themodelcitizen

Oh yeah, thanks. Any idea what "rowing nations" are (the bottom option)? Rivals maybe?

I know cup tie mappings take care of your traditional group A winner vs. group B runner-up and such. In cases where a couple of best third place teams, for example, advance to the next round, is there a flag somewhere to keep teams from the same group from drawing each other? I can't see how the Euros do it... I know we can seed by position, points etc in previous group but I don't think that would do anything to guarantee you can't draw the teams from your group?

F*cking hell, that's like NFL-level complications, lol. It might be doable with LOTS of hidden stages and using that league stage setting "teams to get extra home game." But the custom fixture plan thing is likely a lot cleaner, I just don't know how

If you don't mind the extra game being random opponents I'd do a hidden stage where the fixtures come from (and are sent to the main stage). Set it up so everyone plays each other once, then the extra games can come from something like 3 groups of 3, each group plays the other groups once (but not their groupmates for this extra game)

Alright, apologies for sounding cross, just dealing with some stuff and it came across in my reply. I know it's intimidating to figure out all this convoluted stuff. If you need anything I've explained clarified, I'm happy to help

I'll take a closer look when I've had a chance to eat and sleep. In general just re-read my last big post and ask yourself those questions, think about how that relates to what you're trying to do. EDIT: along with the post after, it also directly answers your question about ranking levels in stages and not the comp, so now I'm wondering if you're actually reading what I'm saying and just want someone to fix it for you, lol.

If you're still stuck, I think it will be infinitely more helpful if you look at other people's files and how they've handled rankings. If you're still stuck someone will look at it. But ranking levels are such an intrinsic part of advanced rules (especially with a complex system like this) I think you need to grasp it yourself or it will just lead to more issues

As I said above, I don't see why ranking levels for the competition itself would be any use her, just ranking level info (which will correspond to the ranking levels in various stages). Also, to add to what I just said about removing the "don't rank teams using this stage" flag - you might want to make that overall table stage 0 or something, just show it shows up when you click on the competition first, the game knows its the main league stage, assign European spots etc

On further thought, I'd scrap ranking levels for the opening league stage. I might not even use them for the opening stage final, but if that's causing issues I'd give the winner current/highest as 0 and lowest as 1 (because no matter what they're finishing second overall or higher, right?). The loser can have current/highest as 0 (because they can still come back and win everything in the closing and championship, right?) Closing final should have winner as current/highest 0 (obviously), lowest 1 (because they can only finish second overall or higher depending on how they do in the Champions Playoff, right?). Loser should probably have current/highest 0 (because they might still be able to win everything if they've already won opening stage, right?). Lowest as whatever the lowest overall ranking in the comp is (because they can still finish bottom on the overall table and not go int he closing stage playoff, which would mean they finish bottom overall, right?) Then, in the Champions Playoff, the winner will have current = 0 (no highest and lowest, because they're done here). Loser will have 1 current. (edit: corrected a number here) I might scrap league rankings overall because of how they can be affected by everything I've just said. Get rid of that "don't rank teams using this stage" flag because we do actually want that to rank the teams that aren't already being assigned a ranking in the specific stages mentioned above. Feel free to ask for clarification.

Lol. Oops. Makes sense with that screenshot someone posted where the Luxembourg league or whatever it was had 7 European spots and then a relegation spot

All good, "current" is just that - when stage 1 ends, a team's "current" ranking is what the Board will look at. In most cases, it's the same as highest - if you finish 4th in an early stage but you can still win everything, your "current" should be 0 (first overall) because as far as the Board's concerned you're still on course to win everything. So by that logic, EVERYONE in your opening stage should have a highest ranking at 0, right? And current, for that matter? Because even the team finishing last in the opening stage could still end up winning the overall champions playoff? I might consider scrapping ranking levels in that stage entirely. I'm not sure you can get the closing stage loser to always be third, though, because it might be the same team that won the opening stage. I'll set highest to 0 and lowest to 2, that might work actually. Will play with it and post it up in a bit EDIT: sorry I don't have older FMs installed, it doesn't show up on FM23. You can try exporting as an XML and uploading it, maybe we can look at it that way. Alternately I'm happy to try and explain more if you don't understand certain aspects of what I'm saying. In general it's quite intuitive and easy once you grasp what the ranking levels actually do.

Fair enough, that sounds familiar actually, I think I've had a similar issue. My first method should work

You could upload a "guide" with all the instructions how to get it, not sure how the mod makers get it on the workshop though

This is technically correct but I'm not sure you're looking at it the right way. The highest and lowest ranking are the highest and lowest rankings they can achieve after all the subsequent stages are done, not the highest and lowest they can achieve depending on whether other stages are drawn or not. This might just be confusing, happy to help on Discord or something, but at this point it's either post your file, or re-read everything I've said

In addition the first screen in your post makes no sense based on what you've said, why would 2nd, 3rd, and 4th in that stage have "current ranking" at 3? In the absence of a highest and lowest ranking, you're telling the game that those teams can ONLY finish with an overall ranking of 3 in the competition. That doesn't sound remotely consistent with what you're saying

Not sure I understand the format mind you, but what if the closing stage loser already won the opening stage? Why would you tell the game that closing stage loser is 3rd overall no matter what in that case?

Post your file

Could be an issue with duplication - if you duplicate "Evostik player of the month" or whatever and change the long name, but don't change the short name ("player of the month"), sometimes it shows up as blank. So you just need to go in, change one letter, then change it back so the game registers a change. Apologies if this has been covered

There's so much going on in the file, can you provide some more info? What stage is that pictured? I imported it into FM23 and i don't actually see any qualifying rules in the first two stages, or any stage called Champions Playoff

And I don't think you need to set ranking levels for the overall comp. At least not in that way, I think that's for subcomps (you're now telling it that first overall, which it should already recognize as the Championship playoff winner from the stage rankings, can also finish between first and third overall). I usually leave that blank for the comp and set the next tab, "ranking level info" or whatever it is, for Board expectation type stuff. Seems to line up with how all the default comps are set up. Can always post your file and someone will be able to clean up the rankings

Maybe I'm missing something, but why would the closing stage loser have "current ranking" set to 2? What if they end up winning everything? You've just told it that the closing stage loser will be ranked 3rd overall in the comp no matter what. The game can't possibly know that this is only a backup in case the same team wins both. If they have ranking levels set at all for that stage, the loser should probably have highest 0 and lowest as the lowest possible overall ranking in the comp, right? I'm not sure I've explained the whole highest/lowest thing properly

Yeah that sounds right, same as default. It's a pretty short list it can choose from. I had it doing that but as soon as I started cleaning the up the 32 team rules (stadiums got messed up if I left as is) then the whole hosting got thrown off. Which might not be that bad, I'd rather pick myself and allow countries like Nigeria and Indonesia to one day host. It's just then we might lose all the cool news items about host bids and such

Really? What if you had like a 4 team league but improved their coefficient to the top? I think the game might actually be smart enough to look down a division to find the Europa conf league qualifiers in that case but I have no idea (not quite the same issue but got me thinking) You could do it in continental rules and just "get best teams from division" or whatever for serie B

You'd have to rebuild the league cup I think, under "teams" you could use an entry at the top to "ignore" the "best teams in competition" for the European competitions (maximum teams set to however many teams are left in that european comp at the time the League Cup is drawn) Then maybe have "get teams from team pool" with the "team pool" set to ignore teams from every other league in Europe (might be a shorter way I just can't think of it). Then "get best teams in competition" from the European comps (we've told it to ignore everyone except the English teams) with "team type" set to reserves