Where'd they all go?

[Simon_Nesbit]

As posted elsewhere, I'm in the middle of trying to set up a massive universe, with a World Championship league (competed by countries), with each country having it's own league (with only players from it's own country)

I haven't found a way to generate the game with zero players, and while i've now got the balance right (# of players per country I want in explore world), when I went to find FA's, it only found 2.

I realised that the teams had players on their roster, so I went through and 'release all, clear roster' (not the draft) - it said they would go to FA, but regardless of which league I am set as (top left side), they only have the 0-12 FA they had on initial creation.

So I can find the players on the explore world pages, but I can't go and sign those players to the respective teams(countries).

Any ideas?

All finances are off, the countries are all set to (international), with 0% foreign, trades on, trades between leagues off.