UPDATE: 1871 Quickstart available requiring only minor change by user to have 1871 rookies import properly in March 1871, then 1872 rookies in December.
http://www.jnshmoo.us/OOTP/RMY_1871_QuickStart.zip
Many thanks to jnshmoo for the hosting.
Quickstart Instructions:
Game loads on 1st March 1871, with the draft ready to go immediately - 95 historical 1871 debutants. Rosters are full of fairly poor scrubs, to avoid roster errors.
User will need to do 2 things, the day after the draft:
- Amend DB path to one which their setup/installation.
- Change 'Draft Date' to (suggested) 31st December 1871. This allows import of 1872 rookies in time for the 1872 season.
----
OK, I think I've figured a few things out. Certainly, I've got a league which started in 1871 without a phantom 1870, imports historical rookies for the correct season and works from the Arod/Garlon DB. Currently simmed from 1871 to 1900. After a small amount of work at the start, that's been completely auto, with the draft appearing to work correctly every year.
If you start a league in 1871
with preseason already underway, the rookie draft imports 1872 rookies, not 1871 rookies. This is why we've had workarounds which need a 'dummy' 1870 season to be simmed first.
Another way of doing it occurred to me: before an early-season 1871 draft, amend the debut years in the DB to 1872 (taking care not to also import actual 1872 rookies). This works, to a point: the point where the game crashes, just as it completes the import for the 'draft pool announcement'. The cause of this crash turns out to be because the 1871 rookies (now amended to debut in 1872, though in game this means March 1871), have 1871 history. So, we delete the 1871 history from the database files. The draft works!
After the draft, change the draft date in 'Rules' to 31st December 1871. Replace the amended database csv files with the originals. Sim 1871. Draft 1872 rookies on 31st December 1871, continue...
Another thing I've found over many attempts is that amending the league structure at the 'create game' stage often just breaks historical drafts completely. I can't pin it down, but I've made identical options setups with a default fictional (2 leagues, 2 divisions, x 4 teams) and simmed straight to a working draft, whereas just about any amendment to the structure breaks it. However, if you start the game with the default 16-team fictional league, you then seem to be able to make significant changes to structure (e.g. delete a division from each league) without hurting the historical draft.
The amendments to the DB required to get the first 2 drafts working in the same year are too much to do manually. I did them with a vba script, run from Excel though not using Excel itself. I can probably provide this, so that you run a script prior to the 1st draft and a second script following it, which make all changes required, without actually permanently amending your original DB files. These run in a few seconds. Alternatively, copies of the amended csv files and instructions on when to switch them with the originals, and back.