[crawdad5000]

Originally Posted by actionjackson

Lots of questions there. Let me try to sift through them and answer as best as I can.

I usually don't go back before 1882 because that's when the 19th century non-historical historical setup has 16 teams and I find the expansion from 8 to 16 teams is really rough on the balance of the league. That's doubling the size of the league in the course of one offseason and that can cause issues.

So, you say you're using 1984 for your stats output, but are you also using the strategy settings and the player creation modifiers? I like to tie all three to 1984 just for consistency's sake.

For the stats output with 1984, I find if you re-enter 1984 as the year you want the stats based on, you want to do it the day before Opening Day. Because I'm tieing stats output, strategy settings and player creation modifiers to 1984, I uncheck all the boxes that say "Auto adjust settings as happened historically." (Don't have the game open, but it's something like that) associated with those three things. Sometimes those boxes are in two different locations in the settings, so make sure you get them all just to be sure.

However, because I want financials to advance historically I check the "Auto adjust financial settings as happened historically." box. Strangely, I find that the financial settings don't advance automatically and I wind up having to do it manually myself. I do this on the first day of the offseason, so that free agency, arbitration etc will reflect the next season's financials. For example, let's say I just finished the 1951 post-season. The 1951 champs have been crowned, and I advance to the next day (the first day of the offseason). On that day I manually adjust the financial settings to reflect the 1952 season, as that is when the players will be getting paid.

I think I've covered everything, but if you have any further questions, fire away. If you have any questions on my above ramblings, feel free to fire away as well.

Sorry for all the questions. I've been following this thread for awhile now while playing my universe of rdl and fictional players mixed. I've decided to try one strictly historical. You answered everything perfectly. Thanks for pointing out about the expansion issue of doubling the league and starting in 1882 instead of '71.
Thanks again!!