Playing The Authentic Colonization mod on a Mac through Steam

[biffchan]

I would really like to play some of these mod games that sound so fantastic. I've just had surgery so have four weeks of immobility - perfect for getting stuck into empire building!

I've been playing Civ IV: Colonization through Steam on my macbook. I would really like to try out the mods The Authentic Colonization and Religion and Revolution but from what I have read it seems like I would need to install XP (or windows 7) on my mac and presumably buy a new windows Colonization game.

I like the vanilla version well enough but these mods sound fantastic so now I know they are out there I really want to get stuck into those. Can anyone give me any tips on how to get these games up and running with minimum time delay/ expense?

 

[raystuttgart]

Since both TAC and RaR have custom DLLs they run on Windows only.
(It is the same for all big Civ4:Col mods.)

So you will need to setup a Windows OS, installl Civ4:Col and then install the mod of your liking.
(Which Windows OS you choose does not really matter. Installing a mod is really simple.)

If you are a beginner, you might start with TAC.
RaR is based on last TAC release but much bigger and complex.

They have a quite different game play and feeling.
So you should probably try them both and see which you like better.

 

[biffchan]

Thanks for the quick reply Raystuttgart!

Now I know I need to bite the bullet and figure out a way to either get my hand on a windows system or use bootcamp to put a windows OS on my mac. It sounds like either way it will be worth it. I love starting the game on Civ IV: Col but never get to the end due a loss of a motivation midway so it sounds like these mods could help with that

 

[Nightinggale]

I suspect the greatest drawback for the mac ports of both civ4 and colo is a lack of somebody, who can fix the DLL issue. I'm not convinced it's impossible to solve. I suspect it is in fact the windows version with a windows emulator. Apple made tools for that at some point and I'm not sure it was such a good idea because it can lead to slowdowns and/or odd bugs like lack of DLL support and they didn't increase in numbers. Sometimes it works great, but it's used even when it doesn't work flawlessly, which I don't think was part of the plan.

Linux people state that they can play using wine, yet I have yet to see anybody trying to play using wine on mac, even though there is a mac port of wine.

Boot camp is likely the only solution, which will not cause mac specific issues, but it is also the most expensive solution, both in price and HD space. THe need for rebooting isn't nice either.