If I understand correctly, it'll be even easier for you.

Now, remember, you don't move teams around in Historic mode, only in traditional careers. Historic careers use each season's historic mod, which defines the league structure, the name of the Super Bowl, the teams, players, AND the artwork for you. So, every year that you continue a historic mod, you don't have to do anything - that's all done for you.

Now, let's say you are playing a more traditional PSF career (or convert a historic one to traditional at some point). Then you can manually move teams around each year (I've done that, mirroring actual history), and yes, the game retains the new structure until you change it. So, say you manually add TB and Seattle in 76 (good example, one of the main tests I used myself, since they then move), and then you move them in 77. It's all good!

BTW, the "League Expansion" phase isn't available in historic careers, since you're loading everything (rosters, league structure, etc). However, if you decide to convert that historic career to a traditional GM once, then you have access to manual league expansion.

So, bottom line, regarding TB and Seattle:
* if you're loading historic mods, you don't have to do anything, it's all handled for you, and it just works perfectly
* if you're creating your own league and adding and moving teams, that's fine, that works for you, too!

Now, regarding artwork, there is a big difference between the two:
* loading historic mods in a historic career handles everything for you, including updating changing a team's weather, adding uniforms if necessary, naming the Super Bowl location, etc
* however, if you manually add two teams or move them, then you have to set their weather, assign the artwork folder, etc, since the game doesn't know that for you. Still, it's very easy to do!

Oh, and good news! If you forget to assign artwork, etc, you can now edit a lot of information in PAST seasons as well!

I hope this helps, thanks!

Does the scheduling properly adjust to follow the league rules (eg. number of divisional games, etc.) if these sort of changes are made?

Thanks for the info Kerry, that certainly sheds more light on how the careers work! redwolf does bring up an interesting point too with the schedules.

Actually, the modders have all historic schedules for you, so you simply load one, and it works! And it follows the teams, so in the example above, if you progress to 76, the schedule is correct. Then, when they swap conferences, the next schedule works perfectly, too.

It's basically you running a lot of Single Seasons in a row, but the game takes care of loading all the information for you and accumulating career history for teams and players, even franchises like Cleveland becoming Baltimore (and then a different franchise opening in Cleveland, but not related to the older franchise).

Oh, I want to make sure I draw the distinction here:

* historic careers are basically what some games have called encyclopedia. You play single seasons, but since teams can more around (even divisions can change from 6 to 8, for example), the game takes care of all of that for you

* GM careers are the same as last year, with two additions:
1) you can convince retiring players to stay,
2) you can change your league structure each season - more or add teams, change the number of divisions, etc. But the difference is that moving teams, etc is manual, since YOU are the GM, rather than loading historic leagues.

So the quick answer to the OP is:

No, you cannot move teams around and construct your own iterations of divisions in historical career (but must adhere to real life as it was) - makes sense

Now for standard career with new features, if there is a league expansion or contraction, does the schedule properly adjust for that or will it rely upon user created schedule?

In that case, it's the same as now. Say you start with a 26-team league and add two teams, you'll have to load a 28-team schedule (but what if you also changed to 12 divisions?) or create your own schedule.

Naturally, I can't handle every format of leagues (you might have 8 conferences, for example), but what I hope to eventually do is, if the league fits one of the NFL formats where we have scheduling rules in place, then I can create a schedule.

Then again, it would be great if someone here could do something like this. I'll bet someone could do this much easier and faster then me, using something like Excel, VB, or even AI.

Originally posted by redwolf9:

So the quick answer to the OP is:

No, you cannot move teams around and construct your own iterations of divisions in historical career (but must adhere to real life as it was) - makes sense

BTW, have you seen this thread (https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/app/3013260/discussions/0/4422059016572363006/), where JT suggested a new "Alternate History" or maybe "Flexible History" mode for next year? I love that idea!

Even then, since you're playing a form of History, you wouldn't reformat your league, but you would have more freedom on where real life players go each year. Sounds really fun!