Building a Europe Mod: Step by Step

[Bonzi777]

I know this has been tried (and in an instance or two, done very well) in the past, but with a new version of the game out (with some applicable new features that weren't available before), I want to try to build out a complete Mod to have a more robust, complete (ish) European Baseball Scene in OOTP 18. So in this thread I'm going to go step-by-step and try to create a more accurate, complete European baseball scene.

Here's a (every changing and not-complete) list of goals:

1) Modify the existing Italian and Dutch Leagues.
-The following things need changing:
i) Schedules
ii) Stadium Sizes, Names and Financials, League Reputation:
-In the past when I've played, the teams are too rich and/or the league has slightly too much prestige. The leagues gets overrun with washed up American and Asian players in a way that doesn't happen in real life.
iii)Create a minor league for Italy and a relegation league for the Netherlands as exists IRL.

2) Build out other leagues
-There is good amateur to semi-pro baseball played in (for a start), the Czech Republic, Germany, Spain, Belgium, France and Austria. Create accurate team names, structures and league schedules. If possible, add some of the top players to their current teams (full rosters is too heavy of a lift, for me, at least)

3) Once there are 8 leagues, create an association for the Confederation of European Baseball, complete with an end of year tournament.

I'm going to be learning about European baseball as I go here, so if there are any experts on the board (or people who can help translate different language websites) all help is welcome.

[Bonzi777]

First update:

The real life IBL 2017 Schedule. The existing schedule in OOTP only has them for 16 games, played more or less consecutively. The league settings says 28 games, but even that is incorrect.

The real life IBL schedule (this year at least) is 34 games. Each weekend there are 3 Friday-Saturday 2 game series (all games at 8:30) and 2 teams play a Saturday Double Header. The schedule is unbalanced. File is attached.

[WillyW3]

Hey Bonzi, have a chat with Eriq and maybe a collaboration could be in the works. His CEB has great potential.

[eriqjaffe]

One thing I've learned going down the rabbit hole of European baseball is that there is precious little information out there, especially when it comes to things like park and financial information. Those problems are compounded the further down the ladder you go.

Ultimately it's why I drew the real/fictional line of my CEB quickstarts where I did.

[Bonzi777]

Originally Posted by eriqjaffe

One thing I've learned going down the rabbit hole of European baseball is that there is precious little information out there, especially when it comes to things like park and financial information. Those problems are compounded the further down the ladder you go.

Ultimately it's why I drew the real/fictional line of my CEB quickstarts where I did.

As I've been doing my research, I've had a little bit of luck with foreign language wikipedia articles run through google translate.

[Bonzi777]

Can somebody help me out with something here? I'm trying to decide the best way to model this. Eriq, you've probably come across this before.

If you have two leagues in the same country, neither of which have a draft. I want players to more or less start in the league with less reputation and then filter up to the better league, that will happen somewhat naturally obvious, but my question is, should the players be created by the lower league or the higher one?

[jpeters1734]

Originally Posted by Bonzi777

Can somebody help me out with something here? I'm trying to decide the best way to model this. Eriq, you've probably come across this before.

If you have two leagues in the same country, neither of which have a draft. I want players to more or less start in the league with less reputation and then filter up to the better league, that will happen somewhat naturally obvious, but my question is, should the players be created by the lower league or the higher one?

I guess it depends on how you want them to move up. the way I do it is I have IAFA and discoveries up to the max for all the leagues. The lower leagues have a shorter number of years to FA and also have shorter max contracts. That way the higher leagues develop their own players, and the stars of the lower leagues will move up via FA.

I'm very interested in what you're doing as I love the thought of a robust Euro system

[Bonzi777]

So it's been a while since I posted, but I haven't been idle. I have a complete, real teams, real players real(ish) finances template for the top-level German Bundesliga.

Problem is I've never done this before so I don't know how to post it. Can someone help?

[gdspd]

Originally Posted by Bonzi777

So it's been a while since I posted, but I haven't been idle. I have a complete, real teams, real players real(ish) finances template for the top-level German Bundesliga.

Problem is I've never done this before so I don't know how to post it. Can someone help?

I'm not sure how to with with a template, but you could just make a quickstart out of it (load the game up, File -> Quickstart Games -> Save Current Game as Quickstart), zip the quickstart folder (found in your ootp directory under Quickstarts, then upload it to Dropbox or Google Drive or something.

[Bonzi777]

Here is the link to the quickstart version

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4...zA3ZXRGRGNmZzg

I'm pretty proud of this, I think it rivals the detail and accuracy of the IBL and HH leagues that are already in the game.

What it has:
The full 15 team (8 South-7 North) German Bundesliga 1.
Real Rosters***
Real Schedule
Real Playoff Format
Real Team Colors (would recommend using it with) eriqjaffe's logo, hat and uniform files http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...finland&page=3)
Real (ish) Stat modeling- the statlines should look pretty similar to real life.

Notes:
There's a couple of things about the league that were impossible to model.

1) Teams are technically allowed to use a DH, but in many instances the pitchers are also among the teams best hitters so most teams do not take advantage of the DH rule, so I turned it off. You can turn it on if you want.

2) Along that same line, there are a lot of what we would call "2-way players" in the German league. Guys who both pitch regularly and play in the field and hit. I gave all of those guys both their hitting and their pitching attributes, but I had to assign them a primary position. If a guy was one of the teams primary starting pitchers, I made him a pitcher. If he was an occasional reliever, I made him a hitter and replaced him on the pitching staff with a replacement level fictional pitcher (most teams only use 5 or 6 total pitchers, so losing those guys to the other side of the ball would have crippled their staffs).

3)The real-life rules only cap how many foreign players can be on the field at one time and differentiate between EU foreign players and non-EU foreign players. Obviously the game doesn't allow that distinction, so I just had to pick a number that allowed for the most realistic roster creation and occasionally give some players from other EU countries dual-citizenship so the real-life players would all fit on the roster.

[nutt]

Originally Posted by Bonzi777

Here is the link to the quickstart version

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B4...zA3ZXRGRGNmZzg

I'm pretty proud of this, I think it rivals the detail and accuracy of the IBL and HH leagues that are already in the game.

What it has:
The full 15 team (8 South-7 North) German Bundesliga 1.
Real Rosters***
Real Schedule
Real Playoff Format
Real Team Colors (would recommend using it with) eriqjaffe's logo, hat and uniform files http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...finland&page=3)
Real (ish) Stat modeling- the statlines should look pretty similar to real life.

Notes:
There's a couple of things about the league that were impossible to model.

1) Teams are technically allowed to use a DH, but in many instances the pitchers are also among the teams best hitters so most teams do not take advantage of the DH rule, so I turned it off. You can turn it on if you want.

2) Along that same line, there are a lot of what we would call "2-way players" in the German league. Guys who both pitch regularly and play in the field and hit. I gave all of those guys both their hitting and their pitching attributes, but I had to assign them a primary position. If a guy was one of the teams primary starting pitchers, I made him a pitcher. If he was an occasional reliever, I made him a hitter and replaced him on the pitching staff with a replacement level fictional pitcher (most teams only use 5 or 6 total pitchers, so losing those guys to the other side of the ball would have crippled their staffs).

3)The real-life rules only cap how many foreign players can be on the field at one time and differentiate between EU foreign players and non-EU foreign players. Obviously the game doesn't allow that distinction, so I just had to pick a number that allowed for the most realistic roster creation and occasionally give some players from other EU countries dual-citizenship so the real-life players would all fit on the roster.

Absolutely Amazing, sir!!!

Any duplicates from the OOTP database to be weary of? I think maybe 3-5 actual players in the real world database are playing in the German league.

[Bonzi777]

Originally Posted by nutt

Absolutely Amazing, sir!!!

Any duplicates from the OOTP database to be weary of? I think maybe 3-5 actual players in the real world database are playing in the German league.

There are at least a couple. Maik Ehmke is in some major league team's minor league system in the game, but he's on Regensburg this year. There's also a handful of players from the Australian league who play their summer ball in Germany. Daniel Lamb-Hunt, Wilson Norman Lee and Mitch Nilsson are their names. I think that's everybody, but there may be one or two more.

[Bonzi777]

I'm working on Spain and France now. Spain should be done relatively shortly. Spain, France and Belgium have very accessible stats available on-line to model the players abilities (more so than Germany, actually), but there's not as much biographical info available on the players. I can usually find their birthdays but things like where they were born and whether they're right handed or left handed are harder to come by, so I might have to randomize it.

[darkcloud4579]

Awesome! Thanks for doing this!

[Bonzi777]

I'm finishing up Spain now (all the players are created just need to tweak the financials etc) but now I'm thinking I might have gone a little bit too low on the overall talent level in the German league. Has anyone played it and do they have any thoughts?

[nutt]

What happened to this? Was looking for the Spanish and French leagues.

[Bonzi777]

Originally Posted by nutt

What happened to this? Was looking for the Spanish and French leagues.

Got promoted at work and didn't have as much time to work on it, then figured out a problem with the system I was using to calculate ratings based on foreign stats. Going to try to pick it back up when the new version comes out.