themodelcitizen

Were you using the Belarusian unique ID for everything? I tried that but ran into some weird errors. Also I wonder if you could insert the Russian teams into CL qualifying the same way I've shunted them into the ACL early rounds, but I do remember having issues editing the main league stage in the new CL. Qualifying might be somewhat malleable to just give Russia a permanent 3 spots or something like I have in Asia (with other countries' coefficients moving around as normal).

You could with cup standings in previous versions, not sure what combination of the new settings you'd need

That's brilliant. "Prairie" btw, it's very easy to make typos with that second i for some reason. Think prairie dogs. And have some prairie oysters while you're at it

Some coach of the year awards for tournaments with weird playoff systems are glitched, you might be able to get around it by assigning a specific competition to the overall table (like MLS does with Supporters' Shield) and award it to that instead. The award names showing as blank are because you've duplicated awards but not changed the "short name" - because it often shows as what you want already, for example when duplicating USLC's "Coach of the Week" for USL1, say, you might just change the long name because that needed changing. You do have to change the "short name" at least once or it will show as blank by default. It can be changing one letter, tabbing away, and then clicking back in and changing it back (you can see on the list of "changes" for the award that it's now registered a change).

BTW your academy team plays in "MLS Next", that's in the background anyway and they'll get a few cups regardless of what level you load. Your '2' team (which has some 20-something pros on it) plays in "MLS Next Pro", that's div 3. One of the big benefits of a playable USL2 is scouting players for the MLS draft. Then when the draft comes around, they'll have a detailed history (not made up stats)

Not really sure about the differences, swore I read somewhere there was almost no point going "view only" as it loses a bunch of features for very little gain. You'd have to read up on it though. Can't you make everything playable but then go into "detail level" and take away the detail for all the leagues you're not playing? AFAIK players will still develop at (mostly) the same rate, but I could be wrong. It won't be quite as immersive as awards like goal of the month etc won't be awarded

Haven't touched any Caribbean teams, might do something with Bermuda Hogges eventually but they're extinct in the base DB anyway

Yes to both, just that if you're using yellow's file, DON'T use my CanChamp fix. He's added a couple of CanPL expansion teams and rejigged the Canadian Championship to fix it, so you'll need his continental files. But our leagues work together (and nicely). In general my stuff is compatible by default, it's where other files make large departures like that where any issues will come up

If you sort by "average points" as the first tiebreaker it will actually use that before points. So when teams have played each other an uneven number of times they can be sorted by average points, although you may prefer not to. I managed to rescue the Cascadia Cup (inactive in the default rules) this way, some years one of the teams will play 2 more games than the other two, and this way they don't get the easy win

Buffalo Cup could be something about the Prairies, or Western Canada, and include Manitoba clubs too. Edmonton and Calgary had the Wildrose Cup previously but that's because it's the Alberta provincial flower. London in the Golden Horseshoe is a stretch, could be something about the 401 Corridor or Southern Ontario/Great Lakes. The West Coast one could just be BC-themed, or something about the Pacific/Strait of Georgia, but actually the Juan de Fuca Plate is awarded by fans right now and used to be a similar rivalry cup between TSS and Highlanders. Ottawa-Ville de Québec corridor I don't know much about, there's gotta be a suitable French name though

Ahh OK, sounds like team pools might come in handy too - particularly with "number of teams in overall list" set to a max, which will factor in previous entries (like the entry for the Culling qualifiers), and for which you can include specific "ignore teams" entries that will only apply to that team pool. Just too tired to think of how to make it work rn too. But it sounds like you're on the right track

"Get beat teams from division" with max set to 16 and the box for "ignore teams" checked, then same entry without the box checked. These probably have to come AFTER the entry for the teams who qualified from the Culling, or else the "ignore teams" will mean some of them are cut out (unless I read it wrong)

If you cut the NACL from the file completely but just kept the Carib Cup fate actions (and setup date maybe) it should still work (theoretically at least)

I wonder if sorting by "cup points (5 years)" would do anything (if there's anywhere to do that without throwing off the whole thing). Could at least have a sort of club coefficient/ranking if the league one isn't working

What if you give those teams a secondary division and use that? Is there any way to use "ignore teams" in the list of teams and set to get last winner of the comp?

There's a stage flag (maybe "other league stage flag"?) in the league "use playoff rankings" too, I think that will force it to assign continental places using the playoffs too

Just go into the FM22 editor file and search for players who have "number of changes" "at least" 1

Yeah, the local region thing is an old trick, but ideally we'd be able to keep the same local region for stuff like players from/based in that region considering it their "home" region and being more likely to sign there. Same with duplicating cities, you lose cool quirks like the news item/media question about how a player knows the importance of local derbies because they're from that town

I wish, I would have implemented them in my FM19 NASL database. I tried to get best-of-3 playoffs but couldn't get it to work, however MLS actually has that now so either they fixed some of the settings or I never actually nailed the right combination

There's an extinct Austrian region (not functionally "extinct" just empty with [ext] in its name) that can be repurposed without messing anything else up IIRC

Cruyff loved these and wanted them in Europe, great way to level the playing field a bit. Loads of old NASL games and shootouts on YouTube (including Trevor Francis scoring 5 for Detroit in a 10-0 win)

Under the CCL's fixture rules you can specifically tell it to prioritize your comp over others with the same fixture priority (i.e. tell it that Carib games will be continental cup - low but only when they clash with CCL)

Yeah just moves it up a month to avoid preseason issues.

Yep the crazy Saudi big 4 behaviour they've implemented (so they interact with European transfer markets a certain way) means any Saudi DB is unplayable. Obviously they don't care, they're not gonna mess with the algorithm just to help with a created league (even though a bunch of them were using my files last year). Any fix so far just nerfs the big 4 transfer activity which is kind of the whole point of playing in Saudi. Won't be maintaining or updating the file this year as a result

Yeah, some teams even posted a picture with their trophy ("Independent Cup southwest region" or whatever) after the one-game win against a lower division team, lol. I thought about splitting it into 9 different stages so each could award a trophy but it seemed a bit much. Also not sure it would verify with the weirdness about including lower division teams in cups this year (on verifying it thinks there aren't enough teams but works in-game, so each stage would probably fail to verify if split up). Will consider that too. Seems a bit cheap to effectively give each NISA team a gimme trophy every year mind you EDIT: added the salary cap to USLC and USL1 based on their latest CBAs. They increase every year, then I think one ends in 2025 and one in 2027, so I've just left it blank after that (in case you build a superteam down there and need the extra space)