A football results simulation engine, which has potential to evolve into a game.

tournament_simulator

This is a 16-team tournament simulation, which:

• defines starting teams and their strengths
• sorts those teams randomly into 4 groups of 4 teams
• creates a league table for each group
• creates a home/away set of fixtures between every team in a group
• simulates the outcome of each match, taking into account:
  • home advantage
  • strength of each team
  • recent form (last 5 games)
  • previous result
  • random factor
• updates the league table and team stats after each result, sorting teams by:
  • points
  • then goal difference
  • then team strength (weakest first)
  • then alphabetically
• carries the top 2 teams from each group through to a knock-out format
• simulates the outcome of knockout games, adding penalty shootout logic:
  • 5 penalties each, then sudden death
  • penalty conversion is based on random chance
• declares a final winner
• calculates tournament performance for each team using a coefficient system:
  • teams awarded points for positive results, as well as goals
  • more weighting given to higher profile fixtures
• awards prize money to teams based on tournament performance
• updates the strength of each team based on available money in the bank
  • teams retain a buffer to help them cope with bad seasons
  • any money available above and beyond the buffer can be used to strengthen the team
  • negative bank balances result in teams having to sell players
• loops through multiple seasons of the tournament
• provides a list of historical tournament winners and match stats

To-do:

• improve result simulator with additional logic (e.g. factor in current league position of each team)
• improve table sorting logic (add more sort criteria following actual European league rules)
• improve coefficient calculation with additional logic (e.g. Elo-style scoring system)
• tidy up code

Long-term:

• turn into an interactive game, accepting user inputs and decisions