Ok, I am sorry if this is in the wrong catagory, and if I am a completle idiot. Can someone please give me a clear, easy to understand text tutorial on this? I use the .exe and nothing shows up. I drag and drop the folder and I get the proper menu but non of the civs or units and when i meet new civs in game it says things like LEADER_DEL - so one so forth... Plus upon loading into a game I get a string of error messages.

Moved to this mod's specific forum for better tech support.

Ok, I am sorry if this is in the wrong catagory, and if I am a completle idiot. Can someone please give me a clear, easy to understand text tutorial on this? I use the .exe and nothing shows up. I drag and drop the folder and I get the proper menu but non of the civs or units and when i meet new civs in game it says things like LEADER_DEL - so one so forth... Plus upon loading into a game I get a string of error messages.

When you double-click the EXE, it attempts to install the mod automatically to the default CIV IV location. If you changed the default location, it won't install the files correctly.

After double-clicking the EXE, you'll see a dialogue box with an install path. If you didn't change the location when you installed CIV IV, don't change the path that appears.

Ok, I did this. I can get to the CIV Gold menu, but even if I deal with the caching issues (tweaking the config files), I get the same old civs, nothing new.

It seems like you did everything right. The only thing that is missing is an official Firaxis patch. As you have just joined CFC, I assume you also have just installed BTS. The CIV Gold mod needs at least BTS 3.13 to run "out-of-the-box".

Start BTS and from the main menu go to Advanced -> Check for Updates and download the latest patch 3.17.