How to Change Game Rules Mid-Game (Win 10/11)

This guide will describe how to change the rules of your game (even the difficulty) after it has already started.

Opening Notes

• I run the game through Steam on Windows 10, don't ask about Mac or Linux, I can't help you
  
• A good text editor like Notepad++ will help dramatically
  
• 7-Zip, WinRar, or another compression/decompression software will help as well
  
• This will not work with cloud saves or Ironman saves
  
• I am by no means an expert, I'm simply trying to help people who want a quick and easy guide

Step One: Find your Save

This is the easy part. Saves are located in:

C:\Users\YOUR_USERNAME\Documents\Paradox Interactive\Crusader Kings III\save games

Then, locate the save you want to edit, it should look something like this (unless you manually named it):

King_John_of_England_1200_6_15.ck3

Step Two: Decompression

All CK3 saves are compressed to save space. In order to edit them, simply use a program (I use 7-Zip) to decompress the .ck3 file.

After the file is decompressed, you should now have a folder with your save inside. Open the folder and edit the new "gamestate" file with any text editor.

The gamestate file should look like this.

Step Three: Editing

Now, go wild! From here you can edit your characters name, the date, and anything else (use with caution and always have a backup because it might corrupt your save). To find the game rules specifically, simply do a ctrl+f search for "game_rules"

Notice: There are two parameters for difficulty, you must change BOTH for the change to take effect! Find both with a ctrl+f search for "difficulty", it's the only two hits.

Step Four: Finishing Up

When you are done editing, all you have to do to play the save is rename the "gamestate" file to something with .ck3 at the end (ex. King_John.ck3). From there, move it into the "save games" folder that the original save was in, and launch the game. You do NOT need to recompress the save, CK3 will do that for you the next time you do a manual save. Now go forth and kill infidels!

[MINOS]

Why is there still no Mod for it to change on an existing Game Save ingame?

Very very very annoying...

[Slinbkk]

it helped, it worked for me

[Eezo]

Idk, just edit it straigh with notepad++, seem fine so far.

[SnowZ]

I do not know if this is patched out or not because when I tried it out. It either did not work or just crashed my game.

[Cpt. Tomilin]

So you can not extract the file, but edit it inside WinRAR using Notepad++.

[lotherius]

Also, if you want, you can set the corrected gamerules and save them as a preset, which you can find in "player/game_rules/presets.txt

[lotherius]

Lifesaver when you inadvertently had the wrong gamerule set and it completely wrecks your game after 10 hours.

[Hyena-Princess]

I seem to be having an issue with this. I even just took one of my saves, pulled out the gamestate, and renamed it without even changing anything, and the game wouldnt even load it

[Panda BaoBao PL]

I invite you to my new ultimate guide about millitary
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2846475771

[Itheff]

@brandon.hiraeth When I was meddling around in the configs myself I simply kept an instance of the game running at the same time and clicked through the rules options to find what I wanted. Unfortunately, I don't know of any full lists of all the game rules and their tags but worse-come-to-worse you can always make a new game with the game rules you want, and then copy-paste those rules into your save.