Towns and GPS

What club locations are for

A club can have a position on the map – as GPS coordinates or simply as the name of its town. Regional leagues use these positions in three ways:

• Grouping by distance: with yearly regrouping, the clubs of a level are shared out among leagues by their distance to each league's centre (see the example below).
• Choosing between leagues: if a club fits several leagues, or none, the nearest league is preferred.
• Areas from the town: a town name can also give a club its regions automatically (see Using the regions of a town).

A location alone never switches regional leagues on. The league still needs its three switch-on lines (see Regional leagues).

Writing GPS coordinates

Write the coordinates in the club file, below the name:

! Name "Yodel Rovers"
#@cs location-gps 50.4 8.5

• Latitude first, then longitude, separated by a space.
• Use a decimal point, not a comma. Map websites often show coordinates as “50.6326, 5.5797” – remove the comma between the two numbers.
• South and west are negative: -33.87 151.21 lies in the southern hemisphere, 40.42 -3.70 west of Greenwich. A forgotten minus sign moves a club to the other side of the world, without any warning.
• Ranges: latitude from −90 to 90, longitude from −180 to 180. 0 0 is a valid position.
• An empty line #@cs location-gps removes the coordinates. Coordinates you write always count more than a position found from a town name.
• Invalid coordinates, such as 48,1 11,5, are ignored and reported by the Check.

In the Team Editor the field is called GPS coordinates.

Writing a town instead

Instead of coordinates you can simply name the club's town. The game looks it up in a place directory that comes with it; no internet connection is needed.

! Name "Waffle Wanderers"
#@cs location-place "Brugge"

How the game finds the town

• It searches the club's country, unless you name another one with location-country. Country names are understood in English and in common local spellings.
• Accents, umlauts and common alternative spellings are tolerated. In a test, “Antwerpen” found Antwerp and “Oostende” found Ostend. Typing mistakes are not corrected.
• If several towns have the same name, the largest one is chosen. In a test, “Hasselt”, “Mechelen” and “Mons” each matched several places, and the biggest town was taken. For a smaller town of the same name, add its region or GPS coordinates.
• If the town is unknown but the club has GPS coordinates, the nearest known town within 100 km supplies the regions; the coordinates stay as written.
• If a town is more than 50 km away from the club's GPS coordinates, the game trusts the coordinates and ignores the town's regions.
• Very small villages may be missing from the directory. Use GPS coordinates for them.
• Made-up countries such as Footlandia have no towns in the directory. Use home areas or GPS coordinates there. The test report then contains harmless notes that no towns could be looked up.

Towns are looked up once, when a new career is created, and only in countries that use regional leagues. The career keeps the result; your files are not changed. The test report shows which town was chosen for every club. In the Team Editor the fields are called Place and Location country.

Using the regions of a town

A town that is found also tells the game which regions it belongs to: its country, its region, province or state, its district and so on, including common alternative spellings. These region names work like home areas. A league can therefore accept clubs simply by the region name:

: Testbelgium - Flemish League
+ division 2
+ promotions 1
+ relegations 0
#@cs regions "Flanders"
#@cs regional-allocation fixed-regions
#@cs allocation-group "Second level"
#@cs allocation-centre-place "Gent"

: Testbelgium - Walloon League
+ division 2
+ promotions 1
+ relegations 0
#@cs regions "Wallonia"
#@cs regional-allocation fixed-regions
#@cs allocation-group "Second level"
#@cs allocation-centre-place "Namur"

In a test with 20 invented clubs that only had a town in their club files, every club was placed by its town in the Flemish League or the Walloon League, without a single warning over five seasons. 18 of the 22 town names were found directly, 4 by the “largest town” rule.

• Regions on the map are not football regions. Where football regions have other borders, give the clubs your own home areas.
• Write region names in the spelling the directory uses. Test a few towns first and look at the test report.

League centres

For sorting by distance, every regional league needs a centre: the middle of its area. You can give it in three ways:

; as GPS coordinates
#@cs allocation-centre-gps 50.6 2.0
; or as a town
#@cs allocation-centre-place "Namur"
; and, if the town lies in another country
#@cs allocation-centre-country "Belgium"

• Always write #@cs in front of allocation-centre-place and allocation-centre-country. Without it these two lines are read as a club name.
• If both coordinates and a town are given, the coordinates count.
• Without any centre, the game takes the position of the most central club among the league's starting clubs, and keeps it for the whole career.
• A centre is a point of reference, not a border. A league without a known centre is never treated as being near.

In the Team Editor the fields are called Allocation centre (GPS), Place and Location country.

Example: two groups by distance

Level 2 of Footlandia is split into a West League and an East League purely by the clubs' positions. No club has a home area, every club has GPS coordinates, and the two leagues differ only in their centre:

: Footlandia - League West
+ division 2
+ promotions 1
+ relegations 0
#@cs regional-allocation annual-geography
#@cs allocation-group "Second level"
#@cs allocation-centre-gps 50.6 2.0
; 7 clubs with GPS coordinates here

: Footlandia - League East
+ division 2
+ promotions 1
+ relegations 0
#@cs regional-allocation annual-geography
#@cs allocation-group "Second level"
#@cs allocation-centre-gps 50.6 9.0
; 7 clubs with GPS coordinates here

The Premier League above relegates 2 clubs and has #@cs promotion-relegation compensate-team-count. Each club file contains a line such as #@cs location-gps 50.4 8.5.

Home areas, towns or GPS: which should I use?