How to nuke a "stuck" unnukeable building

[Admiranda]

When Paradox introduced cities/metropolises, they forgot to remove a military academy in Ambracia/Ambrakia, Epirus. It's now utterly impossible to remove in-game. I use mods – most obviously Agamidae's 1.2 Better UI Modpack and Olympian's Futura Font Medium, as you can see in the screencaps – but nothing that would interfere with my deleting this damn military academy, I don't think. (I do use Dragonpants's Improved Buildings, but I've tried with and without that mod installed, and it doesn't appear to matter. Besides, I'm pretty sure I had this problem before Dragonpants published Improved Buildings on October 20.)

In-game, I've tried to depopulate Ambrakia so that I could recolonize it as I see fit. But this proved very difficult (probably due to Ambrakia's attractiveness as farmland), so much so that I eventually gave up on that tactic.

I know a little of editing the game files (for example, the Hellenization of Epirus into Ēpeiros you can also see in the screencaps – a personal project not completed yet, obviously). Still, I consider myself very much a newbie and certainly don't know how to remove a "stuck" building like this. Where do buildings "live" in the files, and how do they "know where to live" on the map? And once I find this info, how do I proceed from there? Please be gentle and explain it to me like I'm a five-year-old kindergartener.

Relatedly, would it be possible to edit a save-game file to delete a building in an ongoing game retroactively? If so, how?

This stupid military academy is annoying me beyond all reason. Please help!

 

[YTnuBF]

I approached it by first trying to locate the province ID number for Ambracia.

I used Notepad++ to mass search the game's localization files in //ImperatorRome/game/localization/english/ and found that it's PROV465.

Then to change the buildings there when starting a new game I looked in //ImperatorRome/game/common/setup.txt
and searched for 465. (They had added a comment naming the provinces there, so in hindsight the first part was unnecessary.)

Then you can just either delete the reference to 465 = { including everything in its block and the parentheses } at all or change the military_building into something else.


Similarly you can open your save game file in //My Coduments/Paradox Interactive/Imperator/save games/
and look for PROV465 or just 465= .

(PROV465 was faster to find, it was only mentioned in reference to an army unit and then as a block about the province itself in the save file)

The problem lies in the fact that the buildings are only separated by their position in a string:

buildings={ 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 }

It's easy to change at the start of the game since the 2 there must be the vanilla military_building = 2.

But when there are more buildings built possibly as the game goes on, you'd need to experiment to know which position corresponds with which building.

---------------------
It might make sense to make a small mod when changing the setup.txt file for example.
That way updates to your game won't overwrite it, and if something goes wrong you still have the original file.

Also Notepad++ is something that can open and edit all these files without corrupting them, it's a great tool for modding.

 

[Admiranda]

Deleting 465's military_academy in setup.txt worked perfectly, and was stupid easy. Thank you so much!

Spoiler: OP

I approached it by first trying to locate the province ID number for Ambracia.

I used Notepad++ to mass search the game's localization files in //ImperatorRome/game/localization/english/ and found that it's PROV465.

Then to change the buildings there when starting a new game I looked in //ImperatorRome/game/common/setup.txt
and searched for 465. (They had added a comment naming the provinces there, so in hindsight the first part was unnecessary.)

Then you can just either delete the reference to 465 = { including everything in its block and the parentheses } at all or change the military_building into something else.


Similarly you can open your save game file in //My Documents/Paradox Interactive/Imperator/save games/
and look for PROV465 or just 465= .

(PROV465 was faster to find, it was only mentioned in reference to an army unit and then as a block about the province itself in the save file)

The problem lies in the fact that the buildings are only separated by their position in a string:

buildings={ 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 }

It's easy to change at the start of the game since the 2 there must be the vanilla military_building = 2.

But when there are more buildings built possibly as the game goes on, you'd need to experiment to know which position corresponds with which building.

---------------------
It might make sense to make a small mod when changing the setup.txt file for example.
That way updates to your game won't overwrite it, and if something goes wrong you still have the original file.

Also Notepad++ is something that can open and edit all these files without corrupting them, it's a great tool for modding.

 

[Snow Crystal]

If you are using debug_mode and have access to the console, it is probably easier to use the Explorer to fix this, rather than editing a save file.
Open the console, write 'explorer', then click enter.

Then this will show up. Click on "Achievements", and in the drop down menu find "Provinces".

Next, we'll find the specific province. In the search key we put in "Ambrakia", finding the province in question.
Click on the search result for the Ambrakia to open a new explorer window.

It should look like this. Inside the "Effect" part, we will be able to write Script that directly affects the province. If we want to remove a building, we will just write 'remove_building_level = <name_of_building>'. So in this specific case 'remove_building_level = military_building', then click 'Run'. This is pretty much how we quickly do stuff in-game when we work on the game and need to test something.