Rules

WARNING !!!

These rules have changed and were last updated on January 2nd. You should look at the addendums before you begin to play.
There is also a FAQ sheet.
And if you feel really involved in the developpement of the game, you should look at the developpement page, there are some ideas for the future of the game which might require your attention. 

Index

0. How that works
1. How to contact me
2. How to subscribe
3. How to send your orders
4. Orders to send each turn
5. How does the economic works
6. How does the politic works
7. What about playing the games
8. What about trading
9. What about National Teams
10. What about my giant stadium
11. First Advises
12. What about my money

0. How that works

World Soccer is a play-by-e-mail game in which you are the manager of one of the greatest soccer teams in the world. Your task is to beat all other players by all possible means ! You have to build a good sponsoring for your team therefore you will buy the best brazilians ever and try to beat Juventus Torino in Final of the Champion's League in Paris. And last, but not least, you will have to build your team with the best strategy ever. You know, the best strategy with good players can beat the best players with a weak strategy. That's your work guys !
The game is divided into turns which are 14 real days. Each turn you have to submit your orders.

1. How to contact me

You can send me comments or anything at cedric.lefebvre@hol.fr.

2. How to subscribe

I think most of you have their favourite teams and would like to reserve them, so submit your form.

3. How to send your orders

Since this is a program who deals with your mails, when you send your orders you have to respect a few rules :
- the orders begin with #BEGIN and end with #END. If you want to make comments, you can write whatever you want before #BEGIN and #END
- you can only write one order per line !!!
- each line must begin by the order written in LARGE LETTERS, and the the contents of the order written normally.

Example :
#BUY RONALDO 100 500 ...

4. Orders to send each turn

There are different kinds of orders you have to send to me each turn :
Economical orders : what you do with your money ?
Game orders : what is your strategy for the next game ?
Annoucement : what do you want to tell to other players ?
Political orders : it is possible that after some good games you become elected to be the manager of the national team or work at the FIFA or UEFA. In this case other orders would have to be sent. You have also to send your choices for election.

All these orders have their own grammar look at the list of orders.

5. How does the economic works

In this game you are the manager of one big economical group who might deal with billions of francs (FF French Francs : my own money, to be converted later...). Therefore, you will have to choose what you will do with it; you can do a lot of things in fact :
- Invest in your stadium (increase the number of places, increase the quality...)
- Buy new players of course from the other teams
- Sell your players
- Buy contacts in other countries to keep an eye on the rookies to be able to sign them in your team
- Engage spies to spy the other teams
- Engage some guys such as a trainer, an healer...
- Pay your own players
- Offer some extra gains to your players for good games
- Offer money to your opponents to let you win...
Look at the list of orders for more explanations.

6. How does the politic works

This game is not supposed to be played in only one country but in as many countries as possible. The order of countries is Italy, France, Spain, Germany, England, Netherlands... I would like to play as many championships as possible. So check your friends !!! (And you can also play many teams in different countries after a while). First the championships should be played by 10 teams per country. This is a good number which allows a maximum of teams to play the european cups.
In this game you are not only a watcher but you also should be part of the game, just like in reality. For each country there should be an elected Federation President, representing the country at the FIFA counsel, an elected League President, representing his country at the UEFA counsel, a National Manager named by the Federation President to manage the national team. Each of these persons has a number of defined powers. The FIFA decides of the future of the game and decides with the manager of the game (me) what improvements should be made. Any improvement should be voted by the 2/3 majority and I have a veto right to cancel any impossible or unwise improvement.
The UEFA decides of the new laws about the european cups and economics. This works the same as the FIFA.
The National Manager can spy each turn one team freely unless there is no national player in this team.
You can never have 2 political works at the same time.
The two presidents are elected for a year (a season). 

7. What about playing the games

This pbem game is rather complicated (I prefer to say realistic) and each player has a lot of caracteristics to be defined with (more than 20). And each of them has som influence on the way the player plays. But normally you should not have access to most of them. If it does interest you there should be another paragraph with them. You will only have access to : age, statistics, height, shape, position (Goalkeeper, Defender, Midfield, Attacker) and the best foot (left, right or both) which means that the player best plays on left, right or does not matter. With a lot of tries you should be able to figure a good startegy.

The strategy is defined by an order and does not change until you order it again. Let's explain how that works to figure your first strategy.
To build your strategy, you have to choose 11 players, their position and their way of playing plus 4 replacers.
There are numerous places for the players and sometimes there can be one or more players of that kind : (I do not know the right names in english for the positions so correct me please !)
- Goalkeeper (1) ex : Peter Schmeichel
- Wing Defender (2) ex : Roberto Carlos
- Central Defender (1 or 2) ex : Marcel Dessailly
- Libero (1) (playing behind the defense) ex : Ricardo
- Stopper (1) (playing before the defense and leader of it) ex : Laurent Blanc
- Defensive Midfield (1 or 2) ex : Didier Deschamps
- Central Midfield (1 or 2) ex : Michael Laudrup
- Wing Midfield (1 or 2) ex : Ibrahim Ba
- GameLeader (1) ex : Zinedine Zidane
- Offensive Midfield (1 or 2) ex : Denilson
- Wing Attacker (2) ex : Daniele Massaro
- Central Attacker (1 or 2) ex : Ronaldo

Your replacers are 5 :
1st is a goalkeeper
2nd is a defender
3rd is a midfield
4th is an attacker
 

Well that's all for strategy, look at the orders for the grammar of this order.

8. What about Trading

Trading is just one of the nerves of the game. It is the way the richest teams become the best teams (or do not if they made bad choices, such as Barcelona with Dugarry !).
The managers of the players contact each other via e-mail and discuss the matter. Then one turn both manager should order me (through SEND and BUY orders) to trade. They have to fix the salary and the Trade Costs. If they do not come to an agreement they can call on FIFA and ask for them to fix prices. But it will have effect only in special cases (new salary doubled from the old...) Then the FIFA will tell its answer. One player without a contract will quit his team and be available freely (except for salary) to everybody and will go to the best offer (salary modified by the celebrity of the team).

9. What about National Teams

As it as been already said the national managers are named by the FIFA representant. They stay at their post as long as the FIFA representant does not name someone else. Usually the best manager of the league should be him because good results from the national team, in addition to giving experience, good moral, to your international players, gives all the teams of the country more celebrity which makes more people come to the stadiums, makes other countries' teams fear you, makes young players of your country appear more frequently...
This manager has the special power to spy each game a team which contains a player from your country freely.
He is supposed to play world cup qualifications...
It won't be used for the first season.

10. What about my giant stadium

One of the most important things is the stadium. To deal with it is really simple compared to all the computer games. First I thought it was not needed, but after some tries I figured it would add to realism.
You have some things to do with it :
- build new places (about 3000 FF per seat)
It is to be known that there can be everywhere the same audience; that means that Monaco (in reality 8000 sp) can have as much audience as Barcelona.

11. First advises

With all that rules, I think you should be able to figure how the game works extern; maybe you would like to see more, therefore continue. But now I will dispatch some advises about how to handle the game.

First I want to tell you that I decided to be as realistic as possible which was pretty hard. But it has a good advantage : if you want to build the team of your dreams, it should work. But I also decided to make players have team of the same strenght to let them equal chances, so I increased the skills of some teams and increase those of others. With this system, on one hand, good players playing in bad teams should have increased caracteristics and on the other hand, good players in the best teams should be weaker than they are in reality. So be careful with players you think are great ! In addition, even if I am a great fan of soccer and my friends too, we are no encyclopedia of soccer and we might think a none well-known good player is not very good, even if we think we are right. But mainly we should be close from reality.
So you have subscribed to the game and now what ?
You will have some money to begin with. With it I think there are some things to say : you might first decide to increase the capacity of your stadium which takes a lot of time to; or if you think your team has great weaknesses you might prefer to buy new players. That's up to you. But I think it is hard to evaluate the players without having played a while, therefore maybe you should wait a bit to distinguish your strenght and weaknesses and know the good players. So maybe you should wait a bit before changing what you have.
My second advise deals with strategy : make your strategy on paper before trying it, with paper you should know that there's a hole in your atlantic wall that should be your defense !
Third, try ! Do not keep your average tactic, there is always a better one !
Change your tactic but not too much, because a player has to stay at the same place before doing good and if he does not definitely good, try to put him somewhere else !
That's all folks, now begin to play !!!

12. What about my money

In this game, just like in reality, the best manager can not win without money. Each game, you receive some money through your stadium, by selling players... But what will you do with it ? At the beginning of the game you will have some money (50 Millions) and you will have to deal with it.
In addition you can have 3 times money borrowed from the bank at the same time. You can not borrow more than 100 millions each time and you will have to pay a bonus of (number of years * 10%) or more. You will also have to pay back for it in 3 years maximum and pay for it each month.