Booting up an ancient savegame

[VT45]

So I am looking to convert an old EU4 grand campaign game (like pre-mission tree old), which I've been doing slowly and painstakingly by hand. The advice I've been given by the Victoria 3 players is to find a way to boot up the old savegame to update it to a newer and compatible version. Is that something that's possible? Has anyone done something like that? Would it help someone do it if I could provide the old savegame file? Am I completely barking up the wrong tree here?

 

[grotaclas]

I don't think that this is really feasible. You could try to load your save in the newest eu4 version, but it is very unlikely to work. Save games are usually compatible between minor versions and sometimes you can load an older save in the next major version, but the more versions you jump the less likely it is going to work. You could try to load and resave it in each major version after the version which you played to see how far you can get. But IIRC there were several major versions like 1.30 and 1.31 which could not even load the saves from the previous major version without crashing.
And even if you can load your save, it doesn't mean that you get a useable result. Newly added provinces will start with their 1444 development and they might also be uncolonized(eu4 has an algorithm to asign new provinces to neighboring countries, but this doesn't always work). And you will be missing things from the newer versions which the converter might need. e.g. you might have no government reforms. And even if eu4 can load the save, it might be different than the converter expects and crash the converter.

I see a few more options for you:

• use an old version of the eu4 to vic2 converter which is compatible with your eu4 version(if one exists) and continue your campaign in vic2
• manually mod vic3 to add the countries from your eu4 save and either add assign them states in the mod or use the debug mode in vic3 to quickly change state ownerships
• create a new eu4 game at a start date near the end and then use a eu4 save game editor to change the province ownerships to match your campaign and then convert that campaign. But you probably still have to fix some stuff in vic3, because later start dates in eu4 are missing things like government reforms which you would acquire in a normal campaign
• do the previous thing, but instead of a save game editor, you write some code to transfer the province ownership from your old save(e.g. with the help of some of the libraries which can parse eu4 saves). Then you only have to fix the provinces which were added since your old version

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Paradox. I'm just trying to help people.

 

[VT45]

I don't think that this is really feasible. You could try to load your save in the newest eu4 version, but it is very unlikely to work. Save games are usually compatible between minor versions and sometimes you can load an older save in the next major version, but the more versions you jump the less likely it is going to work. You could try to load and resave it in each major version after the version which you played to see how far you can get. But IIRC there were several major versions like 1.30 and 1.31 which could not even load the saves from the previous major version without crashing.
And even if you can load your save, it doesn't mean that you get a useable result. Newly added provinces will start with their 1444 development and they might also be uncolonized(eu4 has an algorithm to asign new provinces to neighboring countries, but this doesn't always work). And you will be missing things from the newer versions which the converter might need. e.g. you might have no government reforms. And even if eu4 can load the save, it might be different than the converter expects and crash the converter.

I see a few more options for you:

• use an old version of the eu4 to vic2 converter which is compatible with your eu4 version(if one exists) and continue your campaign in vic2
• manually mod vic3 to add the countries from your eu4 save and either add assign them states in the mod or use the debug mode in vic3 to quickly change state ownerships
• create a new eu4 game at a start date near the end and then use a eu4 save game editor to change the province ownerships to match your campaign and then convert that campaign. But you probably still have to fix some stuff in vic3, because later start dates in eu4 are missing things like government reforms which you would acquire in a normal campaign
• do the previous thing, but instead of a save game editor, you write some code to transfer the province ownership from your old save(e.g. with the help of some of the libraries which can parse eu4 saves). Then you only have to fix the provinces which were added since your old version

Disclaimer: I'm not working for Paradox. I'm just trying to help people.

I was taking the second option beforehand, but doing it alone proved hard because updates for Vic3 are coming out faster than I can keep up with them at the moment. So when I asked for help in converting it over, the Vic3 people (on Reddit at least) suggested that it might be quicker and easier to try to launch the game and then automatically convert it from there. I had a feeling I'd be barking up the wrong tree, but I thought I'd ask anyway.

I still have the old save file from EU4 and the automated conversion to Vic2 that I was working from, but working through it on my own is an absolute slog done manually and I was hoping someone could possibly help me or at least point me in the direction of something that could help automate the process.