Civilization 4 Performance

[Soulstorm]

I was surprised to see that my G5 would not handle Civ 4 too well. I have turned all options on except anti-aliasing, and my resolution is 1280x1024.

Gameplay is glitchy, and although it is playable, I think the performance is not as it should be, especially on a G5 dual 2.5 GHz with X800XT inside and 1gbyte RAM. (OS X 10.4.7). The graphics are not that demanding, after all!

Crappy port or demanding game?

[dmw007]

I was surprised to see that my G5 would not handle Civ 4 too well. I have turned all options on except anti-aliasing, and my resolution is 1280x1024.

Gameplay is glitchy, and although it is playable, I think the performance is not as it should be, especially on a G5 dual 2.5 GHz with X800XT inside and 1gbyte RAM. (OS X 10.4.7). The graphics are not that demanding, after all!

Crappy port or demanding game?

Interesting, I have this game for PeeCee and it runs okay- not great on a OC'ed 3.3GHz P4, 1GB DDR, 128MB 6600GT. I have yet to try it for Mac though. Although, I would imagine that it would be as smooth as butter on your Power Mac G5 (especially considering the video card that your system has). :)

[Foxer]

I run the PC version under bootcamp on 2.0 GHZ iMac and it seems smooth. Some processor lag between turns later in the game, but that's always the case with every version of Civ I can remember. I was thinking of picking up the Universal (one less thing to reboot for), but now I'll probably hold off.

[chicagdan]

I run the PC version under bootcamp on 2.0 GHZ iMac and it seems smooth. Some processor lag between turns later in the game, but that's always the case with every version of Civ I can remember. I was thinking of picking up the Universal (one less thing to reboot for), but now I'll probably hold off.

Yeah, if you have the ability to dual boot, that's probably the way to go with Civ IV, at least until it's properly patched. There's an excellent discussion of Civ IV for Mac taking place on the civfanatics.com bulletin board -- Brad Oliver, the lead developer at Aspyr, has dropped by several times to discuss the various problems. I highly recommend that anyone who has the game or is considering buying it stop by.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=199

If I had the ability to dual boot, I wouldn't buy any games for Mac anymore. The PC versions come out quicker and are more regularly patched. Plus, for a game like Civ IV, most of the mods won't work on Mac versions. The expansion pack for Civ IV will be out in six weeks, lucky if it's six months for the Mac version.

[alec]

As mentioned before, Civ 4 for mac is basically unplayable. Boot it under Windows or wait for Aspyr to fix up the game before you purchase it.

[jsw]

As mentioned before, Civ 4 for mac is basically unplayable. Boot it under Windows or wait for Aspyr to fix up the game before you purchase it.
Civ IV for Mac is not unplayable. I'm not sure why you'd say that it was; I've completed several games on a 17" Intellimac. Sure, there's occasional bugginess, but I've had a lot of fun with it. Hardly unplayable.

[chicagdan]

Civ IV for Mac is not unplayable. I'm not sure why you'd say that it was; I've completed several games on a 17" Intellimac. Sure, there's occasional bugginess, but I've had a lot of fun with it. Hardly unplayable.

From what I've heard, it's more playable on an Intel Mac than PPC ... but I agree, not unplayable. I have a 2.1 ghz, PPC iMac and have completed an epic, huge mapped, 18 civilization game using the highest level of graphics possible. Was it ungodly slow by the end? Oh yeah. But I finished it ... so it's definitely not unplayable.

[eva01]

I haven't been able to finish any games once we get down to 10 turns left it takes about 5-10 minutes for a turn to finish :/

[jsw]

I haven't been able to finish any games once we get down to 10 turns left it takes about 5-10 minutes for a turn to finish :/
Wow... it must be MUCH worse on PPC, as I never notice anything worse than maybe 20 seconds or so.

[eva01]

Wow... it must be MUCH worse on PPC, as I never notice anything worse than maybe 20 seconds or so.

I may have underlying problems as well, but even so it is quite painful at the end, I don't know why at all.

The minimum wait time i have had in the last 10 turns was 2 minutes.

It is quite very painful. I don't know why.

I am thinking of selling the game personally cause my powermac just cries.

[dmw007]

I am thinking of selling the game personally cause my powermac just cries.

If you do plan on selling it, I maybe interested. :)

[psycho bob]

Runs fine on my dual 2.5 with NVIDIA 6800GT. Panning occassionally slows but other than that no performance issues. I do have an issue sometimes where the buildings just go black but it still plays fine, restarting the current game fixes it some Open GL coding issue.

The thing that annoys me most is a funny one. When the level (saved game) is loading and the music is playing as the progress bar moves it keeps cutting out. Surely in this day and age they can program it so the audio plays smoothly in RAM while the game loads in the foreground :)

[eclipse]

What's good about Civ 4? Isn't it just the same old long endgame?
Surely we're all past that by now?

I only played a few games of Civ3 and got fed up with the SLOOOOW techncial / science advances, and the fact that Democracy had so much corruption. I liked the idea of ROADs being essential for trade, but the corruption in democracy really sucked. Just could not make a civ big enough!

As you can see from my signature, roads (and oil) are kinda an important resource question we face in the real world, too. How about a civilization game where we have to survive peak oil without too much trauma or dieoff (http://dieoff.com)?

[chicagdan]

What's good about Civ 4? Isn't it just the same old long endgame?
Surely we're all past that by now?

I only played a few games of Civ3 and got fed up with the SLOOOOW techncial / science advances, and the fact that Democracy had so much corruption. I liked the idea of ROADs being essential for trade, but the corruption in democracy really sucked. Just could not make a civ big enough!

As you can see from my signature, roads (and oil) are kinda an important resource question we face in the real world, too. How about a civilization game where we have to survive peak oil without too much trauma or dieoff (http://dieoff.com)?

You raise some great points. One of the good things about Civ 4 is that it can be modified very easily to alter gameplay scenarios. I think that a peak oil mod/scenario would be very interesting to explore.

As for the question of corruption, it's no longer part of the Civ game engine, the designers determined that it wasn't fun. Same goes for pollution ... although that really changes the ethos of the game ... environmentalism is now a civic option that strangely has negligible economic effects.

I agree with you as well that the great flaw of the entire Civilization franchise is the endgame. Alpha Centauri took a stab at a more interesting conclusion -- one that involved a kind of human transcendence usually the domain of science fiction -- but even there the execution was sloppy and getting to that point was a long, hard slog.

Civ IV does give you the option of moving at a very rapid pace if you wish to do so. What I'd like to see is for the game to give you the option of changing the pace mid-game.

Overall, I think the Civ franchise is under major assault from the Europa Universalis game engine for supremacy in the turn based strategy game arena. I think a solid contemporary resource wars game is more likely to come from the EU platform than from Civ.

[eclipse]

What's this EU game you talk about?

[chicagdan]

What's this EU game you talk about?

Europa Universalis and the derivatives of that game (such as Hearts of Iron.) For Mac versions, check out the Virtual Programming website (www.vpltd.com.)

[eclipse]

What are the game requirements, I'm on a G4 450.

[chicagdan]

What are the game requirements, I'm on a G4 450.

Are you asking about Civ IV or Europa Universalis II? You can run EUII easily ... but Civ IV? Forget it. It chokes my iMac G5 2.1 ghz and the minimum requirements are a G5 or Intel core duo.

[eclipse]

:eek:

Yeah... one day when I grow up I want to be a graphic designer and stop playing computer games... and maybe after I've earnt my millions, settle down and play a good game of Civ 4 on my G20.

Wait a minute, I'm 38, my wife is the designer but I'm just a house husband "Mr Mom" and the Great Depression starts around 2008-2010!

D'oh! :p :o

You mean Civ 4 chokes on my wife's G5?:confused:
I thought that's what this thread was saying, but couldn't believe it!

Wow. What on earth goes on in Civ 4 now? Must be awesome!
(Man I've got to grow up one day and earn my pay.):o :o :o :o

[chicagdan]

:eek:

Yeah... one day when I grow up I want to be a graphic designer and stop playing computer games... and maybe after I've earnt my millions, settle down and play a good game of Civ 4 on my G20.

Wait a minute, I'm 38, my wife is the designer but I'm just a house husband "Mr Mom" and the Great Depression starts around 2008-2010!

D'oh! :p :o

You mean Civ 4 chokes on my wife's G5?:confused:
I thought that's what this thread was saying, but couldn't believe it!

Wow. What on earth goes on in Civ 4 now? Must be awesome!
(Man I've got to grow up one day and earn my pay.):o :o :o :o

I'm a 40 year old Mr. Mom ... except we have no kids and I don't do housework. I do have my "writing" career to distract me from Civ IV, however.

The game came out before it was ready and isn't running well on any Mac system. Maybe in six months the patches will get it running okay on the recommended systems. By the time there's a computer thats powerful enough to run Civ IV briskly, Civ V will be out and everyone will be back to crawling again.

Oddly enough, the game's barely more interesting than the original Civilization, which you can download for free at freeciv.org and play on any Mac system that can run Tiger (because it uses X11.)

[eclipse]

I liked the combat in Civ 2 better — the fact that units could survive combat, and you didn't get battleships firing on the coast being defeated by settlers!:eek: :eek:

Any news on a Freeciv 2?

Any help on loading X11 into my G4? I use the latest Mac OS all the time.... so where do I go?

[chicagdan]

I liked the combat in Civ 2 better — the fact that units could survive combat, and you didn't get battleships firing on the coast being defeated by settlers!:eek: :eek:

Any news on a Freeciv 2?

Any help on loading X11 into my G4? I use the latest Mac OS all the time.... so where do I go?

X11 is included on your Tiger install disk, just start the install routine and choose it.

There's no freeciv II yet, I don't think the code is in the public domain (like the original Civ code is.) Freeciv isn't exactly like the original Civilization, it has been refined somewhat. I always found the settlers taking out a battleship both annoying (when I had the battleship) and charming (when I had the settler), like the ewoks defeating the Stormtroopers. Check that, the ewoks were always annoying.

[eclipse]

hey, if they fixed the ewok problem in Civ 1 it might even be worth playing! ;)