I've tried to recreate everything as realistic as possible using the rules and dates provided by the CFA on their official website.
This includes:
Cyta Championship - 14 teams, split after 26 games into a group of 6 (10 games) and 8 (14 games), 3 teams relegated
B' Katigoria - 16 teams, split after 15 games into two groups á 8 teams (14 games), 3 teams promoted and relegated
G' Katigoria - 16 teams (3 missing teams added), split after 15 games into two groups á 8 teams (14 games), 3 teams promoted and relegated
Coca-Cola Cup - 30 teams. all Cyta Championship and B' Katigoria teams participate, previous finalists skip the first round
Super Cup - 2 teams, Cyta Championship and Coca-Cola Cup Champions
K19 A' Katigoria - 14 teams, 26 games, 3 teams relegated
K19 B' Katigoria - 14 teams, 26 games, 3 teams promoted and relegated
K19 C' Katigoria - 18 teams (3 missing teams added), split after 17 games into two groups á 9 teams (8 games), 3 teams promoted and relegated
Kupello K19 - 44 teams, all K19 A' B' C' Kategoria teams participate
I recommend to activate the "Add Players to Playable Teams" option since 3 clubs without any players were added to the third division and need to be filled up with players.
The file was tested in a simulation of 15 years and since I didn't see any bug or game breaking problem, the file should be good to go for long and short term saves!
Update 1.1
- Fixed the starting dates
- Fixed the TV money to take into account individual TV contracts
- Updated contract expiry dates of players and staff to be the 30/6 instead of the 31/5
Update 1.2
- Fixed Cyta Championship registration rules concerning homegrown players
Update 2.0
- Updated for the 23.3 database
- Added team and league histories back to 2005
Update 3.0
- Updated for the 23.4 database
Old files:
23.0 Version
23.3 Version
Discussion: FM23 Cyprus (D3) - Realistic Rules
4 comments have been posted so far.
I used the fixture dates tab and put these dates as start/end date in the league schedule and added them as fixed dates as well. I also set the first/last date in the league settings and the general fixture times and rules tab, though I don't know whether it's important or not.
About the contracts, I honestly didn't notice that since in long term tests the new contracts are ending on the 30/6, so thanks for making me aware of it, I'll update that soon.
For the TV money I gave each team 1m, but I'll set it up so that the amount given by the league is way lower and that the individual TV contracts can overwrite this (luckily they are already set in the sponsors tab of the clubs). Thanks for the information, since I couldn't find any good sources on this.
I don't think there is any way to check this in the editor, since it is only concerned with the rules. I think there is some possibility to make this more important with the right tweaks in the editor, but that's something I'm not really familiar with.
Great to hear you like the file and I hope you have fun with your next save!
I did try with the advanced fixture rules and I usually didn't have any problems. This year's edition is the first one who has these specific issues (especially with the fixtures). I am going to use your file from now on as it seems that the issues are much less prominent (or game breaking) than mine.
Just a some questions:
The super cup is usually played way early in August but the league starts 2-3 weeks later (depending on the teams playing the super cup). When I set it to early August and changed the league's fixture dates to a later day, the game decided to discard the new dates and just start from early August. How did you set it up?
Did you also fix the contracts ending date from 31/5 to 30/6? It basically goes hand in hand with the season update starting June 10 rather than June 20.
For the TV money: Did you give each team 1 mil as TV money? Or did you give 1 mil for the whole league to be divided by 14? As far as I understand, Apoel had the most money ever from a TV deal when they negotiated a 15m deal for 6 years (2,5 per season). Omonoia had the 2nd highest which amounted to 1,5 mil. I don't think any other team comes close to be fair, a friend of mine was in Doxa's board and he was talking about 600,000 per year at best.
Teams other than Omonoia/Apoel/Anorthosi usually make their money from when the big teams visit them. They usually sell out the away end and that's the bulk of their income. Is there anyway to check this in the editor? I dabbled with some of the gate receipts but it basically broke the game after 6-7 seasons.
Other than that, it seems that you created as close to a perfect Cyprus file as possible! I will be definitely using it from my next save (hopefully when the ME patch drops). So thank you very much!
To add the rules about who can play without being registered, you have to set that up in the advanced fixture rules. I utilised this especially with the G' Katigoria rules since these only allow a certain number of O21 (Semi-)Pro players. About the penalization, it's true, there is no direct setting but I chose to set it as an non-breakable rule since this is the closest to reality in my opinion
About the TV money, I set the amount to 1m€ since that's what a UEFA report from 2021 mentions, but if clubs can negotiate their own deals I'll add it to my file as well, this might also solve the long term problem of scaling.
When it comes to fixtures, I don't see many problems in my file except for the forced break in November '22 for 4 weeks that I couldn't deactivate, but that doesn't really cause any fixture congestion. There is some fixture congestion though when you reach the later stages of UEFA competitions with games every 2-3 days, but this is more of a problem with the real fixture plan, since it's similar in other nations.
About the cup, from what I saw there are separate cups for the top 2 divisions and the 3rd and 4th division, but since the 4th division and it's teams would have to be created mostly from scratch, I decided against creating this cup.
Yes, you can merge these histories in the advanced rules in the stage league settings, you can have a look at the Austrian rules or my file if you want to see how it's done in the vanilla game.
I haven't added kits or logos, but for the 1st division there is a current kitpack on sortitoutsi and for the 2nd division there is one which is 3 years old I think.
Hope this helps you and any feedback is appreciated!
1) Great job on doing the Cypriot divisions with actual real life rules.
2) I also created one for my own game, but I run to several issues. A critical one is the squad registration rules. I got the max 8 non-EU players working and the squad size being max 28, but I couldn't get the U-19 being able to play without being registered, nor the "only 5 non-Cypriot U-21 players allowed". I also don't think there is any rule in the editor which penalizes teams if they don't play at least one Cypriot with 1000 euros (or 3000 if there aren't any at all).
3) There are several issues with TV money. If you don't allocate a specific amount for each team prior to the season, there aren't many TV matches at all. In Cyprus teams generally have a minor amount being allocated to them by the CFA for TV money and the rest are a direct result of negotiations with the 3 footballing platforms. Since the game doesn't televise many games, this becomes an issue long term.
4) Fixtures. Oh boy... There are so many issues stemming from the second stage of the league. Teams play at any day of the week (despite Sat/Sun being preferred) and there are many conflicts with later stages of CL/UEL/UCL. Also the game instead of choosing to play each week, it puts 2 games one week on the next one after 15 days. Did you test it and found that it works as normal to you? Especially the first season with the WC is absolute madness.
5) Just a correction here, all teams play in the cup (A,B,C and lower) and the semis are 2 legged. Of course this creates further conflicts with the fixtures, so I don't know how to get past this.
6) A minor one, but with the way the editor is set up, it creates two histories (one for the 1st stage and one for the 2nd stages). This means that records will be completely bonkers longer term. Is there a way to combine the two stages into one history?
I will very much like to test this in order to give you some feedback. Are the kits included as well?