"Load A Mod"

[Hazen]

I'm brand new to the Civ games in general, so I went ahead and bought the humble bundle Civ 4 Complete Edition the other day. I'm curious about a menu feature called "Load A Mod." When I click it, there are already various mods like Greek World, Tutorial, etc, that can be selected, but nothing happens when I select them. The BtS expansion has even more of these to choose from, so I definitely want to know what's going on so I don't miss out on these after I learn the game. Am I doing something wrong?

[Power46]

Mods change the game so that it acts differently, has more content, etc. They are usually user created, and most games until recently the permission has been dodgy-however, Civ IV was one of the earlier games to give full permission.

If you want to use a mod, select it in that menu, and then select "OK" from the bottom right.

Bear in mind that Mods can be as simple as giving you more information on your interface, to total conversion mods where you play in space rather than on earth. One of the most popular mods just simply puts a clock somewhere in the interface, so that people don't play until 3 in the morning!

You can download more mods from places like http://www.civfanatics.com/ (look in the forums, under Civ4 - Creation & Customization).

Also, bear in mind that they change it significantly, usually making the game significantly more complicated, so you may want to take a little bit of time to understand some of the mechanics before really diving into mods. For many, mods are THE reason they still play Civilization IV.

I hope that it all made sense, and you didn't just stop reading after the second paragraph.

EDIT: Also, Mods are not exclusive to Civilization games, they are in many PC games.

[Hazen]

You sir, are a beacon of knowledge. I appreciate it!

Also, I plan on watching a ton of tutorial videos to figure out best gameplay strategies and all that, but I also wanted to know, is playing Beyond the Sword the same as playing regular Civ IV just with extra features? It seems that every expansion of the Complete Edition functions as a standalone, so it's kind of confusing to me which expansion is best to play for any given situation. Should I just play Civ IV until it bores me to tears, or should I automatically jump to Beyond the Sword, Colonization, or Warlords?

[Mreisse]

I recommend BTS, definitely. A lot of game balancing features and tweaking come together in the final expansion version, and I love it. Also, when you get bored to tears, load a mod* and launch a new game. Note that many mods do specify which flavor of Civ4 it works for: Vanilla, Warlords or BTS. Naturally, most are updated to take advantage of BTS improvements in the game engine. (But don't worry, Ghandi will STILL declare war if you end up neighbors.)

Incidentally, the first time I loaded a mod, I was confused because nothing seemed to change. What happens is, you select the mod, then start a new game with those features enabled. It all looks exactly like standard except there will be new gameplay/interface elements, and sometimes even new civs, units, skills, everything!

*I highly highly recommend Fall From Heaven 2 mod from the aforementioned civfanatics. THE best total conversion mod I have ever played.

[Power46]

Originally posted by Hazen:

You sir, are a beacon of knowledge. I appreciate it!

Also, I plan on watching a ton of tutorial videos to figure out best gameplay strategies and all that, but I also wanted to know, is playing Beyond the Sword the same as playing regular Civ IV just with extra features? It seems that every expansion of the Complete Edition functions as a standalone, so it's kind of confusing to me which expansion is best to play for any given situation. Should I just play Civ IV until it bores me to tears, or should I automatically jump to Beyond the Sword, Colonization, or Warlords?

Warlords is Civilization IV with extra features, Beyond the Sword is Warlords with even more extra features on top of that. However, Colonization uses the same engine but specializes the time period and certain mechanics. If you look for strategies in videos, there is little chance that you will get any from the vanilla game. Beyond the Sword should be your choice, unless you want to hyper focus to the time where America was being colonized by the Europeans.

Also bear in mind that if and when you do get to mods, they may change the mechanics enough that many of the strategies posted will not work as well, if at all.

EDIT: Also, as Mreisse implied, be careful around Ghandi-he likes Nukes in this game.

And one mod I have had recommended to me is Caveman2Cosmos.

[freeRio]

does anybody have a free gift code? I have the game on disk but it doesnt work.