[1998 Yankees]

I'm updating this to answer my friend who asked this question in another thread:

Originally Posted by myasu

Hi Bruce,
Is this a historical-fictional league? (I mean Historical MLB setup with fictional players)
Could you share your league setup/idea with me?

Basically, I started an historical league in the year 1871, the first year available. Rather than play with historical players, however, I released everybody, deleted all free agents, filled teams with fictional players, then released everybody again and scheduled an inaugural draft.

What I was looking for was the evolving league structure and historical strategic tendencies and financials, but with fictional players. Repeating from above:

Off, but not out of any sense of history. I tried this new feature with another league and quickly got tired of it. It's repetitive and it all depends on your owners generosity and available cash. You get into a downward spiral if you have a cheap boss and a crummy team with low attendance.

Heh, more departure from history IRL because I have these ON. Moreover, I have four levels of minor leagues WAY before they were "invented" by Branch Rickey because I like seeing players develop with stats instead of just growing them farmlike on a reserve roster.

The only things I have consciously done historically are:

• no foreigners until mid-20th Century or later (but I certainly don't bar "colored' players)
• no DH until the last quarter of the 20th Century
• allow the game to evolve and expand the league, and
• allow the game to set historic finances, strategic tendencies, and stats totals.

Those are just preferences; I could have been much more strict with myself to not introduce minor leagues until they historically appeared, for example.

Below is a snapshot of my Historical settings. What I don't have checked is as important as what is; for example, I don't want to Automatically Import Historical Rookies because I want the game to make fictional players for the amateur draft.

Now I'm just letting the game update itself as I progress from year to year. For financials, it's following the data in the financials.txt file. For style and quality of baseball, it's pulling data from the era_ text files (era_modifiers.txt, era_stats.txt, etc.) and total_modifiers.txt.

I'm not sure where it's getting league and franchise history from, though. I'm just tracking it manually, as seen below (I date everything April 1). The only hassle is having to update team logos and uniforms each time a change occurs.