How to write country definition files

How to create a country file

Last updated: 12/15/2008

Howtos:

How to create a country file

IMPORTANT: If you create a European country for which there is already a short definition, e.g. you make the French leagues and there is already league_france1_short.xml (in the short_leagues subdirectory of the support_files directory), you have to edit the European cup files (cup_europe_champ_league.xml, cup_europe_uefa.xml and cup_europe__cwc.xml) and change all entries league_france1_short to league_france1 (the sid of the first league of your new country). Otherwise you'll get an error when loading the cup teams.

Countries consist only of leagues, cups and some strings. Let's start with an example (you probably won't need more than that, anyway): the file country_england.xml looks like this:

  <country>
   <name>England</name>
  
    # This is the name of the country.
  
    <symbol>flag_en.png</symbol>
  
    # The symbol, some image file (jpg etc. would
    # work, too).  The file should be somewhere in
    # the support directories.
  
    <sid>england</sid>
  
    # The unique string id of the country. This
    # should be the same as the part of the file
    # name between 'country_' and '.xml'.
  
    <leagues>
  
    # The array of leagues of the country.
  
    # The leagues are given with their string ids,
    # ie.  the corresponding league definition
    # files are called 'league_england1.xml' etc.
  
      <league>england1</league>
      <league>england2</league>
      <league>england3</league>
      <league>england4</league>
      <league>england5</league>
   </leagues>
  
    <cups>
  
    # The array of cups.
  
      <cup>england_fa</cup>
  
      # The cups are also given with their string
      # ids, so one of the cup definition files that
      # gets loaded would be 'cup_england_fa.xml'
  
      <cup>england_league</cup>
      <cup>europe_uefa</cup>
      <cup>europe_cwc</cup>
      <cup>europe_champ_league</cup>
      <cup>supercup_league_vs_cup</cup>
      <cup>supercup_europe_uefa</cup>
      <cup>england_prom_games2</cup>
      <cup>england_prom_games3</cup>
      <cup>england_prom_games4</cup>
      </cups>
  
  </country>

Some notes:

You should take care that the average talents in the leagues are not too far apart, otherwise promotion/relegation will be a mess (the same teams that got promoted get relegated the next season, obviously). I'd say 700-800 is the biggest difference there should be between two leagues connected by promotion/relegation.
The order of the cups is important. If the European Cup Winners' Cup is included, it takes the winner of the first cup in the cups array as the participant from the country, in this case the FA Cup. If we specify the League Cup as the first cup, the winner of the League Cup participates in the CWC.
If there are cups that 'compete' against each other concerning the teams that participate in them, e.g. the Champions' League and the CWC (what does this mean? If there's a double winner, e.g. a team winning both the first league and the first cup, the league runner-up should participate in the CWC.), they should be listed in reversed priority order. In our case, the CL participant gets chosen first. If the team is also qualified for the CWC (ie. a double winner), he doesn't participate in the CWC as well, but the runner-up gets chosen. So, in a way, the CL wins against the CWC.
Generally, cups that provide participants for other cups (FA Cup winner -> Cup Winners' Cup) have to come before the second cup; cups that contain teams that may not participate in other cups (with the same group value, see below) should come after these cups.

That's it for country files.