Thanks, works like a charm

Thanks a lot Andruh, I will refer other players of the modded game to this answer. As always, your mods really help the community and your efforts are much appreciated.

I was waiting for this question.
It depends on how much used mode differs from the original Civ5.
1. If it is just cosmetic differences and save format is not changed, it is possible to replace the DLL only to load and save the file.
2. Perhaps same standalone tool from Dynamic: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=443989 will be useful. In it also has functionality of bloat remove, but it does not require a loading saves by Civ5 application.
3. Finally, if the differences are significant and savefile format changed, I am ready to give to author of used mod an unbloat patch - a set of code changes that add my unbloat fix. Author will be able to embed this code into his mod source code, release a new version of mod that will automatically remove the bloating at everey savefile loading.

I know this "This mod can't help if your game uses mod that already replaces DLL because there may be only one mod with DLL replacement", but for modded games what can be done to decrease file size? Any ideas?

You should explicitly use Custom Advanced Setup and Save File Unbloat each time you perform turn. When you restart Civ5 or just load game via multiplayer/hot seat, Save File Unbloat not used and bloating continue its life and growth.
Right way for using mod - is oneshot repair of already bloated save.
The rest of the time you can play via hot seat menu, but do not forget to restart Civ5 before each new load to prevent bloating grow.

I activated both this mod and Custom Advanced Setup Screen MOD. I restart my Civ V and played my turn via multiplayerrobot/hot seat mode. Whenever I play more than 1 game, it still gives bloated save file error... What do I do wrong?

Thank you very much for this mod my friend.

Sorry. I am unfamiliar with the finer details of modding. Thanks for the quick response.

This mod don't available for Mac/Linux because of inability to create DLL-replacing mod for these platforms.
Removing bloat from save is once-only operation and can be performed on another computer with Windows.
Save files for Civ5 are cross-platform compatible.

Could you post a direct download link? The Steam Workshop is unavailable for Mac/Linux.

Its seems like patch 1.0.3.276 does not fix bloating bug. Probably it even don't renew dll code - only exe and xml files. Anyway, I updated patch to current DLL source code from SDK.

@Andruh I deleted that save awhile ago and created a new one. The mod seemed to work but around 260-280 turn, the game freezes randomly (Next turn is clicked or save game is clicked). Not sure if this mod caused it but I never had the problem before with other saves. I can send you the save for this one.

iCeFrEnZy,
Could you send me the file that causes an error when downloading? I'll try to understand what the problem is.

I saved a game with this mod on and I got a runtime error when I loaded it ;_;

This does really lower the file sizes! Thumbs up and I hope to see more content from you in the future!

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/groups/multiplayerrobot/discussions/0/46476691540040509/ - details about bloating bug and how to avoid it

https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=75500984&searchtext=Custom+Advanced+Setup+Screen
Thought I'd leave a link to the other mod that's needed to use this one.

Awesome work by the way. After months of closing CiV between each GMR turn, I found out a different way to prevent bloating, but didn't realise you need to disable BNW and G&K each time you open CiV, or it enables them and causes bloat again.

Good news from 2K support.
I received a reply to my patch propose that developers are already aware of the bloating issue and hopefully they would be able to come up with a fix in the near future.

Yes, there are problems, but it is a small fee for the opportunity to cure the bloated save.
But this mod is not the cause of these problems.
If the load save game through Custom Advanced Setup, even without Save File Unbloat Mod , we see replaced names.
If load GMR game and save it, even without Mod - names replaced by Player1, Player2, ...

I used this on more than 10 save files for GMR games and it greatly helps to reduce the file size.
So far, I have encountered a minor problem with this, which is,

when I load a hotseat (GMR) game using this mod, the player names are replaced by standard AI names (just names are gone, they are still treated as human players when I use diplomacy).

If I save using the mod, then reload that saved (and bloating fixed) file, the AI names are now replaced by Player 1, Player 2 etc.

Once I upload the file to GMR, no issues are reported by other players. When it is my turn again, and if I load the save file by normal means, I see that everything is back to normal.

Not a big deal and does not affect the game play, but just wanted to report it.

I was thinking about trying to bloat a file, see if I can get it up to a few MBs and really test out this mod.

I haven't got a bloated save to try this but it sounds like a good idea.