Contract Negotiations[]
You will not have to negotiate contracts with all players. Contract negotiations only operate for the best players in your team and simulate these top players having larger contract demands. The majority of your players just require normal contracts and these contracts are considered to be non-controversial and you don’t ever have to bother about them. All you have to concern yourself with are the contracts for the big name players at your club.
These contracts are about the size of the bonus the player wants for signing the contract and the length of the contract. The signing bonus is paid as soon as the contract is signed. Apart from this signing bonus you don’t have to worry about wages, as these are taken care of by the club board and don’t impact your seasonal budget. So, as far as you are concerned, the only things that contracts impact are the cost of the bonus and the length of the contract.
At any one time there will be a maximum of ten players in your club that you might have to negotiate a contract with, though sometimes your club will have less than this, or even none in extreme circumstance. These ten players are considered the club’s ‘best’ players.
These ten players are the ten highest PL (Player Level) players in the club (ties broken in favour of the younger player). However, you only have to negotiate a contract with one of these players if that player’s PL is 1 or more levels higher than your club’s CPL (Club Player Level).
e.g. As a starting club you will have a CPL of 15. That means that only the players that have a PL above 15 will require any sort of contract negotiation, and then only the ten highest PL players above 15 PL.
If a player rises into the top ten players then contract negotiations will only start if there are currently less than 10 contracts currently running. If there are less than 10, then contract negotiations will start immediately.
If a contract reaches its end, then a new contract negotiation will start with any player in the top 10 of the club who is not currently operating under a contract and whose PL is above your club’s current CPL, even if this is a different player. If there is no such player, then no contract negotiations start.
You can also begin contract negotiations with a player already under contract if you wish and so don’t have to wait for their current contract to end. You can only do this, however, with a player that is currently in your club’s top 10 PL players i.e. it is possible to have a player operating under an existing contract that is no longer in the top 10 PL players in the club – you would be unable to start negotiations with this player if that was the case.
When a contract negotiation starts you are notified of the fact. Once the negotiation starts you can start playing contract cards into negotiation slots to start creating better contract terms for the club.
During contract negotiations you will play Contract cards into available contract negotiation slots. Each contract negotiation has two sections where cards can be played - one section that impacts the size of the signing-on bonus the player demands, and the other section impacts the length of the contract that the player wants (the signing-on bonus is the amount of money the club must pay out of club cash to the player when the contract is signed).
You can only play a total of seven Contract cards in any single negotiation, and can choose which sections to play these cards into – you could play all seven into one section, or split them between the two sections, whatever you prefer, but a total maximum of seven cards can be played into one negotiation.
A contract negotiation will end once you have played seven Contract cards into it or after seven days have passed, whichever occurs sooner. Once the negotiation has reached its end the contract is automatically signed.
It makes no difference if during a negotiation a player’s PL falls below your club’s CPL, or falls out of the top 10 highest PL players in your club. Once contract negotiations start they progress until the contract is negotiated and then it is automatically signed.
Lastly, if your club cannot afford the signing bonus then the club board will still pay the money and any cash deficit in your finances will be deducted from next season’s budget.
Contract Demands[]
A player will always start a contract negotiation with his initial demands. They will demand as signing bonus of an amount equal to their PL squared x100 e.g. a player with a PL of 20 will demand a signing bonus of $40,000. They will also demand a contract length of 56 days (the length of two seasons).
You can bring down the signing bonus amount by playing a Contract cards into one of the signing bonus slots. The amount the card will bring down the amount is equal to the player’s PL divided by 5, multiplied by 1,000, and then multiplied by the card-energy value of the Contract card played.
e.g. A 1 card-energy Contract card played on a player with a PL of 20 will reduce the requested signing on bonus by $4,000 (PL/5x1000x1), while a 2 card-energy Contract card would reduce it by $8,000 (PL/5x1000x2).
You can extend the duration of the contract by playing a Contract card into one of the contract duration slots. A contract card will increase the duration by an amount of days equal to 2 days multiplied by the energy value of the card.
Contract cards will have a focus on them which will be one of the position groups the game uses (Prop, Hooker, Lock, Flanker, Number 8, Scrum-Half, Fly-Half, Center, Wing, or Fullback). If the card focus matches the best position of the player then the card will have an increased effect. For the signing bonus it will add +20%, and for the contract duration is will add an additional 5 days.