2016-07-08 12:30

Chapter 13 - The games your team can play
Version 1.2.0 - 17.07.2018

The best roster is worthless if you don’t use it for competition. Luckily the game does offer a lot of it.

League games
As you hopefully know, your team will compete in a league analogue the setup of the NFL, 32 teams sorted in 2 conferences with each 4 division having each 4 teams.
For each conference a champion has to be found during the playoffs. Each conference does give 6 teams a playoff spot, 4 of them are divisional champs, sorted by record and PD from seat #1 to seat #4 and 2 spots are for the best teams inside the conference which are NOT divisional champs, sorted also by record and PD as seat #5 and #6, normally called wildcard teams or the wildcard seats.
Seats #1 and #2 get a bye week in the first playoff round and #3 plays #6 and #4 plays #5 in the wild card games for each conference.
The winners of the wild card games will play #1 and #2 of the conferences in the divisional round games. #1 gets the lowest remaining seated team, #2 the other one.
The winners of the divisional playoff games will play for the conference championship.
For each round does the highest seated team be the home team.
After the two conference champions are decided, they will meet in the Bowl to find the league champion.
With that game the league games are over for all 32 teams and all teams have to wait for the season rollover.

The 2 conference champions will advance to a higher league (except for the Elite league conference champions, since there is no higher league).
For Elite league it’s clear which division they will enter, since they swap places with the two worst teams of the division the region is linked to.

Thunder <-> Elite League AC East
Fire <-> Elite League AC North
Claymores <-> Elite League AC South
Admirals Elite <-> League AC West
Sea Devils <-> Elite League NC East
Monarchs Elite <-> League NC North
Galaxy Elite <-> League NC South
Dragons Elite <-> League NC West

For all other promotions do the teams enter a division with an available spot, so it’s impossible to really plan the spot you might get into. It’s random within the available spots.

The divisional playoff losers will play in relegation games against the 5th to 8th worst teams from the league a level higher (except if you are level 1, since there are no relegation games between level 1 and Elite league). Those relegation games do happen one gameday prior the Bowl.

You can also promote through a BOT flush (except if you are a level 1 league team, since you can’t BOT flush to Elite) which means, that a lower league team get selected to fill a BOT spot in a league 1 level higher. It is possible that a BOT promotes to Elite league, because there is no BOT flush in Elite league, so the promotion is done as if the team is human controlled and the missing BOT flush prevents that the team gets instantly relegated again. That BOT has to play the full Elite league season to get down again. But that happened only once so far. You can avoid a BOT flush promotion by a setup in your overall team settings. This would prevent for example that a completely new team from level 2 will go to level 1 and gets hammered for a complete season. I can only recommend this to do, at least in the first season, but it’s up to you. Honestly I’m not sure whether that checkbox does prevent also a promotion via BOT flush if the league needs for sure an additional team. Could be that you get forced into it.

The schedule in the league games are always set up the same way with slightly differences regarding the opponents each season. As part of a conference and a division you play

- 6 games against your divisional rivals, 3 home games, 3 away games
- 4 games against a division not your own, but inside your own conference, 2 home games, 2 away games
- 4 games against a division from the other conference, 2 home games, 2 away games
- 2 games against random teams of your own conference, 1 home game, 1 away game

That’s 16 games , 8 home games, 8 away games and you will have 1 bye week in addition to complete the 17 league gamedays prior the playoffs.
Of course your division rivals will just change based on promotions and relegations, the 2 played other divisions are each season randomly selected, so one season you play maybe the AC South and NC North and the next season you play AC North and NC West. Inside your own conference the chances are 1/3 to get the same division as last season, in the other conference it is 1/4. So it CAN happen that nothing chances, it’s likely something changes and it’s possible that all does change.

If you did not make the playoffs or lose during the playoffs and drop out of it you can schedule friendlies on the gamedays (Tuesday and Saturday) against the other teams from all RZA. Same is valid for that one bye week day, which is either a Tuesday or a Saturday. Those friendlies do give you not the income of a regular season home game, but some extra money and your players will also gain EXP as a positive effect and will also lose PC as a negative effect.

You can get trophies for winning a division, the conference and the league.
You get also a trophy for being a member of the elite league, regardless of the league results.

Since season 20 there is a capping on the PD calculation. If you do win with a margin of 60+ points against your opponent, the game is calculated like it was a margin of 60 points flat. The exact margin is still calculated in a different number (PDR) and comes into place when a tie breaker is needed in case of 2 or more teams have the same win-loss-record and the same official PD (that one with the flat calculation). In that case the PDR comes in place and the team with the higher number wins the tie breaker.

If you did finish in the whole league as worst team to 4th worst team, you get relegated automatically (except elite league, a different rules is used there). No deciding game, you just go down and get a spot in a lower level league (while their conference champs get promotion automatically). Which of the leagues in question you will enter is random. Level 1 will send teams to level 2.1 and 2.2.
Level 2.1 will send teams to 3.1 and 3.2 and 2.2 will send teams to 3.3. and 3.4 IF that relegation process is activated. At the moment the level 3 is closed, so the rules above is only valid for level 1 now. If level 3 opens again, this rule would be valid for level 1 and 2.
Elite league is different.
It is filled by teams from all 8 regions and each region has one linked division inside the Elite league, as written above. Each level 1 league conference champs of the 8 region do promote, so 16 teams do promote in total, each season. Therefore 16 teams have to relegate and it’s simply the case that the worst 2 teams of each division are selected. They do swap places with the 2 conference champs of the region the division in Elite league is linked to.
There are often discussion regarding this rule, since sometimes very strong teams with a positive record or even playoff teams do get relegated in one division, while in another division a team with a negative record stays in the league as 2nd best inside their division. All suggestions regarding a change were declined, so it stays as it is. In theory it can happen that the bowl winner gets relegated. Did not happen so far.

If you did finish 5th worst to 8th worst in the whole league, you get a chance to play a relegation game against the conference championship game losers of a level deeper (again, except Elite league, no relegation games between level and Elite league). The winner gets the spot in the highest level league involved.

Supercup
The Supercup is an inter-RZA organized competition. Each season all teams in the leagues and regions are put randomly into a high amount of divisions of 16 teams each and you do play against each of the 15 other teams inside your division one game.
Normally the engine does give the home right to the team with the biggest stadium, if both have the same size it’s chosen randomly.
Since teams can go BOT during the season it is wise to check the next opponent a few days before the game (each Monday and Thursday) whether the team went BOT and whether the game site has to be changed. If the home team is a BOT, your income will be much smaller than a game in a 144.300 stadium!
Once the regular games are played, every division champ gets a playoff spot and the rest of the 128 playoff spots are filled with the best teams of all divisions which are not divisional champs, based on their win-loss record and PD (tie breakers are the same as for league playoff spots).
The 128 playoff teams have to play against each other randomly and the winners do advance to the next round of 64, which do then play again play each other randomly and those winner do again advance and so on, until the last 2 teams standing do reach the final.
The final of the Supercup is called Global Bowl and the winner does get a trophy. No trophies for divisional champs in this competition.

The Supercup is together with the Elite league the toughest competition, so if you win one, you can be quite proud.

Champ of Champs Cup
If you did win a conference in the last season, you do play Champs of Champ Cup in the current one.
The competition is automatically filled with all champs of Elite league, level 1 and level 2 and the rest is filled with BOTs to get a field of 64 teams for a playoff bracket. The pairings are random.
Why BOTs as fillers? To give no team a financial bonus which was NOT a champ a season before. Don’t ask me, what happens if all teams are human controlled. Probably a doomsday scenario.
2 Elite league champs, 16 regional league champs of level 1 and 32 of level 2 => 50 Champs are normally human, 14 teams are fillers. I have to admit that it is very likely that at season start 14 BOT teams are available. It can happen that such a BOT teams get a new manager and becomes a human controlled team, but that happens not often.

The winners of the first round advance to the next round to play against another randomly selected winner and so on until the last two teams do play the final. Classic knock out competition.
The winner of the final does get a trophy.
The competition is played on the Friday slot, so if you compete in the CoC you can’t play friendly games on Friday.
Be aware that the first round starts late mid-season, so until then you CAN play friendlies on Friday and of course you can play friendlies on Friday again once you did drop out of the CoC or the competition is ended. But since this is a major ticket income, I’m sure you won’t complain. ;-)

Friendlies
You can set up friendlies for free on every Friday (as long as no Champ of Champ Cup game is scheduled for you) and every Tuesday and Saturday in offseason and bye weeks. Normally the Tuesday and Saturdays are league game days.
The Friday friendlies can be set up by a challenge through some others teams overview page or by using the challenge pool tool, which will set up a game on Thursday (or on Friday for a Saturday game and on Monday for a Tuesday game), if the set up parameters do match the opponent parameters. There is a very small chance NOT to get a friendly by that tool, because some parameters are not right or not enough teams are available.
For example will the tool not set up an away game for you, if you did request a home game and not enough teams willing to play an away game are available.
So if you don’t mind the location, try home and away as parameter, under the risk to play in a small arena.
Normally the Friday games have between 30.000 and 40.000 visitors, so you should aim for at least that size of an arena, which is unfortunately not a parameter for the tool.
If you like to set up the friendly by yourself, you can challenge teams quite early, right on Saturday for the next Friday.

The Tuesday and Saturday games do generate a bit more income than the Friday matches, so they are worth a try in offseason and bye week, just for the money. Please be aware that you can challenge those games only 2 days ahead, so Sunday and Monday for the Tuesday game and Thursday and Friday for the Saturday game. If you try it earlier you won’t see that day as a possible gameday for a friendly on the challenge page.

There is no rule to play friendlies, so if you don’t like to, you don’t have to.
Each of those friendlies will generate EXP and will cost your players PC, if they participate. It’s less than a regular season game for league, Supercup or CoC, but it can help to build up EXP on your backups but will also slow their training a bit down (since you need to train PC more often eventually).

On all other gamedays you can challenge teams for a friendly which does not give you income and no EXP and won’t cost PC. Those games will cost 5 credits for each participant and are just for fun.

Friendly Cups
If you like you can participate in a friendly cup, which will grant you a trophy if you can win the cup. The trophy is free to configure by the cup manager, who does set up the cup, so you might even win not only a trophy, you might win a unique trophy.
The problem with the friendly cups is that you do need some Credits to participate or to set up a cup. The price range is from 25 Credits to 50 Credits and only the two finalists do get Credits in return, with a range of 63/32 Credits for winner and runner up for the smallest competition to 457/228 Credits for the biggest competition available.
In general all friendly cups do work the same way.
You have to set one up or you have to sign up for an already set up one.
As Cup manager you will get info about a team signing to your cup and you can sort them in the future cup divisions by sorting them on seat #1 up to the last seat which can be seat #8, seat #16 or seat #32 if the cup is that big. Or you can decline their participation and kick them of the cup.
The future division setup is based on the competition you selected and the seats you give the teams. For example a 2 division completion with 8 teams will have seat #1 to #8 and the division 1 will be filled with seats #1 to #4 and division 2 will be filled with #5 to #8.

As simple participant you do decide to sign up and you have to wait until the manager does confirm you or he rejects you.
Be aware that once you did sign up or set up a cup for one of the two possible days (Sunday and Wednesday), you can’t sign up for another cup on the same week day and you can also not set up another cup on the same weekday. You have to finish the cup or get out of the cup. This can be a problem, because sometimes it takes quite some time until a cup is full of participants and then all have to be able to still afford the cup. Sometime the manager had the credits when he did sign up and since then lost some credits and is not able to pay after some time when the cup likes to start. Worst case is that the team get kicked from the cup and another team has to be found.
At the moment the cup starts, it is basically another mini league competition. You can have up to 7 games in the divisional round phase and based on the selected options for the cup, a few of the teams get a playoff spot. In the playoffs every game can be the last. The divisional results do determine the playoff matches of the first round, with division winners playing the weakest playoff team from another division and so on.

Be aware that there are two modes of playing the cups, normal and power mode.
Normal mode does take your team and everything is like a league game or a Supercup game. A big difference in team strength will always favour the stronger team and it’s hard to impossible to win a friendly cup in normal mode if you are not level 1 or Elite and such teams are in the mix.
Power mode does mean, that all players on gameday get a skill value of 40 on all skills, regardless the teams league or level. That means that a level 2 team can beat an Elite team, even big time. This mode is a good method to have many participants, since you can try to recruit in whole RZA, while in normal mode you might end up with a cup for the newer teams, or for the Elite teams or you like to restrict sign ups to certain strength levels (that has to be done manual, there is no parameter in the Cup setup to ensure such level).
Friendly cup games do not influence EXP, PC and they do also not generate income!

All-Stars Challenge
Since season 28 there is this mode of play. It’s a nice way to play a bit around with your team against a bunch of super-pros.
You can play in 3 different modes, relaxed, normal and MOTY, and each will give you a different trophy if you win.
Each game will cost you 10 Credits and will have no effect on EXP or PC.
The opponent will an All-Star-Team of the best available players in RZA at that moment and the appearance inside an All-Star-Game will be recorded in the players stat page (as far as I know only if they play as All-Stars, not in your team).
In addition, also the best coaches are selected.
Still, they will play with basic tactics on both sides of the ball and you actually can win against such teams. The winners will also be recorded in the chronical page of RZA.

Scrimmage
As last game variation you can plan scrimmages.
They do cost credits right now only if you try the new engine and they are for free if you use the league engine. Those games do schedule a game between your team and … your team.
It’s purely to test some options in private, like playbooks, depth charts or game settings.
Sometimes it is helpfully to do such a scrimmage to get a feeling about changes to the playbook or depth chart, but they are not played regularly.
If you like to test some stuff, I suggest setting up several scrimmages to get different results per game. Because it can happen that a game does not end as expected and one game is not a good proof of concept for a playbook change. The game has a huge amount of random factors so one game might mislead you on the results. Of course you have to invest credits for every scrimmage you do setup, so think twice before you do setup 20 scrimmages and do wonder where the 100 credits went.
Scrimmages do not generate income and don’t cost PC and don’t gain your players any EXP.

That’s it, all game types are briefly described. I hope you did get the infos you were looking for.

forward to Chapter 14 - Create and maintain your Depth Chart
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Tags: Jack6s RZA Guide