Financal Equilibrium Difficulty

[sbrylski]

I'm trying to create a fictional baseball world with multiple major leagues but of varying financials, so only the richest of leagues end up with the best of players, in general.

So, I altered attendance and media contracts. I have three leagues at 100% of the major league attendance, two leagues at 50%, and three leagues at 25%. (Same percentages on the media contracts.) That's the only thing I altered.

And it almost works. After simming 10 seasons, the financially limited leagues end up having teams filled with worse players or very old players, and the financially successful leagues have great rosters. But...

The rich leagues have way too huge of profits. Some teams have revenue streams that triple their expenses. On the other hand, the poor leagues are good, spending right up to their budget.

Any suggestions or tricks on how to balance things out?

(Note: I have the "entire revenue available" option checked for all leagues, not "owner decides".)

[turdfurgeson]

Sorry, I offer no help. But now I want to play Civ IV for some reason....

[Tram2Whitaker]

I tried this once. If you figure it out, give me a shout out.

In mine, I divided the "Major League" (which is a hassle, because you have to put the teams in manually, and then to top it off, Boston is rated as a "small market") into large markets, small markets, and global markets (thus seperating the Yankees from everyone else).

The Global market was a nightmare. The teams had Billion dollar balance sheets (yes, billion). The pitchers had 7+ eras. The batters had .400 bavg and .625 obp, but only 2 or 3 HRs.

[Chicagofan76]

i am having the difficulty of having aall my all stars bolt from my upstart EBL to EarthMLB my top player in 2005 in my ebl league makes 700.000 top player on earth mlb a fraud makes 19mil...i have lost 4 all stars total in the 2 sns of my ebl vs mlb, now i have a 3rd league on Coruscant that while only having 6 teams and i didnt bother to limit financials there since that league doesnt matter to me....i am trying to retrict my HOF going to MLB from EBL or from CBL to MLB for the time being......i plan on trading for what should be barry bonds w/o the roids in 2015 to my team(when i create him in 2006) but right now i have it that EBL cant trade or recieve FA from MLB and i cant seem to turn it off.

[GMLoophole]

Originally Posted by Tram2Whitaker

The Global market was a nightmare. The teams had Billion dollar balance sheets (yes, billion). The pitchers had 7+ eras. The batters had .400 bavg and .625 obp, but only 2 or 3 HRs.

So they looked exactly like the Yankees

I accidentally did this once by adding a Canadian League with drastically different financials (whatever the default was for a new league; I didn't realize I had to edit them). I want to add independent leagues again, and am probably going to just block free agents and trades from moving back and forth to avoid the problems. I had hoped to regulate movement between the leagues monetarily, as you are describing, but that didn't seem to work (IIRC Roger Clemens signed with Edmonton for eleventy bajillion dollars...).

[Tram2Whitaker]

Global MLB featured the Yankees, Dodgers, and since it is the only major market in Canada, the Blue Jays. They played in a division with a fictional Mexico City team. There was another western hemisphere division with Caracas, Havanah, San Juan (PR), and a team from the Dutch Antilles. These two divisions made up the Americas sub league (with plans for future expansion into Panama, Columbia, Haiti, and Jamaica)

The other sub league, was the Eurasian League, featuring the Euro division (London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Rome w/ planned expansion to Moscow, Paris, and Munich), and the Asian division (Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, and I forgot what city in Taiwan I used; expansion would've included Hong Kong, but I couldn't find it (unless it is now called shanghai), Singapore (despite the lack of Malaysian influence in baseball), Sidney, and Melbourne (despite the fact that those are in Australia and not Asia))

The Large Market consisted of what I believed to be the top 16 markets left in the MLB (Philly, Boston, Atlanta, NY Mets/Detroit, both Chicagos, St. Louis/Houston, Texas, Arizona, Colorado/ San Diego, LA Angels, San Fran, and Seattle)

And the small market consisted of the other 11, plus 5 "expansion" teams.


Point is, in order to recreate the league, I went purely fictional, and it turns out that my perception of league markets is either way off, or the game engine is quite random in its assignments.

[GMLoophole]

Originally Posted by Tram2Whitaker

Point is, in order to recreate the league, I went purely fictional, and it turns out that my perception of league markets is either way off, or the game engine is quite random in its assignments.

I don't know about that, but I can say that I compared the in-game "market size" numbers in the default 2010 quickstart with the Arbitron radio numbers for a project I'm working on and noticed that they don't match up very closely. I assume the rating is jiggered to create the appropriate-sized budget for the teams, but some of the numbers (especially Boston 9/20 and St. Louis 6/20) didn't correlate very well with the Arbitron numbers (NY = 15.6, Boston= 3.9, St. L = 2.3).

And I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers for fictional teams are generated randomly; I know when I edit teams and change their city in the pulldown menu the market size is not recalculated.

[Le Grande Orange]

Originally Posted by sbrylski

The rich leagues have way too huge of profits. Some teams have revenue streams that triple their expenses.

This is largely unavoidable for the simple reason that teams in OOTP have far fewer things to spend their money on that do real-world clubs.

In the real world, clubs have to spend money running the stadium, the front office, team operation expenses such as travel and spring training, and its minor league system. Together all these various costs add up to about half of an average club's expenses. Player salaries account for the other half. An average club has expenses that add up to roughly 90%-95% of its revenue, meaning the 5%-10% left over is profit.

It's also worth noting that OOTP does not treat the cities which can host clubs as markets in the sense of how they are in the real world. Peoria, for example, is not likely to ever host an MLB team for the simple reason its population base does not represent enough potential revenue to match the likely expenses. In other words, Peoria is too small an (economic) market to support a major league club. In OOTP, however, any city can support a big league club. (This is something I hope the game's financial model will correct some day.)

[sbrylski]

Originally Posted by Le Grande Orange

This is largely unavoidable for the simple reason that teams in OOTP have far fewer things to spend their money on that do real-world clubs.

In the real world, clubs have to spend money running the stadium, the front office, team operation expenses such as travel and spring training, and its minor league system. Together all these various costs add up to about half of an average club's expenses. Player salaries account for the other half. An average club has expenses that add up to roughly 90%-95% of its revenue, meaning the 5%-10% left over is profit.

Of course. But I don't see why this is a reason I can't calibrate the OOTP finances so that teams don't have all that money left over.

EDIT: Or are you saying that because I have the "entire revenue available" option turned on, that's why I'm having the problem? Would owners set better budgets?