Germany Lower Leagues

Last update: 02 Nov 2009
Version: 1.0

Author's statement

All German divisions down to the 5th level (Oberliga) are playable.
The structure slightly deviates from real life because it can't be modeled in the editor. However, a good comprise was arrived at, taking into account a future change in the Oberliga system next season and drawing from historical data:
3 Regional Divisions (North, South, West) with 3 relegation spots each.
9 Oberliga Divisions (Nord, Niedersachsen, NOFV-Nord, NOFV-Süd, NRW-Liga, Hessen, Südwest, Baden-Württemberg, and Bayern) with 1 promotion and 3 relegation spots each.

Oberliga Nord combines Hamburg and Schleswig-Holstein, the way it used to be in the past, and Oberliga Niedersachsen combines the current Niedersachsen Ost, Niedersachsen West and Bremen, which is similar to what will happen next year anyway. This is a better approach than keeping all 12 Oberligas and give a promotion spot to each, for a variety of reasons, but mainly because long-term games will see more realistic (and regionally accurate) movements between leagues and because it allows for a cleaner way to add the 6th level, which is in the works.

A lot of work went into making the regional promotions and relegations work as realistically as possible by setting regional boundaries for the leagues and editing each club's regional division preference.

Other changes include added missing stadiums and a few missing clubs from the 6th level.

Tested in various holiday games, up to 2019 without errors. The only thing that can occasionally happen is that a club ends up in a different regional division than it's supposed to, but after analyzing dozens of seasons this is not very often and typically not too annoying, because they're not too far off. (It's not completely avoidable anyway because some reshuffling sometimes needs to occur in the game and we can't model the provisions from real life where the league size or number of relegated teams change based on who gets relegated from above, so the game takes matters into its own hands).


How to install:

* Download the file, extract the file. and follow the instructions below:

* Place the .xml file to the folder My Documents\Sports Interactive\Football Manager 2010\editor data. In case you can't find this folder, it's within the folder that savegames get saved.

* When starting a new game, in the "Choose Database" box, hit "Change" at "Editor Data Files" and then OK. Select the file you placed to "user data" folder. Click "ΟΚ".

Enjoy!


Credits:

Thanks to The Amazing Dale Watkins at SI forums for creating this!