Primis' Global NHL w Foreigner Limits

[Primis]

I'll start tossing stuff for this into its own thread from the ArtMoney/Hex Editing threads.

So I went ahead and hacked the EHM .exe file to do only two things:

1.) Force a "4 foreigners dressed" limit on all NHL teams. A team based in Sweden thus can only have 4 non-Swedes, while a team based in Germany can only have 4 non-Germans. I wanted 3 honestly, but decided 4 might be more of a help from some of the lesser nations.

2.) Removed the vet limit from the AHL. What I'm doing in the NHL is going to mess with the player base considerably, so I will probably need some extra room in the AHL. I don't have a screenie of the AHL rules yet.


Then I went in and redid the NHL: 3 US teams, 3 Canadian, 3 Russian, 2 from Sweden and Finalnd each, and then 1 from each country that gets me to 30. Being 30, it gets me teams in fun places like France, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Poland, etc. The clubs I chose form the offbeat countries were chosen either because of having the best arena size or some sort of real success that put them above their peers. I even went to the bother to try to align them in a way that makes some sort of sense (which was actually kinda' tough at first). Here's a screengrab of my new NHL with a 4 foreigner limit:



I went through and manually assigned notable players of less-traditional nationalities to their nation's clubs (Kopitar and Mursak on Olimpija, Vanek on Vienna, Thoreson on Stavanger IK, etc) to help them, while I'll let Russian, N. American, Swedish, and Finnish team mostly fend for themselves in deciding who they get.

I also "cheated a little". The British team didn't seem like the British team without Tony Hand in his prime for example, and I fudged a couple nationalities to help the Croatian and Italian teams (though you would be VERY surprised to learn who in North America apparently has a 2nd nationality of say Croatian already, and there's even more Italians, and W-T-F Evan McGrath with a 2nd of Polish? I dunno how many of those are accurate to RL, but I rolled with them!). I also believe I fudged Dainus Zubrus to help someone.

Moving the teams and aligning them wasn't the time-consumer honestly, going through the editor (which can't sort by 2nd nationality) and trying to nab the players with 2nd nationalities was a huge sinkhole though, as well as releasing players from the NHL teams that are now exiled to Russia, Finland, Norway, Denmark, etc...

Next step is to give everyone AHL affiliations along with keeping their other junior ones and such. And then I think I'm finally ready to play!

[Alessandro]

Make sure that all affiliations with AHL teams are "Primary Farm Affiliation" and other affiliations if you aren't going to destroy them, set 'em as "other junior affiliation"

[Animal31]

and other affiliations if you aren't going to destroy them, set 'em as "other junior affiliation"

What? Why?

Secondary Farm Afilliation works fine

[Alessandro]

I think that like that it will be a bit hard to make it balanced
1st) the draft. Teams won't draft players according to their nationality and this might screwing out things a bit for lesser teams like Cracovia or Herning. Bolzano should have 'nough italos to survive, but I'd expect some good slaughters for them and Belfast in that division.
2nd) the lesser nations might have not enough of a player pool to get good players.

2nd nationalities are "true", just that in some leagues there are no limits on EU players thus teams rush players into getting EU passports. A bit artificial, you'd say, well, have a look at soccer and you won't be moaning ever again.

[Alessandro]

and other affiliations if you aren't going to destroy them, set 'em as "other junior affiliation"

What? Why?

Secondary Farm Afilliation works fine

I made some tests like this and didn't have any good result with NHL > AHL with secondary farm affiliation or junior affiliations if we have another "primary farm affiliation"

[Animal31]

It works fine for me
the NHL team sends most of its players to the primary, and sends some to the secondary

[Primis]

1st) the draft. Teams won't draft players according to their nationality and this might screwing out things a bit for lesser teams like Cracovia or Herning. Bolzano should have 'nough italos to survive, but I'd expect some good slaughters for them and Belfast in that division.

2nd) the lesser nations might have not enough of a player pool to get good players.

I have every intention of "helping" the Polish, Croation, Italian, French, and maybe Slovenian teams at least once a year by seeing that they end up with rights to players they should have. The AI does a pretty good job singing FA's with the foreigner limits in place, but not drafting I think. Maybe say the Dinamos and Donbass too, we'll see. I remember when I did this (on a smaller scale of course) in the RSL last time that I was pleasantly surprised at how competent say EV Vienna was about going out and getting Austrians. That time Milano Rousssblu was my Italian rep and even they did a good job stocking Italians via free agency.

With 4 foreigners, you figure even Italy can nab a high-caliber NHL level goalie, d-man, and a forward or two to complement what's already there (adjustable by individual need though, if they manage a good domestic goalie say, the rest becomes easier). 5 seemed like overkill considering the 23-man limit, and 3 seemed not quite enough. Teams could also theoretically have 1 or two more extra foreigners scratched because the rule applies to *dressed* players. I thought this would work well so even when a HC Bolzano or a Cracovia loses a foreigner to injury they aren't TOTALLY hosed and may be able to just dress another instead.

Also, with the vet limit out of the AHL it should make stashing players there for depth a bit easier as they'd actually get to play still. I never seem to have good luck calling up "cold" players.

I'll echo Animal -- I've never had too many problems with the AI using Secondary affiliations.

We'll see. We already know it won't be 100% perfect what with the Canadians and Americans being interchangable (Kazakh & Russians too) and the drafting, and I'm half expecting to find another new bug or two somewhere along the line. That's part of the fun! There's a certain appeal (to me at least) to making the game do this when it's not really supposed to.

[Alessandro]

I think it's ok to have interchangeable guys, it would just be better if it would have been the same for let's say czechs and slovakians, and germans and austrians. Austrians do have a little advantage because the "become domestic player after x years" rule there works, in other nations it doesn't work too much. I also think that you should have red bulls from salzburg in lieu of vienna

[Primis]

I also think that you should have red bulls from salzburg in lieu of vienna

It looks like Salzburg's arena only holds 3,600. Vienna's holds 7,000. Salzburg's arena is literally tied for smallest in the Erste Bank Hockey League. I know they have a recent run of success but...

In my experience this is key to about everything in EHM. If you don't have a big enough arena, you'll fail rather quickly being moved to a higher league. Even Olimpija's holds 5,500 and HC Bolzano's holds 7,200 it looks like. A couple thousand seats difference seems to make a HUGE difference to the bottom line. Truthfully 5,000 is going to be rough still likely and I may need to tweak in the savegame editor to help those teams out. I've moved AHL-level markets in to the NHL in DB's/games before and seen that pain, and there's just no way around it.

I've considered trying to make those teams' venues expandable but to be honest I've never understood how that works in the Pre Game Editor.

SC Bern (17,000) and Eisbaren Berlin (14,000) are anomalies in Europe it seems. I might be wrong but I think Medvescek Zagreb (it's kinda' rad that they of all teams have a 16,000-seat arena, I have no idea what their actual attendance is like though) and Dinamo Minsk are the only other current teams with arenas well above 10,000 in the KHL even (I think Riga's is somewhere right around 10,000 though IIRC).

I had toyed with removing the salary cap but I don't think I can do that with teams in 5,000-seat arenas and less even.

[Primis]

So I actually started a game with this last night and this has been insane. I removed the Cap altogether, kept the Floor in place.

We're just about to start preseason games and Crosby has not signed anywhere yet (and I'm wondering if he actually will sign anywhere), and EVERY SINGLE TEAM is trying to sign him, which is amusing. There's been a trickle of signings but I think the floodgates are about to open for a lot of the Euro teams.

It's interesting to see who make runs at players on trading block. Avangard Omsk and Dinamo Riga seem to go after EVERYONE on the block regardless of nationality. Sparta Praha is also right up there with trade market involvement. Montreal and Toronto are very active as well, which is weird because Toronto, Vancouver, and Boston are doing absolutely nothing save for signing a few UFA's.

I'll give everyone a rundown of how things shake out. It'll be interesting to see how various countries/teams react and stock their rosters I think. This is all kinda' one grand A.I. experiment.

[CeeBee]

Sounds real interesting, Primus. Might be fun to play someday if you ever decide to release it.

[Primis]

Sooooo this is perfectly playable and fine but... I'm seeing problems.

I took the Salary Cap out in my game so teams could feel a bit freer to spend, but I think the Floor needs to be lowered as well because some teams can only do so much.

Also, guys like Ryan Miller, Sidney Crosby, Ryan Getzxlaf, Martin St. Louis, etc., never get signed. They sign, and then the team back s out of it on them. Did some investigating and all I could think of was cash flow. That's rough since I started out every team with at least $10m in funds to play around with. I got through until just after Christmas at this point, these guys shouldn't just be sitting at home.

Rouen and Belfast really struggle in particular to find players.

SC Bern has been the biggest head-scratcher of all. They have a higher rep than most euro teams, a big arena, lots of money... and they've been content to just play with naff imports instead of signing anyone good. No idea why.

Teams like Stavanger have done fine, they surprised me by going out and landing Corey Perry, Derek Roy, and Stephane Robidas. Henring Blue Fox did ok. EV Vienna, much like Bern, just seems uninterested in signing anyone and sticking with what they have (again no idea why). Berlin signed new imports, but didn't choose very wisely. Teams like Rouen, Bolzano, Berlin, Cracovia, etc are all constantly signing players and then backing out and not confirming. Crosby must have verbally committed to these teams at least twice each.

Teams that have done well include Avangard Omsk (who looked unbeatable period until they dropped a random game to Belfast and then went on a losing skid), the North American teams of course, and Frolunda (who assembled an all-star Swedish team and really isn't even playing any foreigners). Sparta Praha went nuts signing guys and similarly has an all-star Czech team w/ Brandon Sutter as their only foreigner even on the roster.

The Red Wings signed a bunch of guys and have an awfully good lineup, but Chicago (whose only additions have been MA Fleury in net, Pronger on defense, and Ribiero up front) seems to still be head and shoulders above the others.

Barys Astana didn't mess around and signed both Ovechkin and Malkin very quickly, as well as Tyutin, Gonchar, and Kulikov, and is easily now the top Eastern team with Frolunda, what with Avangard's skid. Dyanmo Moscow is struggling and just never got the right guys I guess, those they seemed to have tried. SKA St. Petersburg has been active trying to acquire Russians from North American teams in trade, so that's good.

Frolunda by the way went out and got Henrik Lundqvist, Erik Karlsson, Doug Murray, Victor Hedman (who they aren't even able to dress because they have so much def. depth), also got Nick Backstrom, Shane Doan (!!!), Landeskog, Paajarvi... they loaded themselves up like I intended.

Donbass Donetsk has about 15 foreigners on the roster. I have no idea why. Most of them aren't very good.

The lesson in all of this is that for some reason, some teams will sign the top guys to replace their imports, and other teams are happy to keep theirs for some odd reason. I need to fix this somehow or figure it out. Some of it could be just AI GM ability I guess (poor CPU GM's). But it's jarring to see teams like Bern and Berlin struggling when I expected them to do better considering their home-grown talent. And I don't know if I should go the obvious route and remove those teams' lesser foreigners to encourage them to sign others or what.

The AHL has been fascinating. Teams are sending guys to the AHL primarily, and euro junior clubs secondarily just fine. There are a couple AHL clubs that are doing really well because they are flush with guys form that nation.

[ppaalloo]

please where can I change the rules on foreign players in the league as the KHL instead of max. 3 foreign players dressed for 7

[nino33]

please where can I change the rules on foreign players in the league as the KHL instead of max. 3 foreign players dressed for 7

You'll need to do some hex editing if you want to change league rules http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... EX+EDITING

[ppaalloo]

What program do I need? art money I have but I need instructions on how to change the league rules...

[nino33]

What program do I need?

You'll need a hex editor

I need instructions on how to change the league rules

There's no easy to follow, step by step instructions that I'm aware of (hex editing is not easy, and not a lot of users have done much hex editing).

Perhaps Primis can point to something better, but I think the thread I linked to is the closest thing to "instructions" that we have

[ppaalloo]

hm... I'll have to wait for the new TBL rosters please report this to the authors modified the KHL instead of 3 foreign players dressed for 7 and this is also in the Slovak Extraliga

[nino33]

hm... I'll have to wait for the new TBL rosters please report this to the authors modified the KHL instead of 3 foreign players dressed for 7 and this is also in the Slovak Extraliga

I don't believe the TBL Rosters uses hex editing to update any league rules

There was a patch produced in 2011 that updated some league rules
patch http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... =88&t=8755
discussion http://www.ehmtheblueline.com/forums/vi ... =13&t=8739

[ppaalloo]

hm interesting and also good but still do not understand if they are official rules and can be KHL 5 foreign players dressed because Slovan Bratislava played every match all 7 foreign players and the same thing in the Lev Prague

[Alessandro]

hm interesting and also good but still do not understand if they are official rules and can be KHL 5 foreign players dressed because Slovan Bratislava played every match all 7 foreign players and the same thing in the Lev Prague

EDIT: My mistake

[Alessandro]

hm interesting and also good but still do not understand if they are official rules and can be KHL 5 foreign players dressed because Slovan Bratislava played every match all 7 foreign players and the same thing in the Lev Prague

The patch works 100%, if Slovan has more players is that cuz they have Slovakian second nationality.

[ppaalloo]

Slovan Bratislava played every match all 7 foreign players

I thought in really, not in the game

[Manimal]

Slovan Bratislava played every match all 7 foreign players

I thought in really, not in the game

In reality, some teams gets exception to the rule.
Slovan, Lev, Donbass, Medvescak, Admiral and maybe Riga, I am not sure but Alessandro will know

[ppaalloo]

oh I did not know ...