[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.