Miguel mentioned at the start of this thread that we have thought of several ways to play the Amador file(s). Including several ML challenges that Miguel will go into detail about in the coming days. Now of course you're free to play it anyway you like! But as most of us like a bit of background story to add to the immersion we've also come up with a complete League and Cup structure.
So, what is this League structure? We have 13 countries represented in this first option file (well 15, in truth, but Luxembourg and Andorra have one team only so those two teams will enter into another country's League system) and 12 League systems (the two Ireland's are playing as one League). Using an excel file I found online that had a fixture generator and league table, I added a random number formula that I could paste in and 'ran' seasons for each country to generate a bit of History for each League that I think will add to the immersion.
Each Country will have either 1 or 2 Divisions with a 2 up, 2 down format in those Country's with 2. Now, if you intend to play this League structure here comes the optional part. I'm going to take one team in each Division across the Amador world and play out the season for each team. The option of course is whether you just want to play as one team in one Division or two, or several or however many or like me, one in each. That decision is yours. However do remember if you're going to go all in on the experience you will need to come up with a way to decide how the other Division's finish as you won't be playing them out.
On top of this there is a cup tournament that is known as the Amador West Trophy. This involves every single team in the file. A kind of great big Amador FA Cup. More on that later.
The Format:
Amador World Of Football
As mentioned there are 12 Leagues across the Western Federation of Amador. These leagues are as follows...
Amador West League System
Amador Portugal
Amador Espana (2 Divisions)
Amador France (2 Divisions)
Amador Belgique
Amador Suisse
Amador Italia (2 Divisions)
Amador Deutschland (2 Divisions)
Amador Nederland (2 Divisions)
Amador England
Amador Wales
Amador Scotland
Amador All Ireland
They are split in such a way that no league has more than 10 teams. Making a nice maximum of an 18 game season. You can of course also play a League Cup alongside the season if you wish.
At the end of the season those with 2 Divisions will see 2 teams promoted and 2 relegated and the Division 1 winners crowned their country's Champion. Could it be you?
During the season the Amador West Trophy will play out. The format is as follows
Amador West Trophy
The 'FA Cup' equivalent of Amador will involve all 140 teams of the Western Federation. It's a prestigious tournament with a random draw and it's a real honour to win it and claim yourself the Trophy winners. Current Holders are Flevoland from Belgium.
The first round is a preliminary round to enable us to get down to 128 teams. The teams who enter the preliminary round will all come from the Divison 2's across the league as follows...
Amador Espana Div 2
Bottom six of previous season
Amador France Div 2
Bottom four of previous season
Amador Italia Div
2 Bottom six of previous season
Amador Deutschland Div
2 Bottom five of previous season
Amador NederlandDiv 2
Bottom three of previous season
This will give us 24 teams to draw randomly. They will play a one off game, extra time and penalties if necessary, played at the home of the team drawn first (the same format used throughout the tournament).
These 12 winners will then join the other 116 teams to make our 128 teams for the 1st Round of the Amador West Trophy.
These are drawn randomly and will play the same knockout format through to the Final.
The teams who will contend the Preliminary round in the first season are as follows
Amador Espana:
Islas Baleares, Asturias, Navaraa, Extremadura, Cantabria, La Rioja
Amador France:
Hauts-de-France, Nouvelle-Aquitaine, B.Franche-Comte, Andorra La Vella
Amador Italia:
Abruzzo, Sardegna, Umbria, Basilicata, Molise, Valle D'Aosta
Amador Deutschland:
Thuringen, Sachsen-Anhalt, Meck.-Vorpommern, Saarland, Bremen
Amador Nederland:
Drenthe, Flevoland, Zeeland
At the end of the season 32 teams will enter into the following season's Copa Amador. A new cross region tournament that begins next season. This will decide the best team in the Western Federation. It will not be run as a modern day money grabbing Champions League, it will be an old style European Cup format.
The 32 teams are drawn at random and will play a two legged knockout to determine who goes through to the next round. The Final will be a one off match at a neutral venue played to extra time and penalties if required.
Can you win the ultimate Amador prize? A League/West Trophy/Copa Amador Treble?
As future areas of Amador become available the intention is for the winners of each area's Copa Amador to play for the Amador World Trophy, the best team in the Amador World Of Football. Will it be your team?
There's also what I think is a really cool idea I'm toying with to make it a sort of ML experience. My idea is that playing in this league format at the end of every season you could load up your OF into the pesfan editor and age all players by 1 year. Then do a csv export and sort by age.
You could then do any sort of idea you wanted.
An idea for example.
All players that are 45 MUST retire
25% of players between 40 and 45 must retire
10% of players over 35 must retire
Then these players are replaced by a list of players under 25 that I will provide but perhaps at least 18 as of course we can't change their stats in this simple format. (There is a possibility of setting something up to even go that far but for now let's keep it simple) So we want them to be fully developed as they won't evolve stat wise. The other option (thought not as good I don't think as you won't get 'new' players) would be to use the stat sheet of the retiring players, change them to a young age, 20 or so, but randomly mix the players up so they go to different teams.
So, at the end of the season your current team will age by 1 year. Some of them may retire and will be replaced by a random player between 18-25 (perhaps if a keeper's retiring we should make it another keeper)
This means your teams (and the AI's) will constantly evolve in terms of personnel and what sort of players they have.
Then simply load the option file back up and begin the new season. Just a thought on that I don't think you'd be able to 'continue to next season'in the game as I'm not sure it would recognise a new option file - does it keep the one it uses from the first save - not sure on that. Hopefully it would be ok as then you'd have a record of scorers etc. Although I believe it is limited to a certain number of seasons anyway isn't it? Maybe I'll test that out unless any knows?
Next up: The Leagues.