Because there are certain things you'd like to change during a game that you would have to restart to fix but it isn't worth it. This can also be used for cheating, in fact, this is the best form of cheating as just about ANYTHING can be changed, but the primary reason I wrote this was to change little annoyances that you just cannot fix on your own in-game without having to restart the game.



This should allow you to permenantly change just about anything in your saved game, however, it involves a little editting and 2 specific tools. However, as explained above, this method allows for changing of things not possible mid-game and changes even console commands cannot do.

REQUIRED TOOLS:

• 7zip
  
• Notepad++

You CANNOT preform this method without these tools. Once you have them, you can begin:

1. Save your game with a unique name that you can easily remember and spot. From now on in this guide, I will call your save here "YOURSAVE" for ease of writing. Once you have your uniquely named save, exit to the main menu and select "load game". Here, to make it easier to find your save, you need the Empire ID of the save. This is the name of your empire (say Terran Empire) and then a number, which is normally the number of times you've used it in a saved game, so it could be say "Terrian Empire 3" or something. Remember this, along with your unique save name, and exit the game.
   
2. You will need to find your save games folder, which (as of this writing) you can find here: C:\Users\[User Name]\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Stellaris\save games\[Empire Name]. Find the Empire ID folder you noted when looking for your save, and then you should find a file called YOURSAVE.sav inside that folder. You could also just search every folder until you find your "easy to remember" save name with a folder that has the correct Empire name on it. This is where all the saved data is for your galaxy.
   
3. Once you find it, Copy (don't just take it) the file to your desktop. The reason I say copy is because if anything goes wrong during this operation, you will still have a "clean" save to retry later if needed. Once the YOURSAVE.sav is on your desktop, click on it to change it's name. You need to change the file name to YOURSAVE.zip. The only thing that you should change is the ".sav" to ".zip". This will allow you to open the save file. Your computer will warn you that you are messing with the "file extension" and could "break" the file. Ignore the warning and continue anyway.
   
4. Use 7zip (the first program needed) to open YOURSAVE.zip. Inside you will find two files: "gamestate" and "meta". You want to extract both files to your desktop.
   NOTE: WinRAR can work at this stage, but for a later stage, I'm not sure how to do it with WinRAR, and it's the most important part, so you must have 7zip, or I don't know how to help you. If you can follow Step 8 below exactly with WinRAR, then use that if you wish.
   
5. Open up "gamestate" with Notepad++. There is a good reason you require this program (or another good text editor you are familiar with) because you cannot use regular Notepad. It will not save the file correctly and Stellaris will not be able to read it. Now at this point, you can make any changes to the save you want. If you are familiar with some of Stellaris' internal coding, this will help, but you can change any number of things about the game. Once you have found and changed all you want, save the file.
   
6. Now that the gamestate file has been altered, you need to put it back into .zip form. However, you can NOT just put it back into the file YOURSAVE.zip. It will not be saved correctly and Stellaris won't be able to read it. You have to create a "new" .zip file with the modified "gamestate" file and the unaltered "meta" file. I'm going to do this with 7zip, but if you know a way to do it with WinRAR, go right ahead. That's why you have a backup. Select both files by holding "ctrl" and clicking on both. Once both are highlighted (make sure you didn't highlight any other files), right-click and find the "7zip" option on the listings, and inside the 7zip menu, find "add to archive" and select it.
   
7. When the box comes up, you now have to properly compress the two files into a manner that will allow Stellaris to read the files. If you do not do everything listed here, Stellaris cannot read the file. Please carefully follow these instructions:
   
   • Inside the "Archive" type box at the top, type in a new name for your save, similiar to your original unique one, say "YOURSAVEFIXED.zip". With the "new" name, you have your original save as a backup in case anything goes wrong to try again.
     
   • For "Archive Format" you must select "zip" and nothing else.
     
   • For "Compression Method" you must select "Deflate" and nothing else.
     
   • At the bottom in the "Parameters" type box, type in the following: tc=off
     
   • Select "OK", and when you see a new file called "YOURSAVEFIXED.zip", change the extension back to ".sav" from ".zip", so Stellaris will know it's a save game file.
     
   • Warning: If any of these listed instructions are not followed, Stellaris will not read the file correctly and load a "blank" galaxy and you will have to retry to compress the "gamestate" and "meta" files.
8. Put your newly named (yet similiar) save ".sav" file back into the same folder that you found the original one in, so Stellaris can find the file. Load Stellaris and (assuming you find the new save) try to load your "new" saved game. If everything worked throughout this guide, then you should load the game save normally and all your pieces should be there, only with all the changes you just made. If not, and you get a blank galaxy, try the compression of "gamestate" and "meta" again. If that doesn't work, go back through your changes in the gamestate file and make sure no coding errors were made. If all else fails, restart the entire process with your "backup" unique save.