themodelcitizen

Sounds like he's succeeding where anitamui failed? Just kidding mate, saw the title changes, keep up the good work

They have a teams option for "best teams in local region" that seems to work now. But if your secondary divisions work the same way that's good too

Definitely get rid of everything under league schedule/general except "check for clashes with", and change that to "none" since you're specifying every date everywhere else. That "don't use home match days" flag will be important too since they all have them specified. And make sure "stop for international finals" is active and unchecked, the last download I can see it's active and checked. Obviously all this doesn't explain the long-ass break unless you've got a custom international tournament running all year too, but are important for scheduling

Under the competition flags make sure "don't use home match days" is selected in those cases. That's odd that dates don't work if they call the fixture dates, I've had it working this year. Maybe something else is overriding it somewhere else. The lack of any matchdays until May makes me think they're being blocked, but I can't see how. If you're building off someone else's DB, I wonder if they're using a different "base year for dates" (not 2000) or something odd like that

Pretty sure it's the same ID for all the relevant tournaments. But for the Caribbean Shield (the bigger tournament for smaller nations), it sounds like it's not getting all 32 teams because of how the USVI team is selected (they have a couple of top divisions so I think I made it random from the two winners - they probably moved the teams out of those divisions or something). Then because that's not drawing, it's not producing the 2 qualifiers for the Caribbean Cup. Anyway I wouldn't use the CONCACAF redux file in FM24, it has some huge changes to fix the entirely broken CONCACAF system in FM23. This year they actually fixed a bunch of that (not all) so a lot of my changes from FM23 would just confuse it

Have you also gone into "history" under the competition rules and removed that entry for "ignore" Liechtensteiner teams? Could probably lose that whole "team order for top 3 teams" box. Failing all that, under "history" turn off "automatically add history" and use a stage action to "add history record" after the league stage. Normally this is a last resort because the top 3 rankings should able to hand themselves out, but in this case they basically are, we just need to brute force through the hard-coding on top of that

That's so bizarre. Just went to double check and there's only the one set of ACL rules in the DB (no old rules with "end year" set to 2022 or anything). I wonder if something about the missing template made it use a set of rules that used to be in the editor, but isn't there anymore, but maybe is kind of still there? Just not accessible by getting at the continental rules. Glad I haven't seen that.

Also I'm not sure if Windsor City are doing the TFC affiliation at top level anymore? Just youth? So maybe "youth players training" etc might work, although I think the game treats that as the youth players training at the parent club's facility (is that a different setting)? Which makes no sense for a 4-hour drive. Maybe shared scouting knowledge

Hahah all good, I probably can't do anything until tonight (on PST) after work anyway. If there's overlap we should be able to just copy and paste whatever one or two entries or settings I change, I think I can just get away with putting a "qualify team" fate in the three L1s, will also show up in-game in the rules

You should try one or two as realism with advanced rules! You would be unstoppable

Two-legged semis, finals are a one-off at Wembley I think? Might be fun if you put it at a random top stadium (maybe even include Vegas, Phoenix, San Diego etc )

I'd also try getting rid of the "start" and "end" date since we're specifying all 30 in "dates" anyway

Oh, having looked at the file, before you do that, uncheck "number of dates" that's currently set to 30. Yes, I think that might actually override everything else and just generate 30 dates using matchday rules as soon as it can, lol. I realize this doesn't assuage your concerns about obscure boxes being checked or unchecked

Hmm, I seem to remember FM23 was doing that too so I literally put in break periods for almost all the Monday to Friday periods, and then it would force it to schedule games on the available weekends (which also corresponded to my fixture dates). Was really hoping they'd made it more flexible

Under "dates", you'll need to have all 28 entries. Each won't be set to a "date" - that box is unchecked - but a "fixture date", and each will correspond to one of the 28 that you have set in "fixture dates". That's all "fixture dates" is - just a reference for other areas, including parts of the nation rules (like season start and end date). However, even with this, dates may still get moved for cup games, continental games, or clashes if there's an odd number of teams and it has difficulty scheduling all the dates. Under "league schedule" you should also make sure "check for clashes with" is set to "none", and under fixture rules you should make sure "plays on international match days" is checked and "stop for international finals" is active and unchecked (or whatever they are). When it does find clashes though, it will resort to "matchday" (possibly Saturday/Wednesday if nothing else is specified) and try to cram them in when it finds openings, usually at the beginning of the season but in your case that December period. "Break periods" will always be enforced if you also check the box for no postponements. Agreed, it's confusing as hell, but looking at the setup of default comps can help

Until you're searching a confusing phrase from some obscure editor rule and discover it's never been uttered by anyone, ever, in any setting, including on google

If you want them to be able to qualify from the English leagues, it will need to be set to England. You would only leave it on Ireland if you had them separately taking place in the domestic cup over there and trying to get access to Europe that way (and that way only). However, I believe that you'll encounter issues where the Champions League (and possibly the Prem) will apply its "minimum homegrown players from nation" rule to England, not Ireland, and obviously you don't want to have to register a bunch of English-trained players

Is it finding clashes and postponing games? That would make sense that it defaults to Saturday (most nations have this as default weekend date). Check the box for "block postponements" in the break period. The game can be incredibly obtuse with scheduling, they claimed to have fixed it this year but no dice. Also, you're not actually using fixture dates 1 through 28. "Start" and "end" dates are just that, and the game fills in the blanks on its own. You'll have to list them all under "league schedule"/"dates" (you can specify the fixture date here) if you want the game to use them. This is more work but allows complete control over scheduling for each matchday, with offset dates

Ohh OK. You could set it up so that it's a rotating version every 3 years, with a random stadium from a predefined list every time. So BC could be the two CanPL stadia, Ontario gets a random pick from Hamilton/York/etc. I wonder if league stage stadium 1 (still works in cups I think) you could make it so that, like an island team would get Langford and a mainland team would get Langley (giving all the lower league teams an "alternate stadium" for this competition only), but that would be tricky.

Yeah, or within "teams" you could set each entry to rotate over 3 years. Sometimes it's easier to keep track of with 3 separate versions though (just triple the amount of work if you notice a minor issue ). So an extra "get best teams from division" entry for the "host" league that rotates over 3 years. Is the host automatically the host league's winner? If so, then under "stadium pool" you could specify "get last winner" (or however you pick teams for the IPC) for that year and that would now be stadium_0. This can also rotate over 3 years (or have 3 different versions). Alternately if the teams are listed in a certain order (with the host league's teams coming in first) and you use the flag "don't randomize team order when scheduling the league" then I think "league stage stadium 1" should by default be the stadium of the first team in the list.

Thank you!! There are some USL2/PDL media guides from over the years as well which will be good for filling out award histories. USL Academy I was wavering on, aren't they like 80 minute games? Might include some of the showcase/cup-style tournaments, same as I've done with MLS Next. That's not active right now partly because we can't replicate the fall-spring schedule, so it would be a bit odd having a lower level active instead, but worth thinking about.

Yes! Might need you or @Gum to look at my US file at some point, lol. Adding USL2 (including Thunder Bay and FC Manitoba) but it's not finishing in time despite everything looking fine. I'm sure I'm just missing something from looking at the 16 child comps, 5 league stages, and 6 cup stages though

Brilliant! I had it set up in a similar way, except the main stage (0) actually set up the fixtures like normal and just also sent them to the visible 2-year stage. A separate hidden stage brings in the results from 2022 and then those results are also sent into the visible 2-year stage (which relegates). That solved the stage name issue, where the main stage is just the default "league table" or whatever, but relegation seemed not to always work, maybe because of the weird stage setup. You might benefit from "store league history" checked but "stage name" unchecked. The 2023 thing could be a ranking issue? Maybe "don't rank teams using this stage". Or maybe I'm misunderstanding what awarded winners in 2023. Anyway, happy to take a peak at any point if you need a second pair of eyes to tighten things up. Sounds great so far!

Oh really? I did the change ACL to Serbia thing to get the rules, and then copied and pasted that entire list into a fresh set of advanced continental rules (and then re-added the entry for the continent again). What's happening with yours? Did you miss a newer version maybe when you copied it over?

There are weird flags and stuff you'll randomly find like "get all-star opposition" under the "teams" entries. But combining them all with all the various stage rules and competition type never worked for me either. I wonder if there's some kind of coding like with national team selections being tied in there, as it kind of functions in a similar way