Cheating in Ironman

[Prof. Dr. Konrad R. Theobald]

Hello, is there any way to cheat in Ironman? Something really dumb happened and I would hate to just throw away my Savegame over it but it makes no sense to keep playing it.

So I was wondering if there is any way to cheat in Ironman? Maybe with a software of some sort? Or is there a program to decrypt the savegame so it is possible to edit it in a text editor?

[Jackochainsaw]

Not that I know of. What happened exactly? Nothing is impossible in the game unless you are in the 11th hour or have made a permanent choice that prevents you hitting a certain achievement.

I'd hate to say you are boned in this regard, but you might be boned, I just hope you didn't put too many hours in.

I had a Wily as the Fox attempt that went very pear shaped. I got it the second time out converting all of Sicily to Norman culture and being very lucky when swearing fealty to the Byzantines by getting the hook I needed to stay Catholic and another hook for War Declaration due to the oppressive Crown Authority (then winning my independence after acquiring the required Kingdom with all territory converted to Catholic). That was not fun as achievements go, but I learned a lot. Still gives me nightmares.

Let me know the achievement you were going for, it might add context. Some can be recoverable regardless of the cluster. The most cheese of all the achievements (Saga in stone) has a strategy that One Proud Bavarian has covered but you can move beyond a point where it is achievable. I also have found the Witch Coven to be distinctly difficult when your family grows in the mid-late game.

Running with debug mode will invalidate the check sum.
Running with any mod beyond purely superficial will invalidate the check sum. (there are a very small number of mods that are iron man compatible but they tend to be entirely UI/graphical in nature)
Editing the savegame with a trainer will more than likely invalidate the check sum because Jomini (the game engine) keeps track.

I have heard that you can do something with the save game, where you can roll back to a manually saved iron man game, but I haven't looked into that. I'm guessing you are too late for that. The whole point of Iron Man is that if you make a derp move or the dice roll 1s, that's it, you're done. Galling as it is. Context required.