nine_iron

I might even make a league containing teams from Lincolnshire... oh wait...

Dynamic reputation. I have lost count of the number of times I have run a league for 10+ years to see how my tiny tweaks in rep and prize money affect club finances. Balancing it out takes a lot of effort and time, you will also likely need to make compromises. Starting the rep too high means a big drop and low income for a lot of seasons, starting it too low results in a huge increase later on that is too much. Also watch TV money and cup prize money to ensure they don't get too high.

I used to use Football Pyramid but that site is long gone, I have a folder on my browser too of links that probably don't work anymore... Mostly old sites for leagues. I do like the FA sites for local leagues, they are great! https://fulltime.thefa.com/index.html?league=6657134

I partly get information from my notes and spreadsheets that I have accumulated since around 2006...

Need to do a complex but necessary edit to the files that tell the editor what you can and cannot change. Once you have done it it doesn't seem so scary or complex!

I am pretty old school, hard to get out of my long set ways.

Sums up the editor pretty well. I have had similar problems over the years, awards are my weakness and I never seem to learn! Deletions are always flaky and not perfect, this is why the community tends to prefer blank slates of the extinct nations. They do mean you need to move Kazakhstan back to Asia and Bhutan to be non-FIFA, this also means making "Continent" editable but that has many video guides on how to do it and is worth the extra effort with the Resource Archiver.

The community has established best practice for creating a new country that uses CIS or Pre-1922 Ireland. It was initially done to avoid issues around names. I have been part of a group doing it since 2006 but I will say I am probably the least knowledgeable of that group. I put some of that best practice in the video but some of it was around making a nation out of another, rather than a totally new fantasy nation. There have been some really good examples of those over the years too. I would personally say it is worth the effort BUT I am of course biased towards the methods I have been using for more than a decade.

I highly recommend replacing C.I.S or Pre-1922 Ireland. I made some videos about how to do this. They are a bit old but I have been doing just this for a while

Regional Databases live on!

Being a transcontinental country, Kazakhstan joined UEFA in 2002. The usual approach is to undo this and move them back to the Asian Football Confederation. Then move out from the AFC one of the lowest ranked nations from that region, making that AFC nation a non-FIFA member.

Here is the file if anyone wants it. Lincs & Cambs NFP 3.00.27.fmf

Seeing as I couldn't develop this further due to the new European format issue for advanced rules I have instead worked on an experimental format. I give you "The Draft" version of my database. My only hint is pay close attention to promises, they can make or break your season! I have also used this as a chance to change up the league structure. There are no advanced rules so its fairly simple and not a huge challenge finance wise. Lastly some players are pre-drafted, these are my choices for balance and challenge, they frequently would go undrafted so I had to do something to ensure they didn't just go back to England. Moved file to first post

Final table of the first season... Yes I did mess up by playing a weakened team and losing to Histon... I was trying to build fitness as I was playing 2nd and 3rd. If I had just played a stronger team I may have won the league, as long as I still got the draw against Grimsby the following game. It was a lot of fun but I will probably bring this to a close now, I can't really sign anyone and all my good players are about to get poached as teams from outside the nation can buy them too. It was fun while it lasted, I think if I did it again I wouldn't do as well as I would tweak things to make it harder. Still this was an interesting experiment and I really enjoyed it.

As the end of the transfer window rolls around we see the table looking not too far from where I predicted it at the halfway point. Boston and Scunthorpe are not too far off the pace with Lincoln doing even worse than expected. Grantham are showing that it takes more than one player to make a team and my team, Borough are slowly fading as the other teams gel and my overall bulky squad has less of an impact. St Ives are the obvious other over-performer as they battle with Cambridge City to be the "best of the rest". I may have got Boston's strength wrong and over-estimated Cambridge City, only time will tell if they swap places or not. One thing to note, I got Kaine Felix all wrong, this guy is a beast, Grimsby's top player ratings wise and a key part of their 2nd place title challenge. The AI did a superb job putting the team together. Can Lincoln recover from this? What will happen after youth intakes? Can I keep a Euro spot? Are Peterborough anything other than title contenders?