Any Civilization 6 players on MR? Curious how the game performs on the new MBPs and on your machine in general. My 2016 MBP can't handle it anymore, just force closes after a while.
Last edited:
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Civilization 6 players
- Thread starter miamialley
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Yes, it is running fine on Apple Silicon. I have an M1 MBP from last year with 8GB and an M1 Pro with 16GB.
I tend to run at 2560x1440 on an external monitor via USB C/Thunderbolt.
Last year's M1 has been comfortable at medium/medium and 2xAA. I'm guessing around 20fps with a bit of slow down in the end game for huge maps. Totally playable, though, even though the memory pressure lives in the yellow.
The M1 Pro seems to be quite happy at ultra/ultra with 4xAA. Benchmark gives an average of around 25fps. I loaded an end game save and played a few turns with no obvious slow down.
I tend to run at 2560x1440 on an external monitor via USB C/Thunderbolt.
Last year's M1 has been comfortable at medium/medium and 2xAA. I'm guessing around 20fps with a bit of slow down in the end game for huge maps. Totally playable, though, even though the memory pressure lives in the yellow.
The M1 Pro seems to be quite happy at ultra/ultra with 4xAA. Benchmark gives an average of around 25fps. I loaded an end game save and played a few turns with no obvious slow down.
I really want to be able to play on Ultra/Ultra. 4xAA is the highest setting, right?
I have never had a computer - ever - that allowed me to increase the graphics quality, so I'm really hoping the new MBP can take it. I feel like it should, based upon what you're quoting.
Yes. Ultra/ultra at 4xAA is the highest setting and it’s totally playable at 2560x1440.
The M1 at medium/medium pretty much ran the GPU at 100% as viewed in the activity monitor history window. The M1 Pro at ultra/ultra pushes the GPU to about 90%.
I have no idea what the M1 Max would do. Probably even better frame rates.
The M1 at medium/medium pretty much ran the GPU at 100% as viewed in the activity monitor history window. The M1 Pro at ultra/ultra pushes the GPU to about 90%.
I have no idea what the M1 Max would do. Probably even better frame rates.
I'm going to give it a go on my maxed out 16" M1 Max later today once it gets here. Whenever I play civ I usually play Civ 5 because I love using the in-game editor to create custom scenarios, Civ 6 still doesn't have an in-game editor mod to the same caliber as 5 as far as I'm aware 
Does anyone know of a civ 6 in-game editor that lets you modify the same sort of attributes as civ 5's in game editor mod does?
Does anyone know of a civ 6 in-game editor that lets you modify the same sort of attributes as civ 5's in game editor mod does?
Working fine for me on my new MBP. TBF I also played it every now and again on my M1 air and never had any real issues.
Good to know! Very encouraging. On my 2016 13" base MBP, I could only play the smallest maps...in recent year the computer just can barely do it anymore.
I haven't played Civ 5 in so long, but I remember liking it. There were so many great advancements in 6 I never went back. 6 has tons of mods (I use Steam) and you can edit the map completely. What kind of mods were you wanting?I'm going to give it a go on my maxed out 16" M1 Max later today once it gets here. Whenever I play civ I usually play Civ 5 because I love using the in-game editor to create custom scenarios, Civ 6 still doesn't have an in-game editor mod to the same caliber as 5 as far as I'm aware
Does anyone know of a civ 6 in-game editor that lets you modify the same sort of attributes as civ 5's in game editor mod does?
What configuration is your MBP? How does it look on the screen? You're running Civ 6 right? I can't believe the MBA did well. Very cool.
After seeing reports that the Civ 6 benchmark doesn't report frame times accurately on Apple silicon Macs, I installed Quartz Debug with its frame rate meter. This screenshot is from a huge map at end game on the M1 Pro 16 core with ultra/ultra, 4XAA, at 2560x1440 on an external monitor. The frame rate rarely drops below 40 fps. The fans do come on, but not offensively so.
Thanks for that detail!
I like that Uluru Nation Park! I am confident my Max will finally give me the opportunity to max out the graphics on Civ - never played it full blast before!
I'm about to go from a i9 iMac to a M1 Max Studio. Civ vi is actually my biggest concern, but it looks like it shouldn't be an issue. Anything I'm not considering?
Let us know how it goes. I was thinking that perhaps the Ultra may be better suited for Civ. 6 or Three Kingdoms. But then in one of the reviews - the verge - said that the GPU doesn't perform too well with rendering - relative to the RTX3090. So, I'm now doubtful whether it'll be good-enough to run the game properely.
Apple may have just pushed out the studio for the creative crew - forgetting that they also occasionally game!
My 2021 MBP Max handles Civ 6 perfectly. I play smaller maps out of preference, but it's a beast. I use the Steam version.
I am running Civ VI on a '16 Macbook with a 1.1Ghz M3 processor, which is akin to a calculator in processing power. The Apple M1 will do just fine.
Well, I have a Mac Studio Ultra and am running Civ VI 1.3.13. Something is very wrong. This is just Turn 4, there are just a handful of explored hexes, and my CPU meter is nearly pegged and most of the cores are running full. See the attached screenshot. Yes, I do have the various graphics settings max'd, but hey, that's what a $4k computer is for.
So for those curious, yes indeed I am an idiot. I replaced my "2013 Mac Pro" trashcan with this Mac Studio specifically to run Civ VI on a mac. I don't do Windows.
Does anyone have any insights as to what is wrong? Or is Civ VI just so poorly coded on a Mac that it uses all of the cores full-tilt even with nothing happening?
And when I close Civ VI, the CPU utilization drops down to nothing...
Thanks,
Scott
So for those curious, yes indeed I am an idiot. I replaced my "2013 Mac Pro" trashcan with this Mac Studio specifically to run Civ VI on a mac. I don't do Windows.
Does anyone have any insights as to what is wrong? Or is Civ VI just so poorly coded on a Mac that it uses all of the cores full-tilt even with nothing happening?
And when I close Civ VI, the CPU utilization drops down to nothing...
Thanks,
Scott
Attachments
My 2021 MBP does not max out the CPU the way you describe. I wish I could say I do something more intensive than Civ on my MBP Max, but alas...I do not.
The word on the street is that it runs great on low end M1 machines, so my guess is there is a single advanced graphical setting that Rosetta2 is having issues with, since you run everything on max. Try turning off individual things and see what works, and let us know if you find the culprit.
Please tell me you're kidding and you didn't buy a Studio Ultra only to play Civ6. You must be doing something else with it other than reading emails?!?
Civ6 is very CPU intensive, but this shouldn't be an issue so early in the game. Other than that, I've seen many people complain about CPU load shooting up to the limit, not just on macOS, also on Windows. It looks more like a bug to me for now and it seems random, as it's not always happening.
Like I said, I'm an idiot. I do lots of things with my new Studio Ultra. But the big driver in getting it was Civ6.
My poor little 2013 Mac Pro trashcan just couldn't handle it...At this point, I'm thinking that the problem might be the Steam launcher. This thread indicates that other folks see similar issues:
https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/mlompp/psa_how_to_bypass_the_launcher_in_steam/
So I'll try to bypass the Launcher first tonight to see if that helps before trying the one-by-one process of elimination on the Graphics settings.
Update: well, that didn't do anything. I couldn't follow the step-by-step to bypass the Launcher -- the piece-parts aren't where that old article said they were. So I turned off AntiAlias, set the PerformanceImpact to minimum, and set the MemoryImpact to minimum. Then restarted Steam and CivVI. And now here I am at Turn 1 and GPU is pegged at 100% and most of the CPU's are running also.
Something isn't right, but I can't figure it out. According to the Activity Monitor, Disk usage is minimal and Network usage is minimal. It has the CPU at 958% and memory is 6.7GB. I have 64GB, so there's plenty of free memory and in watching it for 15 minutes there's no memory leak. It is the CPU and GPU that are running full-out. And I'm just sitting here at Turn 1 with a city in the default (startup) position.
I also tried adjusting settings in Steam. The fps counter says 200 fps (at Turn 1) and I also put it in Offline Mode. But that didn't change the CPU/GPU utilization.
As a test, I set AntiAlias to 4x, Performance and Memory to Ultra, then restarted Civ VI and Steam. The CPU/GPU basically are doing the same thing as before.
Any thoughts on how to characterize this further?
Thanks,
Scott
Something isn't right, but I can't figure it out. According to the Activity Monitor, Disk usage is minimal and Network usage is minimal. It has the CPU at 958% and memory is 6.7GB. I have 64GB, so there's plenty of free memory and in watching it for 15 minutes there's no memory leak. It is the CPU and GPU that are running full-out. And I'm just sitting here at Turn 1 with a city in the default (startup) position.
I also tried adjusting settings in Steam. The fps counter says 200 fps (at Turn 1) and I also put it in Offline Mode. But that didn't change the CPU/GPU utilization.
As a test, I set AntiAlias to 4x, Performance and Memory to Ultra, then restarted Civ VI and Steam. The CPU/GPU basically are doing the same thing as before.
Any thoughts on how to characterize this further?
Thanks,
Scott
Last edited:
I can't check right now, but it should be possible to launch it manually without the launcher. It could be that the launcher is in a different location, but it should still launch.
Other that, I don't think there's much you can do except for playing with the graphics settings. You could use dedicated tool to analyze the game at runtime, but that requires system knowledge and how to use these tools (Ghidra, etc.).
Other that, I don't think there's much you can do except for playing with the graphics settings. You could use dedicated tool to analyze the game at runtime, but that requires system knowledge and how to use these tools (Ghidra, etc.).
Reddit user avonhungen says that it is here on a Mac:
Bypassing the launcher allows running Civ VI directly. That, plus galad's v-sync comment, seem like a good path forward which I'll try shortly.
Edit: as T'hain Esh Kelch pointed out, this bypasses the 2K launcher.
~/Library/Application Support/Steam/steamapps/common/Sid Meier's Civilization VI/Civilization VI
and this Windows-centric Launcher bypass page shows how to ask Steam where the executable is instead:Bypassing the launcher allows running Civ VI directly. That, plus galad's v-sync comment, seem like a good path forward which I'll try shortly.
Edit: as T'hain Esh Kelch pointed out, this bypasses the 2K launcher.
Last edited: