Best Ways To Add Fictional Expansion to Historical Sims

[korme]

Hey guys,

Wondering if you all had any insights. My idea yesterday was to create a historical sim with a couple of additional expansion teams along the way. For instance, I was in 1911 and added two new teams to the AL, with plans to add two more to the NL in 1912.

Well, 1912 came and both teams got subtracted. Duh, it's just pulling historical data and realizing the alignment doesn't match up.

Is there a feasible way for me to do this, other than turning off automatic expansion and having to manually add real expansion, minors, and everything else along the way?

[korme]

I also tried to run a search for this topic but couldn't come up with anything fruitful.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by korme

Hey guys,

Wondering if you all had any insights. My idea yesterday was to create a historical sim with a couple of additional expansion teams along the way. For instance, I was in 1911 and added two new teams to the AL, with plans to add two more to the NL in 1912.

Well, 1912 came and both teams got subtracted. Duh, it's just pulling historical data and realizing the alignment doesn't match up.

Is there a feasible way for me to do this, other than turning off automatic expansion and having to manually add real expansion, minors, and everything else along the way?

Others will come on that have actually done this in practice but essentially you want to edit the Teams (and if real minors, Teams Minors, I believe) csv files in the game to trick it into seeing the expansion teams. You are correct that in the auto expansion enabled it is not seeing your new team in the next year and so removes it, it is also seeing the A's move, and the Orioles become the Orioles and move from St. Louis and the Angels appear in the early 60's. And the Indians rename. All this is on a csv file it is referencing. Layer in the teams when you want them (and keep them there in the csv going forward) and I think you can trick the AI into conforming to that.

Search for mods that did this in that section too. Like the way to open the game and get to that file was popular when the Guardians name first happened.

The game is a sandbox at heart, so there's generally a way to do this kind of stuff.

[korme]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Others will come on that have actually done this in practice but essentially you want to edit the Teams (and if real minors, Teams Minors, I believe) csv files in the game to trick it into seeing the expansion teams. You are correct that in the auto expansion enabled it is not seeing your new team in the next year and so removes it, it is also seeing the A's move, and the Orioles become the Orioles and move from St. Louis and the Angels appear in the early 60's. And the Indians rename. All this is on a csv file it is referencing. Layer in the teams when you want them (and keep them there in the csv going forward) and I think you can trick the AI into conforming to that.

Search for mods that did this in that section too. Like the way to open the game and get to that file was popular when the Guardians name first happened.

The game is a sandbox at heart, so there's generally a way to do this kind of stuff.

Cool, I'll take a look at the csv's after work today. I figured there might be a way to manipulate some files, I've just never thought to do it with OOTP. Thanks

[Pelican]

And take it from me the CSV files are easy to find and edit, even for those of us unfamiliar with the process. I've been able to accomplish just what you are aiming to do, year to year. It's been more of a challenge to "persuade" the game that the Pacific Coast League became a major league after World War II. Lots of additional settings.