Can I be Jamaica?

Jamaica is not part of the tournament. It is challenging to get enough players for all 32 squads, so I don't plan to expand outside of the current 32 teams. Sorry about that Dave. Thoughts and prayers.

I should have included the nations in my original post. My bad.

Argentina | Australia | Belgium | Brazil | Cameroon | Colombia | Costa Rica | Croatia

Denmark | England | France | Germany | Ghana | Ireland | Italy | Japan | Korea

Mexico | Morocco | Netherlands | Nigeria | Poland | Portugal | Senegal | Spain

Switzerland | Sweden | Tunisia | Ukraine | Uruguay | United States | Wales

I knew that....was just trying to be difficult

Can confirm...

Honest, Outlaw Dave is FOREVER trying to be difficult...

count me in. will message you with a little preference list not including Jamaica

Count me in this time Brian.  No preference on team.

I am in, can have whoecver I was last time? Sweden was it, maybe?

I'm in. I'll take whichever team is the best.

I'm happy to participate, but OLMEC gameplay isn't well suited for a traditional 32 team group stage tournament, so I'd suggest a format change if we could.

My best idea is reducing it to 24 teams. 4 groups of 6.

Stage one:
Week 1 is two group games, week 2 is three group games.

Top two in each group advance to stage two: two groups of four (Group E A1+B2+C1+D2 and Group F A2+B1+C2+D1) played over one week.

Top two in each group go through to the semifinals and final, played over two rounds.

Out of interest John, why is it not well suited to it?  I guess often the 3rd game is too often easily manipulated.  Was that the thought?

The Swiss League format might work well though.  32 teams each playing 8  random games.  the Top 16 (or 24* as per Champions league!?)  proceed to the knockout with the seed order defined by position in the league. 

(*Top 8 get a bye to the round of 16, the other 16 play-off, 24 keeps everyone interested.)

My first thought:

I like the idea of keeping the tournament closer to the real World Cup (thought of course that is now changing to 48 teams). But really, why?

My second thought:

I am certainly willing to change format if it keeps participant involved and invested throughout the tournament. That seems to be the most important aspect of both format proposals, and I am on board with that.

I prefer to keep the tournament at 32 teams. If we drop to 24, that means several managers who might want to play will be left out. In the first cup we only needed the sim to run three teams (I was pretty excited that we had 29 managers take part!).

Of the two proposals so far, I prefer the one James outlined. Perhaps there is a way to incorporate aspects from multiple ideas? Any other thoughts? 32 teams with 4 groups of 8? 

Please know that a change like those noted above will increase the length of the competition. While I don't have a problem with that, I want people to be aware.

I look forward to more ideas. 

I'm in 

I think I prefer the current format to James Swiss system idea as there is even less chance for a poor team to do well in such a system. it just favors the strong tams even more.

OLMEC is simply a very intricate, well-designed game, especially for one designed before the use of computer assistance, but part of that intricacy is the fact that there's a minimum of two games in a session (and 10 rounds in a year - adding or subtracting even a single round would change the game completely.) We can't avoid the one game a session in the knockout rounds, but that loses most tactical complexity as we miss out on some of the poker element.

The problem with 8 groups of 4 is that we can get the group stage done in a single go, or split it sub-optimally over two rounds.

Honestly another way of fixing the problem would be to keep things as they are, but add a separate straight knockout competition to go along with the group stage, and then give CP to participants. This would keep more managers involved longer at the risk of making the actual final less interesting, but it could easily finish during the semi-final round. That way round 1 is one cup game and one group game, round 2 is two group games or two group games + one cup game, round 3-4-5 is up to one knockout round + up to one cup round, round 6 is the World Cup final.

I had a better idea:

Nations League, run concurrently with the world cup.

These are two 16-team knockout competitions, one for the first four rounds of the game, ending in the quarterfinal round of the cup.

There are exactly 16 European teams, so those teams go in one Nations League and the rest of the world goes in the other Nations League.

This will provide teams up to four more games, including possible games after elimination, and make sure there are no one-game sessions until the knockout round while being able to maintain the 32-team format

Also by splitting this into two separate competitions ending at the quarterfinal stage it doesn't take away the prestige of the main tournament while also allowing teams an additional chance to earn CPs.

Thoughts?

Hi,

I appreciate the time people have put into these multiple options. I may be able to incorporate some of the ideas, but I don’t know which until I speak with Al. A lot of work has to go into running the competition, and I know from working with Al on the WC that there is only so much that can be done (or in this case changed). Things for the original WC were made slightly easier by using the existing AP Cup format that mirrored the WC. I don’t know how much can be changed, e.g. a second group format after the first 12 teams were knocked out. I definitely want to continue conversations about this, especially if we can find a “simple” update that would keep managers involved and engaged longer (and would ideally keep Aires from winning a second trophy).

To be clear, no changes will be incorporated for WC50. So ideas and suggestions would be for WC52 at the earliest. I also want to add that the number of teams will remain 32, and the nations involved will not change. It has been challenging to get (almost) enough players for each country, so expanding that number would only increase the complexity and see more countries require NL players for the Cup. Sorry Dr. Dohm, Jamaica will not be involved in the tournament. 

Please keep sharing ideas. I really do appreciate everyone’s input and participation. It makes this competition as much fun as I imagined it would be. Cheers!

I'm in will stay with Mexico if it's available 

I'm in.