I'm not a modder at all, I just help to fix the ones that don't work first time
The
Civ Gold 5.0 thread has some info on how to get it working.
Step 1: You need to be able to extract the mod from the downloaded file. If it comes in a standalone Windows installer then you mostly likely need to run it in Windows or Crossover to extract the mod. A few mods can be extracted using Mac expansion software such as Stuffit Expander. Some mods come as simple ZIP or 7Z files, and can be expanded on the Mac using the built-in ZIP expansion software, or the free EZ 7z utility.
Step 2: When you have the expanded mod, it should be a folder containing an Assets folder and other folders and files. This entire folder should normally go in the Mods/ folder that lives in the same place as your BtS application (or Warlords or vanilla Civ4 if that's what you are modding).
Step 3: Try loading the mod by launching the game and selecting Advanced->Load a Mod in its main menu. Chances are you'll get some error messages as the XML files load.
Step 4: Repeat for each XML error message. Identify the file it is complaining about. That's the first one named in the error message. Find and open that file in TextWrangler, which is a free version of BBEdit from Bare Bones Software. Select the Text->Zap Gremlins menu option, which finds and replaces all characters whose 8-bit code is outside the normal ASCII range. You can choose to replace gremlins with nothing, or with a bullet character if you want to find and fix them properly. Save the fixed file and repeat until you get no more XML errors.
That should be all that's required to get Civ Gold working.
Other mods can be more tricky if they have Python scripts that rely on Windows features. Then the Python code has to be modified.
A lot of mods include a file called CvGameCoreDLL.dll in the Assets folder. If there's one of these then chances are the mod cannot be made to work on a Mac, as the Mac versions of Civ4 cannot operate with a customised DLL.
Hope this helps
