Yes, I can save in a normal game, so I guess it must be the mods themselves. That is kind of weird that the ability to save a game is not the default since that implies that one should complete scenarios and mods in one sitting. It is also kind on weird that there is no 'save game' or 'load game' in the MENU window at all: I could understand if they were grayed out, but not that they are completely missing.
So I will try to reload the earth map and another mod and see if I can play and save those. It is also very annoying that all I wanted to do was start with a predefined map, and after 3 weeks I am still battling strange effects of having to make a 'MOD', having to load the mod, not being able to save the game, etc, when it seems like it would be more straight forward to just allow people to make maps and load them directly into the 'regular' game. It is made worse by the fact that the modding manuals, like Kael's, do not mention a lot of the features like having to specify that you would want to save a mod game, that sort of thing. Just griping...