OOTP Developments Forums - View Single Post - Questions about historical league settings

Charlie Hough · 04-25-2013, 01:35 AM

I'm going to recommend some settings, but first I want to mention some real life possibilities that nearly played out. During the time period you're targeting for your sim, the Cardinals nearly became the first club to move from St. Louis. The Cardinals were struggling for a time, while the Browns were still enjoying their success from their run during the WWII era.

Interests in Houston and Milwaukee were pursuing a purchase of the Cardinals. So if you succeed in helping the Browns to keep their attendance up and outperform the local competition, then it would make the most sense to move the Cardinals to Houston or Milwaukee.

The Browns nearly moved to Los Angeles and Milwaukee themselves, but the American League owners had it in for Bill Veeck and blocked the moves. Eventually they approved the sale of the team and its move to Baltimore.

As far as the settings go, I recommend that you turn off scouting, use 3-year recalc, turn off development, choose to assign rookies to their real life teams, set AI trading frequency to very low, set trading difficulty to hard or very hard, and make sure to use the reserve clause rules so there is no free agency.

This will help keep your league rosters close to real life while allowing for enough player movement that you can make trades as the Browns GM. You will have a decided advantage over the AI because you can see each player's future historical stats, whereas the AI can only see potential, which can be based on remaining years of career but can still be misleading. The AI can't 'see' that there are only two remaining years in a player's historical career vs. five years, so it can see the player's potential but not the future duration or arc of the player's remaining career.

Unfortunately, this makes it easy to dominate the AI in historical leagues unless you use development or you are very disciplined and don't look at real life statistics for players.

By the way, allowing OOTP to automatically expand the league will also allow relocation. So if you don't want the Browns to relocate in 1954, you'll have to turn this off or manually override the change after it takes place. And keep in mind that these changes take place during the off-season, so be prepared ahead of time.

04-25-2013, 01:35 AM	#2
Charlie Hough Hall Of Famer Join Date: May 2006 Posts: 3,644	I'm going to recommend some settings, but first I want to mention some real life possibilities that nearly played out. During the time period you're targeting for your sim, the Cardinals nearly became the first club to move from St. Louis. The Cardinals were struggling for a time, while the Browns were still enjoying their success from their run during the WWII era. Interests in Houston and Milwaukee were pursuing a purchase of the Cardinals. So if you succeed in helping the Browns to keep their attendance up and outperform the local competition, then it would make the most sense to move the Cardinals to Houston or Milwaukee. The Browns nearly moved to Los Angeles and Milwaukee themselves, but the American League owners had it in for Bill Veeck and blocked the moves. Eventually they approved the sale of the team and its move to Baltimore. As far as the settings go, I recommend that you turn off scouting, use 3-year recalc, turn off development, choose to assign rookies to their real life teams, set AI trading frequency to very low, set trading difficulty to hard or very hard, and make sure to use the reserve clause rules so there is no free agency. This will help keep your league rosters close to real life while allowing for enough player movement that you can make trades as the Browns GM. You will have a decided advantage over the AI because you can see each player's future historical stats, whereas the AI can only see potential, which can be based on remaining years of career but can still be misleading. The AI can't 'see' that there are only two remaining years in a player's historical career vs. five years, so it can see the player's potential but not the future duration or arc of the player's remaining career. Unfortunately, this makes it easy to dominate the AI in historical leagues unless you use development or you are very disciplined and don't look at real life statistics for players. By the way, allowing OOTP to automatically expand the league will also allow relocation. So if you don't want the Browns to relocate in 1954, you'll have to turn this off or manually override the change after it takes place. And keep in mind that these changes take place during the off-season, so be prepared ahead of time.