Civilization V for Mac Now Available

[MacRumors]

Aspyr Media today announced that Civilization V is now available for Mac OS X. Introduced for Windows back in September, Aspyr announced last month that the Mac version would be appearing in time for the holidays.

Sid Meier's Civilization V Mac reinvigorates the classic turn-based strategy genre with an astonishing new engine built from the ground-up for this flagship edition of the Civilization franchise. Players are introduced to an entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of entertainment as players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known.

Dating back to 1991, the Civilization franchise has been a very popular series of turn-based strategy games for nearly two decades now.

Civilization V for Mac is available through GameAgent for $49.99, but Aspyr will be offering 33% discounts on its entire GameAgent store from Friday through Sunday. The company will also be giving away Civilization V swag over the Thanksgiving weekend and offering limited "flash sales" on Cyber Monday to users following GameAgent's Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Article Link: Civilization V for Mac Now Available

 

[sbauer]

It's also available on Steam via SteamPlay (buy once, play on Windows and Mac).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/8930/

 

[shartypants]

Great to see more and more titles come to the Mac!!

 

[Mercaptan]

Very exciting! Now I can shed all that sleep I've been meaning to lose.

And on SteamPlay too! Wow!

 

[CFreymarc]

It's also available on Steam via SteamPlay (buy once, play on Windows and Mac).

http://store.steampowered.com/app/8930/

That is good. I would love to see this on an iPad.

 

[Foxer]

Of course, I bought this and Windows 7 just so I could play it on boot camp when the game came out. I assumed it would be at least a year. Oh well.

I know nothing about Steam, except that I had to install it to play Civ V. I thought there was some thing about you could buy a game and play it on any platform for which it is available after purchase. Not the case?

 

[pdc123]

That is good. I would love to see this on an iPad.

There's already a Civilization game for iOS, and the game mechanics are more similar to Civ V's than they are to Civ IV's.

The actual Civ V wouldn't run on an iOS device, it is very cpu and memory intensive. I have trouble running it in Parallels with its 256mb video ram limit on the i5 iMac; it works but not particularly well.

(obviously I don't need it in parallels any more, and it worked just fine when I was booted up in windows, but still does not bode well for the iPad/iPhone)

 

[Eidorian]

If you get it from Aspyr is it still going to link back up with Steam on the other end? It's a little confusing with the Steamworks backend and Asypr offering it on their own distribution.

I purchased the DVD version on sale from Amazon last week for $35 on PC. It installed off of the DVD and pulled a 100 MB update. Now I can get it from Steam any time without the disc. I have Steam Play back to Mac too?!

 

[pdc123]

Of course, I bought this and Windows 7 just so I could play it on boot camp when the game came out. I assumed it would be at least a year. Oh well.

I know nothing about Steam, except that I had to install it to play Civ V. I thought there was some thing about you could buy a game and play it on any platform for which it is available after purchase. Not the case?

Any game you have licensed through Steam you will be able to use on both a Mac and PC if it is offered for both platforms.

And don't fret, there are plenty of games that are still Windows only if you want to make the most out of your Windows 7 license. Tropico 3 is available on Steam and might appeal to someone who likes Civ games.

 

[Yamcha]

Sure it'll work, but I bet it'll be much faster using Bootcamp on Windows.. I really hope that changes soon, because so far all the games released on the Mac don't perform very well.. although If you have a high end mac you'll still be fine, but yeah its still faster on Windows for those of us who have entry level macs..

 

[MacinDoc]

Of course, I bought this and Windows 7 just so I could play it on boot camp when the game came out. I assumed it would be at least a year. Oh well.

I know nothing about Steam, except that I had to install it to play Civ V. I thought there was some thing about you could buy a game and play it on any platform for which it is available after purchase. Not the case?

I believe that is the case if you bought it through Steam.

I'll be picking this up when it goes on sale, Civ is one of the few games I play.

 

[ibwb]

Of course, I bought this and Windows 7 just so I could play it on boot camp when the game came out. I assumed it would be at least a year. Oh well.

I know nothing about Steam, except that I had to install it to play Civ V. I thought there was some thing about you could buy a game and play it on any platform for which it is available after purchase. Not the case?

Aspyr posted a FAQ on this: http://blog.gameagent.com/2010/11/22/civilization-v-mac-faqs-v3/

According to Aspyr you should now have access to the Mac version on your Steam account. So all you need to do is install Steam for OSX.

 

[Shivetya]

That will be awesome to not have to buy both versions, I jumped on Civ 5 when it was released, also under the expectation that a Mac version was many (as in MANY MANY) months away.

 

[anubis]

Civilization V for Mac. Includes bonus obsolete graphics driver for intense 640x480 gameplay with amazing minimum graphic settings!

 

[Eidorian]

Civilization V for Mac. Includes bonus obsolete graphics driver for intense 640x480 gameplay with amazing minimum graphic settings!

Quad core is a must as well. How many Mac users have that? Nice but sadly I'll probably never play it on the Mac or own a Mac again...

Interesting SteamWorks antics and distribution. GameAgent, Steam, and retail disc methods all in play.

 

[maverick808]

Minimum system requirements are too high for my brand new maxed out MacBook Air

Minimum requirements produce awful gameplay anyway, and the recommended system requirements are insane. This must be an awful port of the game.

 

[pdc123]

Quad core is a must as well. How many Mac users have that? Nice but sadly I'll probably never play it on the Mac or own a Mac again...

Interesting SteamWorks antics and distribution. GameAgent, Steam, and retail disc methods all in play.

Minimum requirements say dual-core; I'd be surprised if CPU is the bottleneck in this case, it's almost certainly your video card.

I'm not going to defend Apple's gaming record, but in this case, I'm more perplexed why Civ V is so resource intensive (on both Windows and Mac). The recommended specs are quite high for what the game is.

Minimum requirements produce awful gameplay anyway, and the recommended system requirements are insane. This must be an awful port of the game.

The Windows reqs very high too, I don't think this is primarily a port issue in this case.

 

[haravikk]

Hmm, good thing it's available on Steam as GameAgent's website won't load at all for me (it won't even time out, just a white-page endlessly loading, yay!).

There doesn't appear to be any sign of a demo though, I usually prefer to see how well the demo runs on my machines first.

 

[maverick808]

The Windows reqs very high too, I don't think this is primarily a port issue in this case.

You are probably right in this case. I actually tried playing this on a quad-core Windows machine with 4GB RAM and a kick ass graphics card and it still wasn't smooth. It doesn't look particularly impressive so I don't see why the requirements are so high... a poorly coded game to begin with I guess. A real shame because the underlying game is probably great, but the poor graphics implementation makes it unbearably slow to play.

 

[whateverandever]

Minimum requirements say dual-core; I'd be surprised if CPU is the bottleneck in this case, it's almost certainly your video card.

I'm not going to defend Apple's gaming record, but in this case, I'm more perplexed why Civ V is so resource intensive (on both Windows and Mac). The recommended specs are quite high for what the game is.



The Windows reqs very high too, I don't think this is primarily a port issue in this case.

Late in the game, CPU is definitely a bottleneck.

 

[Eidorian]

Minimum requirements say dual-core; I'd be surprised if CPU is the bottleneck in this case, it's almost certainly your video card.

I'm not going to defend Apple's gaming record, but in this case, I'm more perplexed why Civ V is so resource intensive (on both Windows and Mac). The recommended specs are quite high for what the game is.

The Windows reqs very high too, I don't think this is primarily a port issue in this case.

What makes you think dual core is enough? It chugs along painfully enough and more so when you have plenty of AI opponents. There's a DirectX 9 render path over on Windows but I expect that for older cards. I'd be more concerned with the CPU time the AI takes.

I was rather surprised to see Civilization V in benchmarks test for the CPU and GPU.

 

[Cougarcat]

Minimum system requirements are too high for my brand new maxed out MacBook Air

The 320m is supported, and the MBA benchmarks have been in line with the 2.4 Ghz MBP, so you might be OK.

I wouldn't buy it without trying a demo first, though. But...

There doesn't appear to be any sign of a demo though, I usually prefer to see how well the demo runs on my machines first.

Aspyr said they may do one early next year. But Civ games usually play fine for the first part of the game, and bog down your computer towards the end, so I'm not sure how good the demo would be as an indication of how well it'll run.

 

[dcorban]

The PC version is slow between turns no matter how powerful your computer is. The Mac version won't be any worse.

 

[pdc123]

What makes you think dual core is enough? It chugs along painfully enough and more so when you have plenty of AI opponents. There's a DirectX 9 render path over on Windows but I expect that for older cards. I'd be more concerned with the CPU time the AI takes.

I was rather surprised to see iCvilization V in benchmarks test for the CPU and GPU.

Strictly anecdotal. I've had a little success running it in Parallels. Unfortunately Parallels has a built in limit that your VM can only use 256mb of video memory. The game quickly started to crawl, and bumping the VM to 3 cores instead of 2 did nothing. However, turning down memory-intensive video settings helped a lot, though not enough as the game progressed.

Edit: Re-reading comments, it is definitely NOT an issue of AI processing time. The game is very heavily bottlenecked on graphics, whether that will be a CPU or video card choke will vary on your systems and settings, but the kind of slowness we're talking about is choppiness when scrolling, zooming, flipping between screens, etc. The AI is going to take its sweet time regardless of your rig, it's just how Civ rolls.

 

[Eidorian]

Aspyr said they may do one early next year. But Civ games usually play fine for the first part of the game, and bog down your computer towards the end, so I'm not sure how good the demo would be as an indication of how well it'll run.

This is my experience as well. The early game runs well enough but once you get the world reveal and have my players visible it's a turn waiting CPU chugfest.

TechSpot appears to have a history of doing CPU and GPU scaling tests with main new games. The recommend a quad core and a desktop HD 5750 or GTS 450 for an enjoyable experience.

Strictly anecdotal. I've had a little success running it in Parallels. Unfortunately Parallels has a built in limit that your VM can only use 256mb of video memory. The game quickly started to crawl, and bumping the VM to 3 cores instead of 2 did nothing. However, turning down memory-intensive video settings helped a lot, though not enough as the game progressed.

It is an all around hardware consuming game. Surprisingly enough for a turn based strategy one. My friend running on a Core 2 Duo with Crossfire 4800s wants to upgrade just to run the game more smoothly.