So I've been thinking about this challenge for a while; the mono-country challenge. Pretty straight forward: I can only use riders and sponsors from a certain country.
First of all; which country would you guys think would be a fun challenge? Countries like Spain and Italy are too easy, but my eventual goal will be to win the TDF, so a country like Thailand will probably be impossible. Any good suggestions?
I've been thinking about Kazakhstan/Ukraine, or even Africa as a continent.
Also, is there an easy way to add dossiers of a certain rider, coming from a certain nationality, in the transfer period? Searching through the huge list of riders for a specific country would be annoying.
There are a few cool options here I think. Portugal, Norway, Poland and the US come to mind if you want to start in a country that already has a good base of riders. If you want to start a step below that, maybe something like Estonia or other Eastern European countries like Slovenia or Croatia, who have or have had a few good riders but not the depth or the elite that those above. If you want to step outside of Europe, I think any non-Colombian South American country could be interesting, although maybe a bit too hard, idk. South Africa might also have enough to carry you through this challenge,.same for Canada.
What I think is the most important thing though is that you have a cool "narrative" for you to follow. Which country would you like to have their first GT or Monument winner, or the first World Champ? Do you want a country with a rich tradition that has fallen behind in recent years or never quite reached the top, or do you want to build a completely new tradition yourself?
Also, if you have decided on a country, you can edit the number of regens (newly generated young riders) in the DB. In the STA_regions table, there's a column called something with weight. The higher that value, the more riders are generated (approximately one rider per 4 points). However, there also need to be regen names in the local.cdb for that to work. For that, may I recommend the first update for the PCM.daily DB, published just yesterday?
Oh and if I remember correctly, you should be able to sort by country on the dossiers page by clicking above the column with the flags, like you sort everything else. Then you just have to look for the country.
Eventually, I decided to approach things a little different, I started The African Project. Made my custom team, with a sponsor from South Africa that was already called "Project Africa".
I started my career with 15 riders all from different African countries, only allowing one rider per nationality. Also I forced myself to not pick the best African riders now, my highest overall is 66.
After this, the only rule that applies is that at all times, all riders, staff and the sponsor must be from an African country.
Lots of fun already!
