FM24 Chielen's Total Belgian Lower League Overhaul

Also available on Steam Workshop:  https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3133808976 

Logopack available on Steam Workshop: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3142597025 

A full rework of the Belgian Lower League Pyramid, containing all teams and B-teams, all competitions in the Belgian Pyramid (up to level 9 (4th provincial), including regional cups and youth leagues) with a dynamic and regional relegation and promotion system which has been streamlined and simplified, the complete Belgian Cup/Croky Cup starting from the first round, awards for all competitions, new media sources, new names for newgens, all places in Belgium and data updates to Belgium in general for more accuracy.

CAUTION: USE AT YOUR OWN RISK

* This is a very complex database with many moving parts, while everything is tested to the extent of my ability to do so, be aware that unexpected issues may arise that might break your save.

NEW IN THIS VERSION:

* Updated to 2023-2024 competitions and teams

* Coordinates were added for all stadiums

* Better use of data available in the base-game

* Refined selection rules in national divisions to be closer to the base game

* Rebalanced finances further

* Further improved stability

* Lots of smaller fixes and additions

AUGUST 2024 UPDATE:

* Changed lower leagues to be amateur instead of semi-pro

* Added promotion playoffs

* U21 and U18 cups now work and were greatly expanded with new cup competitions.

* Improved the system for both scheduling matches and putting teams in the right division. The season should reset properly every year now.

* Added trial days for free players.

* Improved the pre-season period so that friendly matches are now more evenly spread in the time before the season.

* Moved the youth intake day, the first intakes should happen in summer (the game starts with the highest reputation teams)

* Solved an issue where an A-team and its B-team playing on the same level could be put in the same division. Teams playing in the same stadium will no longer be put in the same division of a competition.

* Solved an issue with award names not showing properly.

SETUP:

* Put the file in this folder if you download manually (on windows): My Documents > Sports Interactive > Football Manager 2024> editor data

* Use advanced setup when starting the save, make sure you have the file checked for loading.

* In the advanced setup, check 'add players to playable teams' to fill the new lower league teams.

* The game MUST be played with the lowest possible Belgian Division (Vierde Provinciale/Quatrième Provinciale (BEL)) playable for everything to work properly.

* It is advised to edit the 'loaded' players (dropdown under 'Approximate Player Count' ==> 'Advanced') and add all categories of Belgian Players.

* The game will need some time to generate players for the lower league teams, after which you can play the game normally.

* English as ‘data language’ is recommended. Divisions and awards get a name in their local language (Dutch or French) or in both languages, where that makes sense.

RULES:

The highest three division levels are more or less like in real life. Below that level, teams play two rounds (home and away) and the champion at the end is promoted. Only on the fifth level (3rd division), two of four divisions have two promoted teams instead. The system is set up as such that teams will be grouped by region automatically each season, the system will also relegate more or less teams per region depending on the number of teams from that region that are relegated from the divisions above. This means that the number of teams relegated from each division can fluctuate, all teams in the relegation zone are thus at risk of relegation. Each province has a regional cup, teams that get far enough in these regional cups, qualify for the national cup (Croky Cup) in the next season.

As of now, the composition of the lower provincial levels is dynamic, when setting up the game for the first time, different teams will play in series A, B, C… of the same province every time.

Sometimes B-teams get force-relegated as their A-team is relegated from a level above. In some scenario’s the dynamic relegation does not account for this properly. To compensate for this, an extra team from the same province from the level below will be added to the division, to keep everything stable and in working order.

When the system gets into trouble, it will correct itself by moving teams as necessary.

ISSUES:

Some compromises between gameplay and realism are necessary to make this database possible (and fun!). If you do encounter an issue, let me know, I’ll see if I can do anything with it for potential future updates.

* For most new competitions, no honours/trophies are registered for the winning team. The teams are however considered to have won the competition.

* Creating a large number of B-teams in the same region might cause issues.

* B-teams created through board request are not added to the lowest competition level of their region.

* Teams in Derde Afdeling are not always set to a competition when the season resets.

* Qualification for the Croky Cup does not seem to take into account teams qualifying through the regional cups

CREDITS:

By Chielen

Many thanks to Krlenjuska, Endrieq, D.B. and Ryan

VERSION HISTORY:

* 7/1/2024: Release FM24-version

* 11/1/2024: Update substitution rules to better reflect real life rules (5 from 9 in top two levels, 5 from 7 on third level, 4 from 4 in all lower levels), minor fixes

* 14/8/2024: Big update

* 14/8/2024: Hotfix

* 16/8/2024: Fixed an issue with restrictions on B-team promotions and a rare occurrence of a bug that could cause competitions to not be reset