The Practical Effect of Dynamically Evolving League Options on Fictional Leagues?

[chucksabr]

I am going to launch a completely fictional league playing in foreign lands starting in the 1800s. I am wondering about the effect dynamically evolving league options will have on it.

I assume these options are related to changes made in real-world American baseball? So, for example, if I choose "More/Less offense", will the offense evolve to reflect the same deadball and liveball periods during the same years the Majors experienced them? I think this might be true, because I have it enabled and am up to 1923 on my league's dry run, and I see offense spiked in 1893, 1911 and 1920, just like in the majors.

If I were to turn this off, would it have the effect of run scoring evolving up and down on its own, creating hitters eras and pitchers eras? Or would it basically stay flat, with random spikes for individual teams?

Same with the business aspects like schedule length, roster size, options year, FA and arb minimum service, etc. If I keep these unchecked, will the game ignore these issues entirely and maintain the universe as it is in its first year through eternity, or will it employ and modify changes in these within the game during seasons of its own choosing?

How about the manual evolution option under League > History > {any option below} > League Evolution? It allows you to add things yourself, but it doesn't provide a menu of what types of evolutionary things will affect play--it provides only a date to enter and a free-form description box. How will the game know how to respond to your description properly?

Lastly, for those of you with extensive fictional league experience, what are your recommendations as to which if any of these settings to enable?

[chucksabr]

Oh no-o-o-o ... I'm falling off the first page ...

[olivertheorem]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I assume these options are related to changes made in real-world American baseball? So, for example, if I choose "More/Less offense", will the offense evolve to reflect the same deadball and liveball periods during the same years the Majors experienced them? I think this might be true, because I have it enabled and am up to 1923 on my league's dry run, and I see offense spiked in 1893, 1911 and 1920, just like in the majors.

If I were to turn this off, would it have the effect of run scoring evolving up and down on its own, creating hitters eras and pitchers eras? Or would it basically stay flat, with random spikes for individual teams?

The second one is what it does. You would get a news story along the lines of the mound being raised/lowered or the like, which would be followed by a general decrease/increase in scoring.

Same with the business aspects like schedule length, roster size, options year, FA and arb minimum service, etc. If I keep these unchecked, will the game ignore these issues entirely and maintain the universe as it is in its first year through eternity, or will it employ and modify changes in these within the game during seasons of its own choosing?

If you leave those unchecked, the game will not change from from their initial settings. If you check them, there is a random chance that they will change from year to year. I believe the changes are announced on either the day after the postseason ends or on January 1.

How about the manual evolution option under League > History > {any option below} > League Evolution? It allows you to add things yourself, but it doesn't provide a menu of what types of evolutionary things will affect play--it provides only a date to enter and a free-form description box. How will the game know how to respond to your description properly?

I am REALLY not sure on this one. Maybe it makes your settings match the year?

Lastly, for those of you with extensive fictional league experience, what are your recommendations as to which if any of these settings to enable?

And finally, this is for someone else to answer as I don't play fictional that much.

[Bluenoser]

Enable Automatic Evolution of League = Any of the events that are enabled, can occur at any random time in your league, and not necessarily at the same time they did historically, such as mound raise/lower, offense spike, etc etc.

Progressing Options - Historical Year (below evolution)

Enabling these will allow your fictional historical league to evolve along the lines as real baseball did. You won't see many HR's in the deadball era, then you'll see more in the 20's. The progressing options keep things pretty close to real life.


So the difference is - Automatic Evolution is random and can occur at any time.

Progressing will follow real evolution pretty closely.

[Bluenoser]

Can't and wouldn't make a recommendation on Automatic Evolution. Some like it, some don't. It's personal taste really. Lot's of people get pi$$ed when they spend a lot of time locating and setting up teams only to have the game suddenly move or rename a team.

If you like sudden surprises in your evolving world, you might like some or all of the options.

If you like to control how your league evolves, leave it off and make changes yourself when you want them to occur, or allow them to occur as they did irl.

Remember - it's your game, play it your way.

[Bluenoser]

For progressing, that's also personal preference.

90% of my fictional leagues are historical. Sometimes I leave them disabled because I want my league to always model the deadball era. Other times I might want to model the 60's. Sometimes I like to follow real evolution and enable everything.

Best to experiment and find what gives you the most enjoyment.

Remember - it's your game, play it your way.

[chucksabr]

Originally Posted by Bluenoser

Can't and wouldn't make a recommendation on Automatic Evolution. Some like it, some don't. It's personal taste really. Lot's of people get pi$$ed when they spend a lot of time locating and setting up teams only to have the game suddenly move or rename a team.

If you like sudden surprises in your evolving world, you might like some or all of the options.

If you like to control how your league evolves, leave it off and make changes yourself when you want them to occur, or allow them to occur as they did irl.

Remember - it's your game, play it your way.

I can play it my way only if I understand how things work.

I would like my league to have these things happen randomly throughout its history, not at a prescribed time as dictated by real-life evolution. Based on what you've said, that would be automatic evolution of league? Is that correct? If so, does that mean there could conceivable be a pitcher's era in the 30s and a hitters' era in the 60s, if that's what AI chooses?

[Fyrestorm3]

Originally Posted by olivertheorem

I am REALLY not sure on this one. Maybe it makes your settings match the year?

The manual entry for league evolution is for if you do the evolution yourself. It does not affect the game at all; it's just a log. If you, say, change a team's nickname manually, it will not appear in this log automatically; you will have to add it. Automatic evolution will cause events to appear on this page, but nothing else will. All it is is a summary.

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I would like my league to have these things happen randomly throughout its history, not at a prescribed time as dictated by real-life evolution. Based on what you've said, that would be automatic evolution of league? Is that correct? If so, does that mean there could conceivable be a pitcher's era in the 30s and a hitters' era in the 60s, if that's what AI chooses?

Yes on all counts.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by chucksabr

I can play it my way only if I understand how things work.

I would like my league to have these things happen randomly throughout its history, not at a prescribed time as dictated by real-life evolution. Based on what you've said, that would be automatic evolution of league? Is that correct? If so, does that mean there could conceivable be a pitcher's era in the 30s and a hitters' era in the 60s, if that's what AI chooses?

You'll never know how it works, none of us do. Markus doesn't share code. .

Yes, automatic evolution is what you want.

Enjoy

[Brummer's_Stealing_Home!]

I have a dynamically evolving league, and am not far enough in it to know how well I like the offense/defense aspects. . . I suspect that I will like it.

As for the business aspects, I'm pretty meh on them. A couple of DL changes from 15 days to 17 days and then to 24 days over the course of 7 seasons was more annoying than interesting. Arbitration eligibility got dropped from 3 years to 2 years also. Expansion 10 seasons into the league was unanticipated, but it fit into my plans - instead of taking the "worst" team after simming that 10 season pre-history as I had planned, I just took one of the expansion teams. Even with that, I would have probably preferred to put them in different divisions, but that's small beer. All of this happened in the first ten years of the league's existence, mind you.

I would get pretty annoyed going from a 162 game schedule to a 165 game schedule too, although I've never had it happen.

I was unaware of the ability to turn things on or off on a case-by-case basis, but I wish that I had. My advice would be to limit the categories of change by turning off those things that you would not want to change. For me, things like season length would be a bugaboo, given the difficulty in comparing records and the like, and now that we have expanded once, I would also put expansion on the 'no' list. DL length changes are kinda dumb, too, IMHO and feel artificial. Ditto some of the more detail-y details of the CBA. Your mileage may vary.

It would be nice to have the annual changes be a yes/no decision that you could make as the Commissioner, if just to winnow out some of the more ridiculous and/or harmful ones.

[Bluenoser]

Originally Posted by Brummer's_Stealing_Home!

I have a dynamically evolving league, and am not far enough in it to know how well I like the offense/defense aspects. . . I suspect that I will like it.

As for the business aspects, I'm pretty meh on them. A couple of DL changes from 15 days to 17 days and then to 24 days over the course of 7 seasons was more annoying than interesting. Arbitration eligibility got dropped from 3 years to 2 years also. Expansion 10 seasons into the league was unanticipated, but it fit into my plans - instead of taking the "worst" team after simming that 10 season pre-history as I had planned, I just took one of the expansion teams. Even with that, I would have probably preferred to put them in different divisions, but that's small beer. All of this happened in the first ten years of the league's existence, mind you.

I would get pretty annoyed going from a 162 game schedule to a 165 game schedule too, although I've never had it happen.

I was unaware of the ability to turn things on or off on a case-by-case basis, but I wish that I had. My advice would be to limit the categories of change by turning off those things that you would not want to change. For me, things like season length would be a bugaboo, given the difficulty in comparing records and the like, and now that we have expanded once, I would also put expansion on the 'no' list. DL length changes are kinda dumb, too, IMHO and feel artificial. Ditto some of the more detail-y details of the CBA. Your mileage may vary.

It would be nice to have the annual changes be a yes/no decision that you could make as the Commissioner, if just to winnow out some of the more ridiculous and/or harmful ones.

That option is already in the game - it's the ability to disable any or all automatic evolution features and do them manually.

[Fyrestorm3]

In general, I usually leave Automatic Evolution on, but only for VERY specific things - more/less offense/defense and team relocation, and then maybe one or two others. Having the DL length or arbitration change is not something that I'd want to happen.

By the by, for anyone using Automatic Evolution - BE EXTREMELY CAREFUL if you let it change the schedule length! I recommend going into your league right now and disabling the automatic schedule length changing. But if you really want it, pay careful attention. And if/when the schedule does change, find a schedule on the Mods forum that fits and load it in yourself. OOTP does NOT handle generating a new schedule length very well; you will likely end up with a schedule that requires Interleague yet has Interleague turned off, or something to that effect, and some teams will wind up playing 6 more games than everyone else. It happens quite often.

[chucksabr]

My strategy will be to allow them to change only on-field stuff.

[Matt Arnold]

I keep them all checked. Kinda like the randomness involved in the game.

Then if I don't like things, I do every now and then change things around manually. So I was gearing up for expansion, and it hasn't evolved in my league in the last 20 years, so I just did it manually.