New to Modding; need a little help.

[PantherModern]

Hello All,

I just registered for this forum today, and started to try out the various mods offered on the site. This is my first time dealing with mods in general.

I followed the instructions here for dl'ing/installling civ 4 mods:

http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/downloads

For something like the Ancient Greece mod, I dled, unzipped, and extracted the file to the MODS folder of the "My Games --> BTS" subfolder. Expected things to go nicely afterwards, but when I attempted to load the mod (from the list of already-existing mods), Ancient Greece was not there. Is there supposed to be a collection of files I'm supposed to dl and extract associated with a particular Mod as opposed to just one? The Ancient Greece one, I believe, was a scenario.

Also, I noticed in browsing through threads will similar concerns an observation made by one user who stated that you shouldn't extract the files to the My Games folder, but to the actual Firaxis folder in the Program Files. Did this, and found the files for the pre-existing mods attached to game, as opposed to the empty MOD file for the "My Games" folder. Still didn't work. With this in mind, why are there 2 MOD folders in the first place, and what's the advantage of placing the files in one as opposed to the other?

Anyways, I sincerely appreciate any input from veterans and xp'ed players

 

[God-Emperor]

Sadly, that page is ancient. Mods, with a few exceptions, do not belong in the My Games folder (and the ones that do don't go in MODS, they go in CustomAssets). They belong in the folder where the game was actually installed, down in the Beyond the Sword\Mods folder right next to the mods that came with the game.

Scenario files, on the other hand, don't normally go in the Mods folder unless they are scenarios for a mod, although you might be able to if you create an otherwise empty mod and put the WB save file in its PublicMaps or PrivateMaps folder. They can go in a number of places including the PublicMaps folder of the regular game (which is where you'll find, for example, the Earth_IceAge scenario) or in the My Games\...\Saves\WorldBuilder folder. A scenario file is a worldbuilder save file and every WB save in the Saves\WorldBuilder folder does appear on the scenarios list.

It looks like they had originally planned to use the MODS folder in My Games for user mods, but realized that is was much easier just to use the same mods folder as the stuff that came with the game. There have been a number of issues trying to get mods to load correctly from the MODS folder under My Games. You're much better off if you pretend it doesn't exist.

 

[PantherModern]

Thanks God-Emperor. How would you treat, say new civs?