Historical Sim evolution question

[FakeNewsJnr]

Is there a way to run a historical game (starting for e.g. in 1901) in which the league evolves and expands but differently to real life? I'd like to run a 1901-2020 (and beyond) simulation without taking control of any team or act as commissioner except when fixing the opening settings.

After seeing something on the Reddit I created a fictional game and copied the base template of the league from a historical 1901 game (so I didn't have to manually add teams). As I wanted the league to evolve I left on Automatic Expansion but left pretty much everything else as it was from the 1901 template with yearly financial and strategy adjustment left on. As it was a fictional game no teams had financials at the start so I gave them fictional financials. The DH rule was changed by each league within 20 years (as I had hoped the evolution would do) but when the league expanded twice each team sucked for a year and then became inactive and dropped out of the league (I only found them through the evolution report and seeing them in the teams' history index!).

Why is this happening, and is there a way for me to not have to micromanage every expansion?

[Brad K]

Its realistic that some expansion teams will not be successful.

[FakeNewsJnr]

Absolutely, but 4 teams in 20 years all failing to win 60 games then folding after one year is unlikely due only to RNG! Can expansions fold in game normally? I hadn't realised that!

[Charlie Hough]

There are options in the dynamic league evolution settings to turn off certain types of events, but I don't recall whether there is an option to block teams from folding. If there isn't an option, it should be added as a feature for future versions of OOTP. Teams folded in the early days of what became MLB, but I doubt this would have ever been allowed to happen after 1900. When teams such as the Boston Braves, Philadelphia Athletics, Seattle Pilots and others encountered financial issues or attendance problems, they were sold and/or moved. We certainly wouldn't see teams folded or contracted today. The Players' Association would never agree to that, and if a city lost its team through contraction and MLB refused to allow a new team or ownership, we might see another challenge to baseball's anti-trust exemption.

In the meantime, if there isn't an option to stop teams from folding in your dynamic evolution settings, you can always review team finances toward the end of each season and make changes in commissioner mode to prevent a possible collapse.

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by FakeNewsJnr

Absolutely, but 4 teams in 20 years all failing to win 60 games then folding after one year is unlikely due only to RNG! Can expansions fold in game normally? I hadn't realised that!

All makes sense to me for the era you're playing. I would object to a lot of franchise failures after owning a franchise became a license to print money and only the dumbest people could fail. Basically the era of big TV money, ballparks paid for by government, the sponsorships "official xyz of MLB" etc.

[Tiger Fan]

If I am understanding you correctly you say each expansion team folded after 1 season. If so, do you have historical minor leagues included or automatically expand league checked in the historical tab of league setup? If you do then that is likely why as historical will follow real league alignments with minors enabled.

Meaning that teams that did not exist would not be around when you advanced to a new season. So what might be happening is the fictional evolution is creating expansion teams but the historical progression is deleting them at the end of the season because they did not exist in real life.

So by having all historical options all enabled it does things that happened in real life like move the Browns to Baltimore, but the same process that checks for real major league evolution I believe immediately after the World Series is completed is deleting the expansion teams that were added by the fictional world evolution option.

It won't stop the expansion teams from being created because that happens after the check for team setup for the current year, but it will delete them after one season because they should not be there when following historical progression.

EDIT-
The work around is uncheck the option (I believe it may be called automatically expand league) in the historical tab. This will allow those fictional expansion teams to continue to exist but the trade-off is if you want the Browns, Braves, Dodgers, Giants etc to move in the 1950s you need to do it yourself manually.

[FakeNewsJnr]

Thank you, that has done the trick! Thankfully there are two separate settings for league evolution, one random, one historical, and you were correct in identifying that the historical one overrides any previous changes made. If I want Minors I'll have to add them in later but for the moment I think I'll just do the first thirty years of the 20thC and see what comes up.

Thanks again for your help

[FakeNewsJnr]

Might you also know how give historical rookies fictional ratings as they come into the game? Of course I like that they're play the same positions but I'd love Rogers Hornsby to not be the GOAT (again, it's happened multiple times) and for Ty Cobb to not win 4 MVPs. I want guys who I have never even heard of have their version of the Cy Young/ Hank Aaron awards!

[Tiger Fan]

Originally Posted by FakeNewsJnr

Might you also know how give historical rookies fictional ratings as they come into the game? Of course I like that they're play the same positions but I'd love Rogers Hornsby to not be the GOAT (again, it's happened multiple times) and for Ty Cobb to not win 4 MVPs. I want guys who I have never even heard of have their version of the Cy Young/ Hank Aaron awards!

Well, Hornsby and Cobb - and everyone else - have their ratings based on historical stats so in almost all cases they will be pretty good players and while not perfect OOTP has improved it's accuracy in recreating historical player careers over the many versions of the game.

That being said you could get some more randomness in career progression by ensuring you uncheck the options to recalculate ratings (if memory serves me correct they are in the historical tab and have 1, 3 and 5 years as the choices). By disabling that the players will still have the same initial ratings when they first join the league but the OOTP player development engine takes over on career development and it will have some players either be a lot better or worse than they were in real life. I suppose you could also increase the talent change randomness setting (again, just going from memory but I believe it is an option on the general settings tab in the game) which might amplify the chances for players to have a career much different from real life.

Playing with minor leagues enabled and these settings will also change things up a lot more if you want some players who never made the majors in real life suddenly becoming stars in your league. However, note if you enable real minor league progression you will have the problem you first posted about as enabling the minor league players and teams to import I believe will force the teams to follow real life progression- meaning the fictional expansion teams you wanted will be deleted after the first year again.

Hope that helps a bit towards getting what you want.

[FakeNewsJnr]

Yep absolutely, that's v helpful. I think I had that turned on. In the same section one can base their ratings on neutralized stats so that might also change things from real life a bit more.

I've added a fictional Triple A league and turned off 'automatically expand league' in historical so the only evolution should be the random stuff from 'dynamically evolve league' in options. Hopefully Babe Ruth doesn't win 11 MVPs and two CYs as he just did in my latest test run!

P.S. Lou Gehrig is an absolute God as well...

[Brad K]

Originally Posted by FakeNewsJnr

Yep absolutely, that's v helpful. I think I had that turned on. In the same section one can base their ratings on neutralized stats so that might also change things from real life a bit more.

Using neutralized stats with park factors when a player is playing for his historical team gives a greater chance of close to real life performance.

[ALB123]

FakeNewsJnr: Have you ever thought of creating a Historical league instead of a fictional league, enabling the OOTP development engine (no recalc), increasing the Talent Change Randomness from default 100 to 150 or higher? This is the way I play and I think it's awesome.

I started in 1981 as the Yankees GM. Every player on every team was exactly as it was in real-life on opening day 1981, but from the first pitch thrown in my Historical league, an entirely new history is being written. I don't use historical rookies/lineups or anything like that. I want my new baseball world to be unique in those regards.

Each MLB team will have the real minor league teams they had in real life with the real prospects just like in 1981. There will be a first-year player draft every December 15th and it will have all of the real players who were in the draft year after year, but because it's a new history being written, players can end up anywhere based on the draft order.

When 1981 started all of the players in my universe were rated legitimately based on real-life stats/performance, however, not every real-life Hall of Famer will have a Hall of Fame career in this universe. They might get injured and never fully recover. Maybe that real-life HoF pitcher ends up on the worst team in this new universe, never gets run support, and ends up with not so impressive statistics. Anything is possible.

For the most part, each player will initially begin with as much current skill and potential as they did in real life, so the odds are that Babe Ruth is going to be a very good to great ballplayer, but what if he never got traded to the Yankees in your universe? In my current universe, for example, Chipper Jones was the #1 draft pick in 1989. By 1991, he was written off by the team who drafted him. His ratings were in the toilet and he sat on the free-agent list, unsigned for a couple of weeks before I grabbed him. I put a ton of work in him and while he'll never be like the real-life Chipper Jones, he is now the starting 3B for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1995 and doing well. I traded him last season.

I think it's so much fun to see the real player's names but on completely different teams. A lot of players in my universe play at the same exact level as they did in real-life...So, it's not like every big name stinks in my world and vice-versa...

[nebben]

Originally Posted by ALB123

FakeNewsJnr: Have you ever thought of creating a Historical league instead of a fictional league, enabling the OOTP development engine (no recalc), increasing the Talent Change Randomness from default 100 to 150 or higher? This is the way I play and I think it's awesome.

I started in 1981 as the Yankees GM. Every player on every team was exactly as it was in real-life on opening day 1981, but from the first pitch thrown in my Historical league, an entirely new history is being written. I don't use historical rookies/lineups or anything like that. I want my new baseball world to be unique in those regards.

Each MLB team will have the real minor league teams they had in real life with the real prospects just like in 1981. There will be a first-year player draft every December 15th and it will have all of the real players who were in the draft year after year, but because it's a new history being written, players can end up anywhere based on the draft order.

When 1981 started all of the players in my universe were rated legitimately based on real-life stats/performance, however, not every real-life Hall of Famer will have a Hall of Fame career in this universe. They might get injured and never fully recover. Maybe that real-life HoF pitcher ends up on the worst team in this new universe, never gets run support, and ends up with not so impressive statistics. Anything is possible.

For the most part, each player will initially begin with as much current skill and potential as they did in real life, so the odds are that Babe Ruth is going to be a very good to great ballplayer, but what if he never got traded to the Yankees in your universe? In my current universe, for example, Chipper Jones was the #1 draft pick in 1989. By 1991, he was written off by the team who drafted him. His ratings were in the toilet and he sat on the free-agent list, unsigned for a couple of weeks before I grabbed him. I put a ton of work in him and while he'll never be like the real-life Chipper Jones, he is now the starting 3B for the Toronto Blue Jays in 1995 and doing well. I traded him last season.

I think it's so much fun to see the real player's names but on completely different teams. A lot of players in my universe play at the same exact level as they did in real-life...So, it's not like every big name stinks in my world and vice-versa...

Do you allow fictional players in your game, such as international amateurs, or do you try to keep them out? I'm always interested in how others run their games.

[ALB123]

Originally Posted by nebben

Do you allow fictional players in your game, such as international amateurs, or do you try to keep them out? I'm always interested in how others run their games.

When I originally created this ootp world of mine, it was 100% only the MLB. After 5 or 6 seasons I decided to bring in the Japanese, Korean & Mexican leagues. It's my first saved game ever, so I wanted to experiment.

After a year with those leagues, I created my own California Independent league. That league has been awesome because a lot of aging/aged MLB players end up in that league and many struggling MLB players end up on one of my California League teams. It's awesome to see some players turn it around and then end up back on an MLB team.

To answer your question, I do allow fictional players, like International amateurs, to enter the MLB. I don't allow direct trading between the MLB and the other leagues.

I have made many mistakes with this little world of mine. The next time I do this, I am going to make sure that I have a full plan before beginning. By that, I mean, whatever leagues are going to be in my world will all be created at the same time. There will be no adding leagues 5-10 years into the saved game.

I will also make a spreadsheet first so that I can have a single view of the overall layout of my world. Most importantly, I want to have all financials set to particular percentages of the MLB and I want to have player creation modifiers and other such things set properly from the jump.

One error I made with my current OOTP world is that I allowed trading between the Japanese, Korean & Mexican leagues the very first season that they were added and a ton of Japanese players, particularly Closers, ended up in the MLB. There were so many 4 to 5 star Closers, every team wanted one of them, even if they wouldn't be a closer in the MLB.