I am unsure if this has been discussed before, but I could not find answers and set out to create my own solution to creating a custom game. My stepson and I enjoy playing as a team against many AI’s, but at higher difficulty levels he (as well as myself at times) falls behind and we subsequently we lose. I wanted to use the Ingame Editor (IGE) to create a map with a few extra salt tiles and to remove the AI’s extra settler whilst still being able to play together in multiplayer mode. I was able to achieve this goal and I'm willing to share my results here:


This process starts with creating a modded single player game with IGE to create the edits I wanted for both of our races and then saving a copy. Next is to create the exact same game in a local network multiplayer mode with every map/game setting as well as manually including the same AI races and in the same order they were created in the Mod saved game. After my stepson adds himself to the multiplayer game and the map is generated, a second save file is made.


I use a hex editor to effectively merge the two saved games into a combination file that has the map details of the Modded saved game with the metadata from the multiplayer saved game into a new loadable multiple player save. I cut all of the hex code from the start of the multiplayer saved game file to just before the map data located at the string “FINAL_RELEASE@” and then pasting it over the same data locations found in the original modded saved game file.


I then load up the new combined saved game into a local network game with my stepson joining in and selecting the race that was originally was in mind back when I created the modded game. Presto! We profited and did so without any glitches. We just finished a new game tonight and had done so with both player having a few salt tiles as well as having had the “Explored All” feature activated from back when I used the IGE in which we were both subsequently able to see the whole map throughout out new multiplayer game.


Of course, do not expect to be able to load up the IGE while in a multiplayer game as that is not possible from what I know. In this guide you would need to know the changes you wanted to have made prior to ever playing a multiplayer game.


I suppose you could reverse the aforementioned steps to load a saved multiplayer game at any point, and cut & paste metadata around to load it in a single player mod mode and use the IGE to make the much needed mid-game changes; then re-apply via cut & paste back into a multiplayer save, but I haven’t tried it--just suspect that it too would work.