So I've known for the better part of a decade now that there's a significant hidden mechanic when it comes to newgens, that seems to be the unique nation itself or something along these lines.
As a refresher on what I already knew to be the case:
Junior coaching ~40% PA effect Nation youth rating ~25% PA effect Youth recruitment ~25% PA effect Club reputation acts as tie breaker for youth recruitment Either unique nation or division ID ~25% (or perhaps even more) PA effect (a hidden, unchangeable factor - it may be 'Nation attribute template' that is listed as an inaccessible debug option in the editor, which sounds like it would be similar to the 'Nation personality template' before it was removed in recent versions) All other factors no effect
How I found this is by swapping England and Romania completely, after realizing the numbers didn't add up after deducing the relevant factors and trying to calculate outcomes with them. It took a lot of work so I've never repeated it since.
It occurred to me that there's a simpler way of going about it: Make every club, division, and nation have identical relevant attributes, and measure the median PA differences that result.
A few conclusions we can already make from this initial data:
1) The hidden nation/division factor is definitely real.
2) It seemingly can't be that a factor such as 'game importance' is having a bug where it's been changed in the pre-game editor, but remains in fact unchanged in the game. Germany is 'very important' and also has highest nation rep & youth rating, but we see is ~10 PA below England & France. Mexico & Turkey have stats pretty close to England, but we see their clubs are ~20-30 PA below.
3) Germany doesn't seem to have much variation, but Israel does. Japan & HK seem to have high variation too. More testing will shed light on this, but I suspect that the hidden mechanic limits how many clubs in a division/nation get high median PA intakes, and/or how often.
4) Minnows such as N. Ireland and HK show there is a massive disparity between nations due to a hidden factor. The difference here is ~65 PA.
Just prior to this I also tested whether existing players in a team/division have any effect. I reduced the CA and reputation of players in the Premier League to '1', and it made zero difference to the outcome. So that can be ruled out.
Probably not many people have read my stuff on cities and newgen 'pools' and whatnot, so I will add here that all of that stuff I have investigated and found to be purely cosmetic. These results seem to be further evidence there is no regional/national/global pool, as all nations were assigned to the 'UK & Ireland' region, all continent regional strength was set to '1', and we see here some pretty clear arbitrary tiering of nations going on.
It's going to take a while to collect the results and have a think about how to do it, but I reckon it's probably going to be possible now to reliably calculate expected newgen PA of clubs without having to simply brute force test it for each edition.
Here's what was controlled (made identical):
Nation region Nation game importance Nation state of development Nation youth rating Nation reputation Nation tactical attributes (including preferred formations) Nation economic power Nation FA financial power Nation ranking points Club reputation Club morale Club training Club youth coaching Club youth facilities Club youth recruitment Club youth importance Club corporate facilities Club preferred formation Continent regional strength
Only Division level 1 teams were altered Professional status is not controlled, I overlooked this one So the controls aren't exhaustive, but they're pretty extensive
Facilities & morale were set to 10. Club rep to 5000. Nation rep to 7000. Nation youth rating to 135. Basically I went for something moderately high, just to help rule out extremes messing things up somehow.
So I've known for the better part of a decade now that there's a significant hidden mechanic when it comes to newgens, that seems to be the unique nation itself or something along these lines.
As a refresher on what I already knew to be the case:
Junior coaching ~40% PA effect
Nation youth rating ~25% PA effect
Youth recruitment ~25% PA effect
Club reputation acts as tie breaker for youth recruitment
Either unique nation or division ID ~25% (or perhaps even more) PA effect (a hidden, unchangeable factor - it may be 'Nation attribute template' that is listed as an inaccessible debug option in the editor, which sounds like it would be similar to the 'Nation personality template' before it was removed in recent versions)
All other factors no effect
How I found this is by swapping England and Romania completely, after realizing the numbers didn't add up after deducing the relevant factors and trying to calculate outcomes with them. It took a lot of work so I've never repeated it since.
It occurred to me that there's a simpler way of going about it: Make every club, division, and nation have identical relevant attributes, and measure the median PA differences that result.
The idea worked:
Man City (England) — 139, 132.5, 121.5
Paris SG (France) — 138
Man UFC (England) — 136.5
Maccabi Haifa (Israel) — 132.5, 95.5
Fulham (England) - 129, 133.5
Borussia M'gladbach (Germany) — 125
Hapoel Haifa (Israel) — 125, 97
FC Bayern (Germany) — 124.5, 113
Liverpool (England) — 124
Orlando Pirates (South Africa) — 123.5
Brentford (England) - 122.5, 126.5
Dortmund (Germany) — 121.5
Augsberg (Germany) — 120
Chelsea (England) — 117.5
Kashima (Japan) — 117.5
Vfb Stuttgart (Germany) — 117.5
Zenit (Russia) — 117
Kongsvinger (Norway) — 112.5
Beijing Guo'an (China) — 111
Ferencvaros (Hungary) — 111
Jeonbuk (Korea) — 110
Maccabi Tel-Aviv (Israel) — 108
Pumas (Mexico) — 106
Salernitana (Italy) — 105
Perth Glory (Australia) — 104
Beitar Jerusalem (Israel) — 104
Seoul (Korea) — 104
Ludogorets (Bulgaria) — 103
Celtic (Scotland) — 101.5
FCSB (Romania) — 100.5
Maribor (Slovenia) — 100
Barry (Wales) — 97.5
Konyaspor (Turkey) — 93
Lee Man (HK) — 90.5
Bnei Sakhnin (Israel) — 90
BATE (Belarus) — 90
Kashiwa (Japan) — 87
Lincoln (Gibraltar) — 80
Ballymena United (N. Ireland) — 67
HKFC (HK) — 65.5
North District (HK) — 65
A few conclusions we can already make from this initial data:
1) The hidden nation/division factor is definitely real.
2) It seemingly can't be that a factor such as 'game importance' is having a bug where it's been changed in the pre-game editor, but remains in fact unchanged in the game. Germany is 'very important' and also has highest nation rep & youth rating, but we see is ~10 PA below England & France. Mexico & Turkey have stats pretty close to England, but we see their clubs are ~20-30 PA below.
3) Germany doesn't seem to have much variation, but Israel does. Japan & HK seem to have high variation too. More testing will shed light on this, but I suspect that the hidden mechanic limits how many clubs in a division/nation get high median PA intakes, and/or how often.
4) Minnows such as N. Ireland and HK show there is a massive disparity between nations due to a hidden factor. The difference here is ~65 PA.
Just prior to this I also tested whether existing players in a team/division have any effect. I reduced the CA and reputation of players in the Premier League to '1', and it made zero difference to the outcome. So that can be ruled out.
Probably not many people have read my stuff on cities and newgen 'pools' and whatnot, so I will add here that all of that stuff I have investigated and found to be purely cosmetic. These results seem to be further evidence there is no regional/national/global pool, as all nations were assigned to the 'UK & Ireland' region, all continent regional strength was set to '1', and we see here some pretty clear arbitrary tiering of nations going on.
It's going to take a while to collect the results and have a think about how to do it, but I reckon it's probably going to be possible now to reliably calculate expected newgen PA of clubs without having to simply brute force test it for each edition.
Here's what was controlled (made identical):
Nation region
Nation game importance
Nation state of development
Nation youth rating
Nation reputation
Nation tactical attributes (including preferred formations)
Nation economic power
Nation FA financial power
Nation ranking points
Club reputation
Club morale
Club training
Club youth coaching
Club youth facilities
Club youth recruitment
Club youth importance
Club corporate facilities
Club preferred formation
Continent regional strength
Only Division level 1 teams were altered
Professional status is not controlled, I overlooked this one
So the controls aren't exhaustive, but they're pretty extensive
Facilities & morale were set to 10. Club rep to 5000. Nation rep to 7000. Nation youth rating to 135. Basically I went for something moderately high, just to help rule out extremes messing things up somehow.