How do I remove a player from a save file? Auto-translated

Here's the question: I'm surprised that, apparently, no one has asked this before. We were playing Heroes of Might and Magic 5: Tribes of the East 3.1 in a local multiplayer game with three players. Now, the third player can't continue the game. How can the remaining two of us continue playing using the save file, so that the third player is replaced by AI, or, at worst, simply removed from the game? When we try to start, the two of us can enter the lobby and load the game normally, but the third player, who we need to play without, remains as if he hasn't joined, and it's impossible to start the game without him. I tried opening the save file with Notepad++, and it's mostly gibberish, but I found line 1399, which contains the names of all the players. However, deleting the name or the code related to the player doesn't really help. Either the save file starts saying that you are not mentioned in the save and doesn't allow you to name your character, or it says that you are not mentioned in the save, and the players listed in the save are gibberish*username*gibberish. Help, it shouldn't be that difficult to remove one player from the save and replace them with AI. As far as I understand, there are no save editors for Heroes of Might and Magic 5.