For my first ever fictional league series, I’m going to work through a setup that I’ve been messing with since OOTP 19 but only now had the time to finally devote some real effort to. Thanks to the ability to import uniform colors via XML (a feature over which I have repeatedly made myself a nuisance and started posting here specifically to try to get help with), and some needed personal life free time, I’m going to post for as long as folks here can stand it: My mega-sized European Baseball What-If Scenario:
What if the current European soccer pyramid was actually a baseball system?
For your consideration:
- 31 leagues
- 564 teams
- 31,461 players
- 918 logos
- 40ish custom uniforms (with more to come)
- One annual concurrent Champions League tournament
- Quadrennial European Championships (aka The Euros)
- Quadrennial World Cups
- “Big Five” Cup competitions
This has been a labor of love and an ongoing experiment with this game and I’m now going to reset all my test runs to zero and start over from the year 2012 and post the progress here as I go.
To start, here are the top-tier leagues we’ll be following. I’ll go into more detail on each league later.
Leagues
England & Wales - 5 levels
Top league: Premier League, 20 teams, 114 games, 4 Champions League places
Germany - 3 levels
Top league: Baseball Bundesliga, 18 teams, 102 games, 4 Champions League places
Italy - 3 levels
Top league: Serie A, 20 teams, 114 games, 4 Champions League places
Spain - 3 levels
Top league: La Liga, 20 teams, 114 games, 4 Champions League places
France & Monaco - 3 levels
Top league: Ligue 1, 20 teams, 114 games, 3 Champions League places
Portugal - 2 levels
Top league: Liga Portugal, 18 teams, 102 games, 2 Champions League places
Russia - 2 levels
Top league: Russian Premier League, 16 teams, 90 games, 1 Champions League place
Netherlands - 2 levels
Top league: Eredivisie, 18 teams, 102 games, 1 Champions League place
Belgium - 2 levels
Top league: Belgian First Division, 16 teams, 90 games, 1 Champions League place
Austria - 2 levels
Top league: Osterreichsche Baseball-Bundesliga, 10 teams, 54 games, 1 Champions League place
Scotland - 2 levels
Top league: Scottish Premier League, 12 teams, 66 games, 1 Champions League place
Europe - 2 levels
Top league: UEBA Europa League, 2 sub-leagues of 26 teams each, 150 games, 3 Champions League places per sub-league
Tournaments
World
Baseball World Cup, every 4 years
Next tournament: Brazil, December 2014
Europe
UEBA Euros, every 4 years
Next tournament: Ukraine & Poland, December 2012
Europe
UEBA Champions League, annual
Next tournament: July 2012
England
Baseball Association Cup, annual
Next tournament: March 2012
Germany
DBB-Pokal, annual
Next tournament: March 2012
Spain
Copa del Rey, annual
Next tournament: March 2012
Italy
Coppa Italia, annual
Next tournament: March 2012
France
Coupe de France, annual
Next tournament: March 2012
I’ve tried to make the team and competition logos match as closely to their real world soccer counterparts as possible. This can be pretty difficult for more obscure teams and competitions and I’ve tried to avoid too much corporate branding, which can be tough to do in some instances. The Belgian league, for example, basically used their main sponsor’s logo for a while (Jupiler beer). So some names and logos might not line up quite right for soccer purists.
Seasons for all leagues in my playthrough run from April to November, since OOTP can’t work across calendar years like the soccer season does. The setup for each league (except the Europa League) is for the 2011-12 football season.
In each league, teams play each other twice, like in real life, once home and once away, but in two three-game series instead of single games.
It’s a straight up league table, with no playoffs, no wildcards, no ASG, no interleague play. The Europa League is the only league with sub-leagues, and just for fun there’s a 7-game playoff at the end of the season.
Last piece for now: I’ve chosen to start in 2012 because of a few reasons: I wanted to create at least some sense of history with this scenario, so I wanted to start in the past; 2012 is ten years ago, so that’s a good round number; finding accurate logos and logo files that can be customized gets harder the further back in time you go; a lot of lower-level soccer teams have gone under in the past ten years, a lot more before that, and I want to use as many clubs that are still around as I can without getting too deep into the murky details of how Os Belenenses is related to B-SAD (for example).
For real last piece: I’ve never posted a playthrough before, so I’d like to know what types of things people like to see in these threads. Seasons will run from April to November yearly, so it’ll be a lot of info generated, a lot of games to keep track of, and a lot of potential stuff to post.
What info is must-have for a playthrough thread?
What about my setup would you like to see incorporated into my posts?
Next post will be an overview of my pro/rel settings.