Question about starting in 1871

[gomets6091]

Hey all,

Something I've been trying to do for about 2 years now is to basically replay ML history only with fictional players. I like to start with the NA in 1871 and move on through the founding of the NL, the AA, the AL, etc. The problem I've had in the past is that I'm too anal about certain things, so I really try to be as accurate as possible with things like expansion and stadiums and stuff like that, and it always becomes too tedious, so I've never made it past 1915.

Now, with the new game having support for leagues starting in 1871, with automatic expansion and the correct stadiums and stuff like that, I figured it would be really easy to do this. My plan is to import a historic league in 1871 and just delete the real players and fill teams with fictional players.

Unfortunately, right off the bat I've noticed that the game sets the league up in the familiar 2 subleagues format, which is obviously not how it was in 1871. My main question for all of you is: will this pose a problem? My plan is to just move the 4 teams from one of the subleagues into the other, delete the second subleague, and continue like this until 1875. Then, for 1876, I'll move all the "expansion" teams into a new league, and delete the old teams and the National Association league. Does anyone know if this will work, or if deleting one of the subleagues will cause problems with the games, or anything like that?

[Kelric]

I think it would be easier for you to create the teams and leagues yourself until 1901, simply importing real players every year. After that, baseball becomes a lot easier for OOTP to develop properly.

[silentrob]

Having done some of this myself, I can concur with Kelric. There is far too much franchise movement and player movement for the game to handle it all in the early years. So you'll probably have to arrange most things for yourself early on. Unfortunately, that goes for schedules as well I believe. Especially if you want ALL the teams of the 1870s, which sometimes means you have an odd number of teams in the league. I think someone worked on a schedule for the 1800s, but it was with the 8 team, 2 league format. Could be wrong about that, however.

[fhomess]

I don't stop by this forum too regularly, but my Baseball Saga dynasty (link in sig) is attempting to do just what you're asking about. The game is released with stuff you can use to just simulate through the pre-1900 era of baseball, but it's not accurate to real life. The amount of team movement, odd schedules, and various leagues makes it imposible for OOTP to replicate in its current form.

For that reason, I've been doing this manually. I've released National Association "as-played" schedules in the mods forum, which I entered in the game manually. I'm handling all expansion/contraction myself.

I can tell you that if you delete a team or a league from the game, the players get released as free agents to sign with any team. The team/league history all remains. That said, if you delete a league, the only place to find that league again is in your game's history pages. There's no problem with database corruption or losing that history completely, though, so that's good news for you.

One thing I'm currently in the process of doing is moving from the National Association to the National League in 1876. Instead of moving the teams to the NL, I'm actually deleting the previous teams and creating new NL teams. I don't want the team history from the NA being incorporated into the NL. For example, the Boston Red Stockings joined the NL, but if you look at historical baseball statistical records, the team's time in the NA aren't included. Before deleting the NA team, I went in and edited each player to be on the NL counterpart. That was easier than letting them get released as FA's and trying to figure out which players needed to go back on a team in the NL.

You can read more about the process and issues I ran into with the NA in my dynasty thread.

[fhomess]

Originally Posted by fhomess

Before deleting the NA team, I went in and edited each player to be on the NL counterpart. That was easier than letting them get released as FA's and trying to figure out which players needed to go back on a team in the NL.

One thing I didn't catch when I was doing this: the game populates teams with fictional players upon league creation (I set it to no inaugural draft). I had to go and release all these new players in order to keep the player pool from the NA that I had.

[ashantewarrier]

Originally Posted by gomets6091

Hey all,

Something I've been trying to do for about 2 years now is to basically replay ML history only with fictional players. I like to start with the NA in 1871 and move on through the founding of the NL, the AA, the AL, etc. The problem I've had in the past is that I'm too anal about certain things, so I really try to be as accurate as possible with things like expansion and stadiums and stuff like that, and it always becomes too tedious, so I've never made it past 1915.

Now, with the new game having support for leagues starting in 1871, with automatic expansion and the correct stadiums and stuff like that, I figured it would be really easy to do this. My plan is to import a historic league in 1871 and just delete the real players and fill teams with fictional players.

Unfortunately, right off the bat I've noticed that the game sets the league up in the familiar 2 subleagues format, which is obviously not how it was in 1871. My main question for all of you is: will this pose a problem? My plan is to just move the 4 teams from one of the subleagues into the other, delete the second subleague, and continue like this until 1875. Then, for 1876, I'll move all the "expansion" teams into a new league, and delete the old teams and the National Association league. Does anyone know if this will work, or if deleting one of the subleagues will cause problems with the games, or anything like that?

Your setup works for me which is what I have done in the past myself.