Looking for help turning this bunch of working files into a more convenient mod.

I've spent some time working on this mod, which changes the colors and icons of every Civ in the game. As I'm no master modder, it's currently just a collection of modified xml files made to replace the originals, and some icon .dll's which the game uses if the correct setting is changed in config.ini.

One of the benefits of this method is that the game doesn't see it as a mod, so achievements are not disabled. Everything else seems to be a detriment. It's clunky to install, requires extra caution to avoid overwriting important files, and from what I hear, doesn't always work, depending on if you bought the game as a complete edition or purchased the DLC seperately (I'm guessing the file structure is different). It's also, as far as I know, not possible to upload on the steam workshop since it's not really a mod pack.

I'm looking for advice on how to eliminate these problems and allow the pack to be downloaded by a wider audience. I feel it would probably be simple to turn it into a basic mod, but what I would really be interested in knowing is whether it's also possible to make it into a "DLC" type package as in the EUI, such that it doesn't disable mods. I figure I could upload it both as a mod for those who don't care about achievements or are already using mods, and as a separate download for those who don't mind doing a more complicated install for the sake of a purely graphical mod.

If anyone wants to give me advice on where to start, I'd greatly appreciate it. I have some experience coding but not much with xml or lua (which I don't think I'd need).

Anything to point me in the right direction, or an idea of what files or structures I would need, would be great. Thanks for reading!

I was very confused when you mentioned icon .dll's, but it appears you misspoke (mistyped), and you meant .dds's.

As for changing to a basic mod (which is the way to go if you want to upload to Steam):
So, changing the XML files into proper mod XML would change the syntax from tags that insert new rows to the database to tags. If you tried to insert a row with a tag that the database requires to be unique, the add would fail and the rest of the file would be ignored.

There are actually 2 XML syntaxes, a more traditional tag structure, and a shorthand. See this Cheat Sheet (which also demonstrates some simple SQL syntax, another way to make database changes with more powerful techniques available).

When you add your .dds files to ModBuddy, you must also set them VFS=True.

As for faking a DLC, I have no experience in that myself.

Thanks for the advice. In the meantime I actually managed to get it working mostly as a mod. The icons and colors all work properly except for one small but irritating bug.

For some reason, if Civs are selected in the game setup, even with no mods active, those icons will revert to default to the stock ones in the modded gameplay. All the others work fine. For example, my last regular single player game had America and Persia, so when I load the mod, even with a fresh start of the game, those two civs feature incorrect icons. The mod I've been looking at for help, the Once Color Civs mod, seems to have this same problem.

I've uploaded a zip of the mod. Perhaps you could look over it and see what the problem might be?

I suspect something to do with how the files are loaded and used, rather than the xml's themselves, but I really wouldn't know.

EDIT: I've also now noticed that I'll probably need to make alpha icon atlases as well, otherwise I get gross blobs for icons on foreign civs. I was hoping it would just use the default ones since I hadn't changed them.

Or maybe I need to include some lines to delete some vanilla stuff to prevent it getting in the way.