tournament.

[kayyuenchinup]

@DallanI am still enjoying your mod in Fm 20, have not started the Fm 21 yet.  

I would like to ask about the "cup tied" in the Fm 20 version, will the player become available at the later stage of the competition?  Or "cup tied" will make him not be available for the whole competition?  

[baasblack]

Hey Dallan,

Your work is very important for a lot of people who like to play a database outside the Europe continent. 

You did this for a long of time and i still dont understand why the Editor doesn't support your work.

with your work the colours of every top league table dissapears. i know it is because in the Editor you can add continental cup markings but not world cup markings. 

if this would get possible then you will also get comments from journalist in the game about qualifying for (continental) world cup. 

so it is basically only a win win situation.

I hope the devs will work on this someday but i doubt it if I see how many errors still exist in the Editor a lot not even going to be fixed.

[Dallan]

On 19/12/2020 at 01:27, kayyuenchinup said:

@DallanI am still enjoying your mod in Fm 20, have not started the Fm 21 yet.  

I would like to ask about the "cup tied" in the Fm 20 version, will the player become available at the later stage of the competition?  Or "cup tied" will make him not be available for the whole competition?  

Cup ties make a player unavailable for registration for another team for the entire season of the competition (this rule used to be in the real CL before it was removed a few years ago, but I prefer things with it included).

In the current version of the file, a player only gets cup tied to their team if they play six CL matches for them.

On 19/12/2020 at 14:15, baasblack said:

Hey Dallan,

Your work is very important for a lot of people who like to play a database outside the Europe continent. 

You did this for a long of time and i still dont understand why the Editor doesn't support your work.

(...)

Thanks for the compliment. I do the best I can with what SI give us, and as for more support in the Editor - well, we're not the only ones asking for things, are we.  

I imagine that if you were using the static version of qualifying spots (so you know every year how many qualifiers each league has) then you could edit the Qualification Rules in the league stages of a specific league to qualify teams to the FIFA CL (well, unless you merge the files together it would be the Club World Cup), assign the same seedings and set the Continental Cup setting, and maybe even exempt the relevant cup winners so the whole system would be duplicated there. That would, I think, get the markings on league table positions to show up and prompt the media questions on matches that are important for qualifying for those positions, like it does when you edit playoffs into a league.

But of course doing so for EVERY league would take forever and ruin compatibility with other custom league databases (eg, the various X Country's Lower Leagues databases) so I had to go without it here. It would need SI to expand on the system they use to do this for the default continental rules, or an individual user to edit it into whatever leagues they most care about it showing up for. 

Edited December 20, 2020 by Dallan