Creating a Promotion/Relegation League

[jDaveMc1984]

Hey All!

I've been playing OOTP since 13 and each year I try to devise a way to create a Promotion and Relegation league. I'm wondering if there's a super easy way to do this. Here's what I normally do:

Create four separate leagues (all with minors).
After each simulation I manually promote and relegate.
Sometimes I'll create an association for a cup-like playoff at the end.

Although I'm wondering if there's a template out there, and also if I'd be better setting the league reputation for each level? Any thoughts?

[kackle85]

I was just about to post something like this. Hoping to see if you get a good answer.

[Fyrestorm3]

League Reputation is a must to stop big-name free agents from going to the lower level leagues. Messing around with the finances to make lower level leagues have less money to spend is also recommended. You might just want to use Reserve Clause Era rules to eliminate free agency in general. I would also disable trading between leagues, but that's personal preference. There's no template out there that I'm aware of, but that doesn't mean one doesn't exist.

[progen]

Take a look at this league. You may want to contact the commish and see how he does it.

United States Baseball Association | An OOTP 15 Promotion/Relegation League

Hey all, I am the commissioner of the United States Baseball Association. We run a three-league promotion/relegation system consisting of thirty-two teams. We have an extremely active core group of about 10-15 managers at all levels who are on AIM. We have very lively and engaged discussions. We also have like 10 more guys who export and respond to their emails on a regular basis. League participation is great. Every year is overwhelmingly better than the last. The sky is the limit for this league. We regularly have 5+ of 10 clubs at each level in contention for a championship or promotion.

Features unique to the league include:

--In-season League Cup (think FA Cup in English football)
--MTWTF sim, 1 game series per sim
--Games are LIVE SIM. 3 games per team a day. You can watch your team play.
--108 game season, each team plays the other over four series (2h, 2a)
--Promotion and relegation playoffs at the end of the season
--Cash-based financial system
--GMs have complete discretion over most revenue flows
--Player loans
--Draft pick trading
--Regular podcasts and articles by various members of the league
--Non-PL Teams allowed to relocate after 1 year in the league if they choose.
--International Baseball every other off season
World Cup every 4 years teams drawn into random groups
Confederations Cups in the intermediate years.

[chucksabr]

I handle the promotion and relegation on my league manually, on the first day of the offseason, so that trades don't happen before a club move takes place.

I am just now moving my dynasty from 14 to 16 so this is the first time I am using League Reputation. My dynasty is in Britain, so I don't consider the First Division a "10". I give it a 9; Second Division is 8; Third Division is 7. I don't want to make the rep settings too far apart because I don't want a promoted team to be way out of its depth, or a relegated team to dominate and crush the lower level.

I use different financials, including different attendances and ticket prices and scouting/development budgets, to help establish the proficiencies of the teams at the different levels.

I do allow trading among the different divisions, but because there are different financials at each league level, it tends to self-correct by sending the better players up rather than down.

I don't have any minor leagues. I use reserve rosters, and the automatic creation of free agents each offseason. I use different PCMs at different levels so the free agents created at the D3 level are lesser than at the D2 level, which are lesser than at the D1 level. I am considering doing reserve leagues as a minor league at some point, though, like maybe a U league (U21, U19, something like that). But I also want reserve players to play and establish records in reserve leagues, too, so I may not do the U league exactly like that. We'll see.

I do not allow play among the divisions, although I do have them grouped into an association. My dream is to develop a League Cup tournament that intersperses with the regular league schedule, i.e., where the League breaks for a week to do League Cup play and then goes back to the regualr season schedule. The main thing that is stopping me so far is being able to keep records for the Cup tourney separate from the regular season and separate from playoffs. I could use Exhibition to play the tourney, but again, it keeps no records. I also want injuries and suspensions to carry over from the regular season to the Cup tourney and back again.

What else can I tell you? Take a look at my dynasty to see how it plays out (links below).

[dward1]

I have 3 leagues. Reputation is set at 10, 6, and 3. the PCM for the players entering the drafts are set at 1, .9, and .85. The top league makes about 1.5x as much revenue from media contracts and the second league and the second league is the same (1.5x more) to the 3rd league.

It is set up this way to make a clear difference between the leagues, so the best players all cluster in the best league (though every once in a while a very good player will drop down in search of a payday) and that it is very hard to move up and establish your team in a higher league. In 12 seasons I have had 1 team move from the 2nd league to the 1st and settle in as a seemingly permanent member while 2 teams have done the same from the 3rd to the 2nd. In my world, market size is crucial to bringing in revenue so bigger teams have a better shot at climbing through the leagues.

I allow trading between leagues and for players to be posted (which doesn't really work as I would hope) but do not allow lower leagues players to be purchased by the top league, though it is something I am considering.

I have an in-season Cup between all 3 leagues with random matchups. League 3 is 31-137 against League 1 and 60-79 vs League 2. League 2 is 64-132 against the top league. I haven't kept track but the leagues are getting more even as the years run on after the original draft funneled all the best players to the top leagues.

[Rain King]

Can you elaborate on posting not working how you hoped? That is a feature I have never used and am curious about it.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by Rain King

Can you elaborate on posting not working how you hoped? That is a feature I have never used and am curious about it.

I was hoping it would mainly be used for teams in lower leagues to sell players to bigger leagues and teams for sums that would make a difference to them. instead mainly players from the big leagues are posted, for sums that are of no big difference. For example, one of the worst teams in my top league sold their best pitcher who was under team control for 2 more seasons for a price that was well below what he deserved per season. also a team from a lower league bought him. just didn't make sense why the team would post such a key player for such a low price

[The Wolf]

Might be your evaluation settings. Check the box for not ratings only and try 0/67/22/11 or 10/60/20/10. That should stop that behavior.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by The Wolf

Might be your evaluation settings. Check the box for not ratings only and try 0/67/22/11 or 10/60/20/10. That should stop that behavior.

why do you think its the ratings? I've always run a 11/56/22/11 evaluation for the AI.

[greenrebellion]

It really depends on what type of league you want to create. Do you want all leagues to be on relatively equal footing? Or do you want teams to have a clear advantage upon reaching the upper leagues? If you want the latter, than you should use some mix of the league reputation settings, player creation modifiers and financial settings in order to manipulate the leagues and create clear advantages for upper tier teams.

For the promotion / relegation league I run, we keep the three tiers on equal footing and just allow GM skill to determine where the chips may fall. I had looked at setting up a single player promotion / relegation type concept but since the AI isn't really programmed to think in this manner, felt it would be a league structure best suited for the online realm. Promotion / relegation online leagues have really taken off in the past year or two, so there are several options if you end up delving into the online world.

[The Wolf]

Originally Posted by dward1

why do you think its the ratings? I've always run a 11/56/22/11 evaluation for the AI.

I wrote that it MIGHT be. If you're at 11/56/22/11, that's not it. Keep looking!

[chucksabr]

I use the default of 20/60/15/5. What is the practical advantage of using 11/56/22/11?

[Trebro]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I use the default of 20/60/15/5. What is the practical advantage of using 11/56/22/11?

I found that taking rating to "0" means that veterans aren't cast to the side nearly as quickly as when ratings are factored in. When I'm God-mode simming, nothing drives me crazier than seeing a 32 year old with 1500 hits and a .280 career average failing to get signed to a new team, because that would NEVER happen in real life.

OOTP still lets that occur now and again--because of the way salary demands don't come down fast enough and how some players in bidding wars get insane deals--but it's a lot better with ratings at "0."

At least in my opinion. That was a Wolf suggestion, and I've used it ever since.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I use the default of 20/60/15/5. What is the practical advantage of using 11/56/22/11?

I like boosting old seasons a bit because I have shorter seasons than the standard 162.

[ludosc]

The best one I've built was in '15.

Lvl 1- 20 teams
Lvl 2- 20 teams
Lvl 3- 40 teams (2 leagues)
Lvl 4- 80 teams (4 leagues)
Lvl 5- 160 teams (8 leagues)

Teams played a 76 game schedule (2 H/2 A vs each team) with games on Th, F, Sa, Su.

Had a cup tournament with all Lvl 1-4 teams and a handful of Lvl 5. Used associations Lvl 3 and down to have promotion playoffs. Had different financial and player quality settings for each level.

Setting up the league, I created a spreadsheet with the top 320 cities in the US & Canada in population and that's how I ranked them. I also have longitude & latitude info to realign regional leagues as needed.

No minor leagues just reserve rosters.

Made it through 3 seasons before a hard drive crash wiped everything out. I may rebuild it for '16 but it took a long time to setup.

[professor ape]

Good morning,

I've been away from the game for a couple of years but have been tracking the forum over that time. The last versioin that I played regularly was 13. I'm traditionally a fictional league player and was always interested in creating a promotion/relegation league.

The advice about the settings in the thread have been very helpful but I am hoping to take a step back about the basic setup of the league. I'm thinking of setting up three levels of 14 teams. My assumption is that I should set up the three leagues as an association but I'm not sure how to best handle player creation and drafting.

It seems logical that all three leagues would be working with the same universe of players but I'm not sure if there is a practial way to make it work effectively. Can I have the top league perform a draft first (maybe 10-15 rounds) followed by a similar draft by the second level and finally the third? The teams at all levels would then fill in with all of the undrafted players.

I'm sure that I'll have a load of additional questions as I put this together.

[wildcatrevival]

I have a massive global setup involving around 400 teams including league pyramids in US, Mexico, Japan, Korea, Australia, Netherlands, Italy, Britain, and France/Belgium and single leagues in Puerto Rico, Dominican, Venezuela, Colombia, Central America, Taiwan, China, Philippines, Pacific Islands, Spain, Germany, Central Europe, Slavic Countries, Sweden, Greece/Turkey, and Eastern Europe.

Of course, it sims very slowly and I generally try to avoid simming long periods at once. I have also disabled some of the space consuming features like FaceGen. I keep up with some of the history on a spreadsheet, as well as tracking international rankings using simplified ELO ratings.

I use league associations to run cup-like tournaments- American Cup, Asian Cup, EuroCup, Copa Libertadores, etc.

I have all the schedules set up for common off-days throughout the season, so that a Champions League and secondary "Super Cup" can run concurrent with domestic leagues. Of course, I must schedule these manually as I go along. I also maintain a "Euroleague" which provides top European teams with additional competition during the season

Tips I have learned:
1) keep a traditional league going to fall back on when you get frustrated that your workarounds are so tedious
2) one way to differentiate between leagues is to make attendance a higher percentage of their income and have the better leagues play more games
example: top-flight US plays 90 domestic games, while Sweden only plays 18 domestic games. thus Swedish teams are essentially semi-pro, though they have the opportunity for more competitions if they are successful in the EuroCup, Euroleague, and Champions League/Super Cup
3) I have recently discovered that international free agents are made available to all leagues with this enabled, so you can adjust the related budgets and the top leagues will get the best amateurs
4) I use reserve rosters, simming minors would further slow down my simulation
5) In some situations, I am treating divisions as separate leagues. For instance, I really only have four European leagues, but they are divided into divisions that do not play each other (a German division, Swedish division, etc.) Though this limits some differentiation options, it does help with the simulation times. My US pyramid is five levels spread through three leagues.
6) with all the extra playoffs and tournaments, the season runs very long and the offseason and preseason run into each other. this means that I need to manually do awards or else they may get cut off by the new preseason. it also means that some free agents haven't chosen a team when the new season begins. this is something I have just learned to accept as normal in my universe. the new league reputation seems to help this problem as it helps the free agents differentiate between offers.

[dward1]

Originally Posted by professor ape

Good morning,

I've been away from the game for a couple of years but have been tracking the forum over that time. The last versioin that I played regularly was 13. I'm traditionally a fictional league player and was always interested in creating a promotion/relegation league.

The advice about the settings in the thread have been very helpful but I am hoping to take a step back about the basic setup of the league. I'm thinking of setting up three levels of 14 teams. My assumption is that I should set up the three leagues as an association but I'm not sure how to best handle player creation and drafting.

It seems logical that all three leagues would be working with the same universe of players but I'm not sure if there is a practial way to make it work effectively. Can I have the top league perform a draft first (maybe 10-15 rounds) followed by a similar draft by the second level and finally the third? The teams at all levels would then fill in with all of the undrafted players.

I'm sure that I'll have a load of additional questions as I put this together.

this is the most logical way to do it but leads to too sharp of a falloff in talent between the leagues I think.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by dward1

this is the most logical way to do it but leads to too sharp of a falloff in talent between the leagues I think.

That would be my fear so I may go for a limited draft of something like five rounds. But I'm not sure if I can prevent the higher league from immediately signing the free agents before the next level down can have their draft the next day.