German Mega Patch

[DT33]

Hey all,
I haven't been around for a while but I'm coming back with a bang.

I'm introducing the German Mega Patch!!

This is based on the European Expansion Patch (EEP 2.0) made by SlimOntario2033. At this point I first want to thank him, also for some of his help in the early beginning and I also want to thank everyone else who was involved with that patch back then...as it was the foundation and main inspiration for me to start work on my own patch! Bascially expanding and improving the EEP in the past couple of years...
I also want to thank the people who are behind the RFET, especially paul21ss, which was a big inspiration also. In case you don't know, it covers several tiers of the Romanian league system including plenty of new stadiums for the lower league teams. I wanted to do something similar for Germany!!

Let me explain a few things first. As you may know, the EEP 2.0 does have several German lower leagues, below the 3.Liga. But these are fictitious and do not reflect the actual German league system. While they are still great and can be fun to play, they're just lower league teams thrown together to form a nation-wide 4th league, 5th league and 6th league. But in real life, anything below 3.Liga in Germany is split up in regional leagues. And the lower it goes the more regional it gets. I assume this is the case with most countries but either way, this is how it is in Germany specifically (pre-Corona!):

First you have the 4th tier split up in 5 Regionalligen, consisting of usually 18 teams:

Regionalliga Nord (covering the states of Schleswig-Holstein, Hamburg, Lower Saxony and Bremen)
Regionalliga Nord-Ost (covering the states of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Brandenburg, Berlin, Saxony-Anhalt, Saxony and Thuringia - basically the former GDR/DDR)
Regionalliga West (covering the state of North Rhine-Westphalia)
Regionalliga Südwest (covering the states of Hesse, Rhineland-Palatinate, Saarland and Baden-Württemberg)
Regionalliga Bayern (covering the state of Bavaria)

See this map:

(source: https://www.mappr.co/political-maps/germany-states-map/)

Then you have the 5th tier split up in so called Oberligen, which consists of 14 Oberligen ("upper leagues") made up of 16 to 18 teams.

Oberliga Schleswig-Holstein
Oberliga Hamburg
Oberliga Niedersachsen
Bremen-Liga
Oberliga Nordost Nord
Oberliga Nordost Süd
Oberliga Westfalen
Oberliga Niederrhein
Mittelrheinliga
Hessenliga
Oberliga Rheinland-Pfalz/Saar
Oberliga Baden-Württemberg
Bayernliga Nord
Bayernliga Süd

After that follows the 6th tier with many Landesligen ("state leagues"). I'm not going to list them here, for now. And of course there's also further tiers below that but I'm leaving that out as it is not relevant to this patch.

Now my patch tries to somewhat emulate this system - but in a very simplified manner! (At least for now). This is due to time constraints but also due to the difficulty of the regional aspects with promotion and relegation and a tad bid of stupidity of the system itself (!). I wanted to come up with a solution, so that one could get to enjoy the regional flair in Fifa (meaning many local derbies!) without compromising the actual real-life system too much.

 

[DT33]

Now, let's first take a look at the way the system works in real life:

Each regional league champion gets promoted to 3rd league (3.Liga), the first uniform, nation-wide league in the system (followed by 2. Bundesliga and of course the Bundesliga). And the last 4 teams of the 3rd league get relegated to whatever state/regional association/regional league they belong to. For instance, VfB Lübeck belongs to the Schleswig-Holsteinische Fußballverband (SHFV) (as Lübeck is located in Schleswig-Holstein) and thus would be relegated to Regionalliga Nord. Or take SpVgg Unterhaching: Belongs to Bayerischer Fußball-Verband (BFV) and the state of Bavaria (Unterhaching is basically a suburb of Munich) and thus would be relegated to Regionalliga Bayern.

You may be noticing that something is already off here - 4 teams relegating from 3.Liga but we have 5 champions of 5 regional leagues that are supposed to go up? And surely would deserve to do so? Well, obviously that's not possible while mainting the steady number of 20 teams in the 3rd division. So welcome to the complicated and somewhat ridiculous German league system!

What they did to solve this was that only 3 of the 5 regional leagues get a direct promoted team while two remaining champions would get the 4th slot via a 2-legged play off against each other. 2 regional leagues have a fixed direct slot which are Regionalliga West and Regionalliga Süd (due to the high number of clubs and associations - and traditionally, those two areas are quite strong, having been highly represented in the two Bundesligen for a long time). The other 3 regional leagues get one fixed spot and one via play off - which regional league would have a direct slot and which two would go to play-off has been a matter of rotation.
For instance, this year the 3rd fixed spot goes to Regionalliga Bayern (most likely SpvGG Bayreuth (as Bayern München II has been consistently too far behind)) and the two play-off spots go to Regionalliga Nord and Regionalliga Nordost. I am guessing that this will be VfB Oldenburg vs BFC Dynamo Berlin (though who knows, maybe 1.FC Lok Leipzig will still snatch up the championship coming up from behind, as they still have two rearranged fixtures to play. Carl-Zeiss Jena and VSG Altglienicke are still in the running too...)

As you can see, this system is very unfair and controversial. First of all, each champion of a league deserves to advance, yes? Well, that principle is nixed right there.
And up until a few years ago the sytem even consisted of a complete rotation, so not even one single regional league had a fixed slot! They would all be going into play offs against each other. That was all very dissatisfying and frustrating for the fans and teams of the losing side....financially a disaster also...and while the current system is an improvement it still leaves a lot to be desired.

The major bone of contention now is why the two regional leagues West and Süd get the advantage of fixed slots (though, personally I think the reasoning behind this is tenable) and that we still have the overall problem of a play off - or in other words, the problem still is 5 champions vs 4 slots in the 3. Liga. Pretty much the only reason why we have this problem is because for some reason, several years back when the system was being reformed with the introduction of the 3.Liga, the Bavarian association and the DFB (?) decided that Bavaria should have its own regional league. Whereas previously Bavaria was always part of the overall southern regional league which seemed much more sensible. I mean there just aren't that many strong and traditional teams in Bavaria, even though the quantity itself is quite high!

Luckily for Bavaria, Rainer Koch as the president of the BFV and also then vice president of the DFB (later even the president, but luckily hes has just been ousted!) seemed to have pulled the strings here - with sufficient power and influence to pull this of for Bavaria. The teams there surely didn't mind. I mean don't get me wrong - the Bavarian league does have its own charme but it really lacks enough teams with transregional recognition and history. There are excpetions of course! Either way, that special treatment (Extrawurst ) for Bavaria caused this whole quagmire IMO....since usually you would have only 4 regional leagues and the promotion/relegation problem would not be there in the first place!

And that's exactly where my patch comes in! It nixes the Bavarian league and integrates it into one southern regional league - I just named it "Regionalliga Süd".
The other 3 Regionalligen I pretty much adopted from real life - I only decided to rename the Regionalliga Nordost into Regionalliga Ost.
a) Because there is no "Südwest" anymore, b) "Nordost" kinda implies there is also a "Südost" but that's just not the case (or since when is the Czech Republic (or maybe also Austria) part of Germany?? I think the days of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia are over. ) c) I just don't like the ring of that name "Nordost".... to me it's stupid!
(If there are lots of users here that would really like to stick with the original name I may change it but for now I would advise to just change it yourself (via db manager of CM) if it bothers you. I am using the original logo which says "Nordost" but maybe I'll change that too...)

 

[DT33]

This is where the patch stands right now with the regional leagues:

You may notice here that I made a composite of the two logos of Regionalliga Bayern and Südwest to form this new league.
Original logos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionalliga_Südwest
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regionalliga_Bayern

Pretty good, eh?

Last but not least:

As you can see there are many teams that were already part of the EEP 2.0 but also some new teams that I have added! All team compositions for those leagues is based on the 14/15 season! Really just picking off where the EEP 2.0 was at. You may also be noticing that I'm including the second teams (U 23) of the major teams, just like in real life. The EEP 2.0 didn't have any of those teams except just a couple. I took all those additional II-Teams from the Fifa 16 patch EEP 16-17 (or was it Fifa 17 17-18?? I don't remember). This wasn't easy because the structure of the dbs is a bit different so I couldn't just export and import them. From that patch I also took the teams of FK Pirmasens, KSV Baunatal and Inter Leipzig.

There are some minor differences in the compositions of those leagues, including 3.Liga, because I don't have a couple of those II-Teams available that were playing in Regionalliga 14/15 and I'm not sure if I'm ever going to add them (Eintracht Braunschweig II, FC St.Pauli II) and because I don't want the II-Teams to infiltrate the 3.Liga too much and also not the lower leagues. Because most fans don't like this happening (in real life)! As it takes spots away from many traditional teams and the second teams have been known to trick/fiddle around since they are usually at an advantage moneywise and often get players from the first team (which play Bundesliga or 2.Bundesliga).... There are some limits and regulations but like I said - it is often not fair!

Luckily the German system does not allow for the second teams to advance higher than 3.Liga. Of course I cannot avoid this via the patch or set such a rule here (if this is possible in Fifa 14, please let me know!) but what I can do and what I have done is to take those teams out of Liga 3 (for the beginning) and only placed some in the Regionalligen. And I also reduced their values, in budget as well as ratings. I also lowered the skill values of their players a bit. So this way, chances are lowered that they even get into 3.Liga but it does happen sometimes. But usually they don't perform too well in that league then...

 

[DT33]

For completion's sake, here's what 3.Liga and the two Bundesligen look like for this patch:

This is only a short preview actually as I have added a lot more teams and leagues than those above - I've also been doing a system of Ober- and Landesligen! But in a very simplified manner! (So don't get too excited....it's still pretty cool though.)
More on that later, since I don't want to overhwelm you guys.
I will specifically introduce any new team or new league I added bit by bit in this thread anyway so be patient!

PS: In case you don't have a headache yet but would like to get one, here's a reference for the German league system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_football_league_system

 

[DT33]

For now, what is important to understand and what you may have been asking yourself: How did he pull it off to make the regional relegations? You know, from 3.Liga to the various Regionalligen. (As I mentioned previously with the Lübeck and Unterhaching example) Well, from what I can tell it is just not possible to set up rules/scripts in Fifa 14 that tells it to place the right teams in the right leagues and also constantly adapt (!) the correct number of teams for the various Regionalligen.
I think it may be possible (using the tournament system instead of leagues) to set up regional groups/pots with all the teams from the specific region and let Fifa 14 know to put them there but I just can't see any reliable or possible way to have Fifa play Regionalliga Süd in a certain season for instance with 19 instead of 18 teams, in case two Süd-Teams get relegated from 3.Liga. If anyone knows a way how to do this (using the league system), please let me know!

For now, I have figured a roundabout solution! This is not perfect, it is not ideal, but from what I can see it is the only way to make such a system work without ruining the regional aspect! To me, it's simple but ingenious.

Basically, I set up another 4th German league as a reservoir ("Sammelbecken") that collects all the relegated teams from 3.Liga. I called it simply "4.Liga". This is a parallel, seperate league to the Regionalligen which shows up in the menu and gets simulated. It is not playable. It only serves as a way for the 4 spots in the 3.Liga to get freed up for the promoted teams of the 4 Regionalligen. And also, so that those relegated former 3.Liga teams don't vanish completely (something I actually could have done in Fifa/CM by simply not telling it where to relegate to). And not only that, they actually have the chance of coming back to the 3.Liga by becoming champions and playing a relegation play-off against the 16th placed team in the 3.Liga!! So in total, there are the 4 fixed relegation spots in 3.Liga just as in real life (17-20, for the Regionalligen) plus one possible relegation spot (16, against Liga 4).

The only drawback here is that once you are playing in 3.Liga (or even starting there but that's not really what this patch is for - because again, you cannot relegate down to the actual regional leagues and the patch is rather made for playing lower league teams, to advance higher and higher. Once in 3.Liga it's basically do or die!! Either you at least stay in 3.Liga or it's game over in case you end up on one of the fixed relegation spots. Because the 4th league is just not playable!

(Technically speaking I could make it playable but it would be quite messed up...and it would be hard to become champions to get back into the 3rd league. Because over the seasons the 4th league gets bloated up as more and more relegated teams get collected and it is down to chance which teams Fifa calls up for the slots (I think 24 slots is the max one can set for a league). And in the beginning there are empty slots in that league so if you ended up in 4th league then and you come up against a N/A team (not available) the game crashes. You can't simulate or skip over that! (Unless I'm missing something))

Now you may be asking yourself: What teams are in that 4th league to begin with? Because you do need some teams to fill it up in the first season before any team from 3.Liga can enter it. Luckily, the EEP 2.0 provided the solution! It had a youth league (not playable) consisting of U19 teams of the major teams. Basically III-Teams. I've put them all into 4.Liga! -->

I see two big advantages here:

1.Those teams make a 4th league possible without drawing up any "real" teams from the actual league system (not even II-Teams)
2.All the youth players from those teams remain available for the transfer market which is quite important the longer you play a career
3.All those players actually get playing practice which makes it more beneficial/realistic for the transfer market and league system (in the EEP 2.0 the youth league was not active, at least not in my version)

Now, obviously it is not desirable to have a U19 team pop up in 3.Liga because it won the relegation/promotion play-off against the 16th placed team. But so far, I never had this happen in my simulations because the skill values of those young players are quite low in comparison to the players of the adult 3.Liga teams. And in case you are in the 3.Liga yourself with some team of your choosing you can easily control that the 3.Liga team always wins, by simply reloading a save from before the relegation play-off and simulating until you have the desired result. And of course that way you can also avoid getting relegated yourself, as long as you're only on 16th place and not lower than that. Also, by reloading a pre-play-off save (even several matches back) you can control that, for instance, a former 3rd league team "gets back into business" (simulating and checking the menu, so that they become the champions of Liga 4) instead of an undesirable U19 team or instead of the current 16th placed 3.Liga team. From my simulations I can say that it does happen regularly that for instance a FSV Zwickau or Chemnitzer FC gets back in. You just won't get to see those teams in their appropriate Regionalligen, unfortunately - as I said, regional relegations are not doable from 3.Liga. You will get regional relegation from 4th to 5th tier however (Regionalligen to Oberligen) and from 5th to 6th tier (Oberligen to Landesligen). Again, more on that system later. Of course you can change the composition set-up for the beginning of the leagues in CM yourself, in case you would like to have FSV Zwickau start in Regionalliga Ost for instance. Just make sure to put a different team from there into the 3.Liga as a replacement.

Also, note that the country the 4th league belongs to is set to Switzerland. And also that Regionalliga West is assigned to Austria. I HAD to do it this way (also with the few Ober- and Landesligen) because otherwise the game gets messed up or even crashes. It appears each country has a limit of leagues it can have, for Germany it seems to be 6. Those 6 slots are occupied by the first 3 leagues plus 3 of the regional leagues. Also, of course, I had to replace original Fifa-leagues for all these new German leagues in order for them to be playable. Just like it was the case with the EEP 2.0. So far I've replaced all non-european leagues like Mexico, Chile, USA, South Korea, etc and a couple of less vital European leagues (all of them remain in the menu though and stay part of the European competitions like Euro League and Champions League. Those two competitions I have completely adopted from EEP 2.0, just with a couple of adjustments as far as to how many slots go to what league)

As you can see I really racked my brain about this all to make a workable system. And I'm really proud to say that I accomplished this! My patch does work, at last. It did take me quite some time to figure it all out and tried many different things.....and had to say hello to many many crashes!! (Remember, I also set up Oberligen and then some - but I won't say too much yet! ) I did not get there within a few weeks....as a matter of fact, I've been working on this patch for about two years now. Though it didn't start out this way....in the beginning it was just fixing some things with the EEP 2.0 because even though I enjoyed playing it, there were quite some irks and quirks. It did have a few bugs....and then, the more and more I did (out of necessity), also editing/adding graphics and such and the more I got into editing in general the more this got advanced.....up to the point where I was like: dude, you have to keep fixing and expanding and make a patch out of this! Share it!! So here we are....

 

[DT33]

As for a first release, this will take a while. I first want to introduce the specifics of the patch more, what I have done so far and what am I currently working on. This will happen during the next few weeks and months (hopefully). This patch is quite extensive! To be more specific and in summary -->

What I have done so far:

- Improvements and fixing of bugs in EEP 2.0 -->

* fixed teams that caused crashes (mostly due to formations, e.g. SV Darmstadt, SV Meppen, but also several international teams)

* changed IDs of many of the added players (a lot were assigned low IDs, for instance in the 5000 range - which caused two problems:
serving minifaces of former players of those IDs and also serving the name commentary of some of those former players (so when playing for instance a German 5th league player you'd hear a portuguese player name in-game). This has been fixed for the most part, I can't vouch that I've got them all.)

* changed IDs for some players to their actual Fifa ID (according to sofifa). I haven't checked all players yet, so I may make more re-assignments. It's not that important but the benefit may be that you may be getting a specific player commentary. And it also frees up more non-fifa IDs for other players.

* fixing some team logos (some team logos where mixed up and some German ones were outdated, for instance SC Weiche Flensburg or Würzburger Kickers (see previous screenshots). Also Mainz and Wolfsburg logos had a transparent background instead of a white one. And some were too bright for me such as Stahl Riesa. I may actually have to do more work here when it comes to the brightness but that's not a priority)

* fixed a couple of 3D Wipes

* fixed a few teams in their values. I noticed that there were some teams that always performed unrealistically poor in the simulations, almost always relegating (e.g. Magdeburg, Mannheim) and some performed unrealistically strong, almost always promoting (TSG Neustrelitz or Budissa Bautzen). So I increased or decreased some of the player skill values. But more importantly, I fixed the values in the team settings - for instance, Mannheim and Magdeburg had absurdely low numbers in speed, passing, aggression etc. Once I put this up to realistic levels the teams performed much better in-game!

* fixed the coordinates of some teams. This is important when it comes to in-game sun positions, sun setting times etc. Though of course, one can always change the match time before going into a match.

* Speaking of times, I redid the schedule for 3.Liga to make it match more real life.

* Fixed the German Cup (DFB-Pokal) so that the lower league teams get to play at home (so instead of Eintracht Frankfurt vs VfB Lübeck you now get VfB Lübeck vs Eintracht Frankfurt - just like it is in real life.) This is only for the first round however! I don't know how to set this up in a continuous way - so that the following rounds also have the proper home and away settings. Does anyone know??

* Fixed the generic faces of the German league players. Yes, I went through ALL the players (which was quite a lot) and gave them as much of a realistic look as possible! I think I've become quite good with that. There were many crazy looks in the EEP that did not reflect real life, I guess this was set to randomization.... For instance black or dark colored faces or wild hairdos even though the players did not have such a color or hair.

* Fixed some sleeve lengths of players (several had long sleeves which of course looked ridiculous in summer. And for winter, there's always under-armour). I also fixed the gloves on goalkeepers. Many goalies were missing their gloves.

* Assigned more commentary names to players. There were many players that were missing their commentary name even though the names were part of the audio database. And also there are very similar sounding ones that I would assign.

* Fixed retirement issues. No more 29- or 31-year old players retiring. Or, only very rarely. The retirment age I've set quite high, with a proper percentage.

* Adding or making flags/banners/adboards for German teams that didn't have any yet

* Like already mentioned, I adjusted a couple of slots of how many teams go into the Euro and Champions League from what league. Also, there were some fixed teams there from the Scandinavian countries (which means each season you would get the same teams in the Euro competition) and I changed it to whoever is the actual winner of those leagues (as all those leagues are part of the menu and simulation again)

* fixed a couple of team league assignments. The Airtricity league for instance contained the Bohemians of Prague instead of Bohemians Dublin. And there was something wrong with the Romanian league, like it had Universidad de Chile instead of Universitatea Cluj. Or it was just missing that team, I don't remember exactly.

 

[DT33]

- Additions/new stuff (beyond EEP 2.0) -->

* Adding several new German leagues (playable), such a 4 Regionalligen and 4 Oberligen. Also 4 "Landesligen", but those are not playable and only serve as a substructure/foundation to make the whole system work and as a pool to draw more teams from. More on that later.

* Adding many new teams and players. (Duh!) I will post details on them in the course of this thread.

* Adding/making the stadiums for some of those new teams! I've gotten quite proficient with stadium making over time and I can't emphasize how happy and excited I am about this! It is asctually one of the main reasons that drove me to make a patch out of this and release it. Because to me, it is just not really satisfying when you're playing against a club but not in their stadium.! It's like not really playing against them but just some random team....granted, the kits, adboards, flags etc may be specific but if the stadium is generic it definitely lacks something then! Like it lacks soul....
And obviously, a lot of these lower league teams, basically any German team below 2.Bundesliga, does not have any stadiums available for Fifa. I'm changing this! I will post details on the stadiums bit by bit, do be patient. There's still some detail work I have to do on some of those stadiums and so far I have only covered a few. I think in total about 15...But I keep making stadiums as I go along!

* On top of the DFB-Pokal I also added regional cups for all 4 regions! Yep, because just playing league and if you're lucky, DFB Pokal, isn't enough, is it.?
Now they were already two cups part of the EEP 2.0, the Niederrhein-Pokal and an East German one. But I redid these as mine have more rounds and teams to go with. And also, Niederrhein is just part of the West region and my cups cover the entire regions. More on that later!

* Adding good quality minifaces to ALL new players and teams (either as exports from Fifa Manager or such or by making them completely myself (over time, I've learned how to make clean cut-outs!). The lower-league it gets the less one can find good pictures, let alone ready MFs...so that has been a bit of a challenge sometimes. But I'm mostly happy with the results.

* Taking good care to make matching generic faces for all new players.

* Making real faces for some players, especially lower league. You know, like making stadiums and that patch stuff isn't enouigh....Call me insane!
I usually ended up doing these for players in the teams I played career with, but alos the transfers I acquired the higher up I went. For instance: Michael Bemben (free agent), Marcus Mann (Wehen Wiesbaden), Noël Alexandre Mendy (Rostock), Manfred Starke (Rostock + Namibia), Marc Lerandy (Saarbrücken), Felix Borja (Chivas USA, formerly Mainz 05 and Colombia), Marwin Studtrucker (RW Essen), Djimi Traore (Seattle Sounders) and many others! These are not super duper faces, but decent enough. Obviously I just don't have the time to take care of every little detail nor has it been that important to me when I'm doing all those other things as well.....I am happy with most of the faces however. I will try to post some of them later and also more about my face making method.

* Adding real faces from all over the web (whatever I could find. Now I'm not sure how much of that is ok or not - so I may or may not include them in a patch release. Problem is I really don't know anymore which faces were already part of the EEP and which ones I added from elsewhere. I'm pretty sure most of them were freely available. I guess if anyone comes across a face they have a problem with they can just let us know and I'll remove it? )

* I don't remember what gameplay I added quite some time back....but it is an improvement IMO, at least for the lower leagues and with the slider settings I figured over time. (For instance, low speed) I may post more details on those later.

* Better result simulation! Some months ago I've implemented the settings by Gonira, as posted here (http://www.soccergaming.com/index.php?threads/improving-simulation-results-and-league-tables.184782/) and I have to say, WOW! This really yields a lot more variety in match results with sometimes outlandish scores, but that is exactly reflective of real life! And the overall results of where teams end up in the table at the end of a season is very diverse too and makes for nice fluctuations! Previously, you would pretty much get the same teams always promoting or relegatin but not with Gonira's settings.....I was really pleasantly suprised to see many different teams end up in 3.Liga for instance and sometimes I'd would see teams perform well that actually have lower values and vice versa...it's like having surprise teams just as in real life. And further more, the DFB-Pokal results are much better now this way too! Many upsets! And in almost every season that I would simulate there would always be a different winner, sometimes even from 2.Bundesliga.! Gonira's settings alone make for a great patch here, definitely adding more excitement!

* Adding more national teams for internatioal friendlies and competitions. Thanks to the forum, I made this to work without having teams show up twice on an intrernational match day and withouth crashing the game throughout the seasons. I wanted more national teams in-game so that more players (from lower leagues) get called up internationally. For instance, Manfred Starke for Namibia. For now I've focused mostly on more African teams since I have a preference for African football and because you can actually find a lot of African players in the lower leagues in Germany that may be part of their national team or get a call here or there (Togo, Liberia, Sierre Leone etc). Also Asia like Lebanon.

* Adding a couple of new European clubs

* Adding referees to the new German leagues. Almost every German league has its own refeeres, with some cross-sectioning/overlapping (not sure of the proper word here). Those referees are ficititious however, but have realistic names and looks. I made sure to have a variety of strictness with these referees for each league.

* Adding specific goalnets to all new teams, also the EEP teams. Nothing fancy however, usually just stripes in the team colors. (Often the case in real life too)

* Making flags for the new teams

* Making banners for the new teams

* Making kits for the new teams (I have a vast collection of kits from PES and Fifa Manager series which can serve as a template for Fifa kits. "Converting" them is not that hard but still time-consuming.)

* Making adboards for the new teams

---> Regarding these last 4 graphics: There is a lot missing here for now, it's quite some work to complete and "fill up" all these new teams. Obviously, I don't have all the time in the world just for myself. So maybe somebody would like to help in these compartments? This is probably the only areas where I would be asking for help or rather, wouldn't mind it. Becasue I am able to do these myself and enjoy it too, it's just that time is an issue. Especially with me making stadium which should probably be my priority. Tied to that, adboards I would probably rather still like to do myself because I'm kinda picky here. I use mostly photo texture for them, at least with lower league teams which almost always have static adboards - I very much prefer it that way and most often I have them in the stadium file itself instead of using the actual Fifa adboard system. But for the rest - kits, flags and banners - I'm not too picky. But these graphics should be based on real life too, please - don't just do some generic/fantasy ones. Which teams needs what you will see through the course of this thread..

 

[DT33]

So - onto some of the new teams!


VfR Nemünster (Regionalliga Nord)

Some general things to note here:
I've taken good care of the player skills, as much as that's possible. Now obviously I don't know most of these lower league players, let alone have watched them in a live match...but I am using the Fifa Manager series as a reference and the Germany expansion databases that exist for it. Luckily a lot of these players are available and have been entered there - though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of those stats. But they look sensible and all an all, it gives a sense of a golden thread. Players that I couldn't find in those databases (I adopt mostly from season 15-16 and 14-15 - sometimes I have to resort to 13-14 or the up-to-date online editor database (https://editor.fm-zocker.net/) which isn't ideal), I would just guess. But my guessing isn't random...I consider the stats of the other players that are available for the same team (and positions) and look at pictures as well as height, weight, player and career stats from transfermarkt or fupa. Then I make educated guesses.

Btw, the players and their values already existing in the lower league teams of the EEP I did not touch (yet). Except where I just lowered them in the cases mentioned earlier. From the looks of it, they seem somewhat different to the FM stats I'm using.....they may be the result of randomization.? I may bother to "fix" those so it's all "uniform" across the board. But that's time comsuming again and for now, I want to stay focused on adding and completing the new teams. In my simulations the old teams seemed to work rather smoothly with the new teams already anyway.

Speaking of transfermarkt, that is where I mostly take the team and squad data from. Including line-ups. And some player stats like height, birthdate and positions. Even though the patch technically starts with season 14/15, I often end up adopting the 15/16 squad or a mixture between that and 14/15. Why? Two reasons:

a) as mentioned earlier, I often have only 15/16 data available from the FM database and I rather take that then make a guessing for 14/15 - but let's face it, there's hardly going to be a difference in player skills between two seasons
b) I simply often like the 15/16 squad better, player wise. This is a matter of personal preference of course.

I am making sure that there aren't any doubles due to this season variety. I always check the players when adding a new team. And if the player already exists I gauge whether it's more sensible to leave him in the old team or put him in the new team. Usually I leave him in the old one.

 

[DT33]

Players/Minifaces added for VfR Neumünster (Regionalliga Nord):

 

[King AJ]

It would take most probably 2 months for me read all these. Anyway, all the best for the patch.

 

[DT33]

 

[DT33]

It would take most probably 2 months for me read all these. Anyway, all the best for the patch.

Whoa, you really felt the need to post this after about 3 minutes of me starting to post about the patch? Guess what, I'm investing a lot of time too! Well, thanks for being lazy and so encouraging!
(And if you're not really interested in German stuff/patches, why didn't you just move on?)

 

[DT33]

 

[DT33]

Apologies for posting these in such a manner....I'll try to come up with a more effective/summarizing way. But I'll finish this team now and it is somewhat important for me that you get a detailed glimpse of my work first.

 

[DT33]

 

[DT33]

 

[DT33]

 

[DT33]

Currently, VfR Neumünster plays in the Landesliga Schleswig-Holstein Mitte. (6th tier)

 

[DT33]

SSV Jeddeloh II:

Currently this club is in the same league and coached by famous goalie Oliver Reck, formerly Werder Bremen and Schalke. Also had a couple of national caps...

Stats and values for the players are complete, but no minifaces yet.

Btw, In case you're wondering what the II means: no, this is not a second team! lol Jeddeloh II is a really small town in Lower Saxony close to Oldenburg (and somewhat close to Bremen). Actually only a district (of Edewecht), and as you can guess there's also a district called Jeddeloh I.....I always find this funny because in that writing style it confuses people to think this is the second team of "Jeddeloh". It had me fooled at first too!

 

[DT33]

SC Wiedenbrück (Regionalliga West)

Currently this club is in the same league, performing better than expected (upper mid-field).

You may be noticing that I'm also assigning matching balls to the clubs. Usually matching the colors of the team or logo. This is pretty cool in-game IMO! I love the feeling of really knowing you're playing against a specific club, with as many specifics as possible (goalnet, banners, the stadium of course (if available) etc. Now those balls are not reflective of real life, except for the fact (from what I know) that any league below 3.Liga does not have their own ball. I mean no specific league ball. (?) So hence I took the liberty to have specific team balls below 3.Liga. If anyone doesn't like this just feel free to change the balls via CM...