Hey all (Alan especially),

I recently got a ludicrously bad start - see this thread (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=268018). I personally gave up on it, but some people have expressed interest in trying it out. So I posted the starting save; trouble is that I started the game with the Mac HOF mod - so now it wants that mod on *their* systems before it'll run, which of course isn't available.

Does anybody know how to get this to work?

Still on version 1.61, I see?

As your save is not locked to the Assets, a Windows player could probably open it by copying any mod and renaming it to 'HOF-Mac-1.61.011' to fool the game into thinking that mod was loaded.

However, to make it easier, I have done it using WorldBuilder so that you don't have to, as it exposes the whole map to you.

I loaded the correct HoF Mod and opened the start file on my Mac.
Hit Esc to get the in-game menu.
Selected Open WorldBuilder and confirmed.
Saved the scenario in WorldBuilder.
Exited WorldBuilder
Hit Esc and exited to main menu
Loaded Mod 'None'
After relaunch, selected 'Single Player'->'Play a Scenario' and selected the saved scenario.
Saved the 4000 BC starting position
It will now open with no mod loaded, and here it is ...

Yeah, I should update. Thanks a lot, especially for the directions - I may want to do this again.

I also like the creamy goodness that is the HOF mod. But I don't like the situation that you found yourself in, or running games that I download where I can't run the mod.

So I run the mod using my custom asset folder. It's always there, but the saves are normal.

1) Install the mod where it normally goes, as a mod in the folder where the program actually is. There are things that get loaded that expect this path.
2) Copy the Assets folder from the HOF-Mac-1.61.SGOTM5 folder into ~/Documents/Civilization IV and rename it CustomAssets. There is already a folder there called that, if you have never messed around in there then it has nothing in it but empty folders. You can either delete the original one or just rename it something like NoCustomAssets. If you play any multi-player to do that you have to rename your new CustomAssets folder something else as it will not work for multi-player.
3) Open or start any game and the HOF mod will be running. You have to go to Options and turn things on as the settings are saved in a different spot from the version that you have already been using.

If you already have something in your CustomAssets folder then you have to merge them. There are limits to what you can merge, but I run Blue Marble, there aren't any files it uses that conflict with the HOF mod.