Basically I want to see if anyone has managed to get Civ IV running perfectly and as they'd like...

i.e.

- All the sounds where they're meant to be
- At a resolution/display option that you feel leverages your platform fully and is satisfactory for you
- No crashes
- No significant/unreasonable slow-down as the game scales up

etc

I haven't seen a single person who can say that, after a good few hours play, and the game growing that they ar ehaving no problems.

It seems that G4/G5 users are in a world of pain largely...and many intel users are merely having sound trouble (but then we have paid for that)...maybe there are legions of users out there who are having no troubles at all...if so, tell us all the secrets!!!!

Not I.

(15" Macbook Pro 2.0GHz, 2GB RAM, 256MB VRAM X1600: Sound issues; three freezes requiring hard restart.)

Sounds like you are getting away lightly!

If this cannot run correctly on my iMac (2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 256MB VRAM) then really I cannot see why Aspyr released now. I hope they're reading the forums and realising what a total own goal this is turning into.

Civ 4 has been working very well for me so far, but I am lucky enough to have:

G5 2.5 GHz Quad processor
2 GB RAM
GeForce 6600 (256 MB VRAM)

I haven't played through to the end game yet, but this system runs Civ 4 smooth as silk with all the graphics options turned on high.

On my recent G4 laptop the game is too slow to be much fun playing.

Puffyn: Do you hear sounds during battle?

But no. I have choppy sound on both systems and unbearable slow downs during end-of-game turns.

System 1: Dual 2.0 G5, 2g RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 XT (10.4.7 - QT 7.1.2)
Game play starts smooth, but end of game is brutal! Sound is choopy and often cuts off within the second of a sound starting. Half-way through the game, it become unplayable.


System 2: 1.8 G5 iMac 1g RAM, GeForce FX 5200 (10.4.7 - QT 7.1.2)
Why bother you ask? Specs say this should be playable. Beginning to end is unbearably slow. If you thought the first few turns took an eternity, wait until you try end of game turns. Sound is choppy. Unplayable in current form. Thread totally dedicated to this machine and video card can be found here (http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=175883). Sad, very sad.

I hope they're reading the forums and realising what a total own goal this is turning into.

Woo-hoo! We scored a goal!


Wait, is that bad? ;-)

Woo-hoo! We scored a goal!


Wait, is that bad? ;-)
We have yet to crush your sense of humor... this is a good sign :lol: :goodjob:

Sounds like you are getting away lightly!

If this cannot run correctly on my iMac (2.0Ghz, 2GB RAM, 256MB VRAM) then really I cannot see why Aspyr released now. I hope they're reading the forums and realising what a total own goal this is turning into.

maybe this is just a cultural difference, but people use "own goal" as a synonym for "screwup" ?? :eek:

System 1: Dual 2.0 G5, 2g RAM, ATI Radeon 9600 XT (10.4.7 - QT 7.1.2)
Game play starts smooth, but end of game is brutal! Sound is choopy and often cuts off within the second of a sound starting. Half-way through the game, it become unplayable.

If you have a game that is unplayable on your G5 as listed above, can you e-mail it to me (brad AT aspyr DOT com) so I can take a look? Ideally, send a saved game that is deep enough into the game as to be unplayable on your 2.0 G5.

I just finished my first game. I won... it felt much easier than PC games that I've played at the same level. Or maybe Macs are better!!! ;)

The sound did work better later... still no unit sounds, but the ambient music and sounds when things were built seemed to work okay. However, the sky messed up late in the game. I could zoom out to see the globe early, but later there were artifacts all over the sky... red and such.

I was okay with the performance. Although it was slow, it was easily playable... and even enjoyable.

maybe this is just a cultural difference, but people use "own goal" as a synonym for "screwup" ?? :eek:
Correct. It's a soccer term. If a player puts the ball past his own goalkeeper and into the net it's an "own goal" - a self-inflicted score against the team.

"Woo-hoo! We scored a goal!


Wait, is that bad? ;-)"

LOL - yes, very!!:crazyeye:

Civ fans but not football fans I see:eek:

Hey - sorry Brad if I seem a little militant.

I just f**king love Civ - the thought of it not working makes me shudder with rage and fear!!

Civ 4 has been working very well for me so far, but I am lucky enough to have:

G5 2.5 GHz Quad processor
2 GB RAM
GeForce 6600 (256 MB VRAM)

I haven't played through to the end game yet, but this system runs Civ 4 smooth as silk with all the graphics options turned on high.

I've got the same machine... I have to admit, it runs pretty well but I have noticed that it's not "smooth as silk" when panning around the display... we're only talking a standard world size... there's a bit of jump when panning... I take it you're not seeing that?

BTW... do your fans speed up considerably when playing? Not a sudden increase but they get quite loud (presumably, because the CPUs are maxed out)

End of turns/"waiting on other civs", especially later in the game, is SLOOOOOOW (and music cuts out while waiting)
Receiving a world map from other civ on Huge Map game is SLOOOOOW
I lose Nimoy somewhere around Ren/Modern era (I've only played 3 times so far)
Music vanishes for periods of time and later in the game, the longer the music-less periods are

I've had 4 crashes so far. No KPs. My fans get VERY loud.

I have audio set to stereo and all graphics maxed at 1600x1200 screen res.

My system: Quad G5, 4.5gb ram, nvidia 7800, OS 10.4.6 (I haven't installed 10.4.7 yet)

So are the above performance issues I described "normal"? Should I hear Nimoy read the quotes for EVERY tech? Should I be waiting so long for other civs before my turn?

If you have a game that is unplayable on your G5 as listed above, can you e-mail it to me (brad AT aspyr DOT com) so I can take a look? Ideally, send a saved game that is deep enough into the game as to be unplayable on your 2.0 G5.

Just emailed it, per your request. And a BIG THANK YOU. We ALL really appreciate your hardwork and dedication to Civ and the Mac community.

Good to hear from other Quad/6600 owners that the game is pretty playable. I am wondering how my 1GB of RAM will impact performance. First I need to buy the game though... :(

I haven't lost Nimoy yet if I wait for him to load during map generation. Haven't finished the first game yet - but i get the feeling that i will be able to work with some of the gigantic maps that Fanatics modders have put together easily enough.

It's not working perfectly - I haven't *absolutely* maxxed out the graphics successfully - but the game is beyond playable for me.

UI/scrolling response is acceptable on my quad, even with a huge map and 9 AIs. But the sound issues and the general slowness of the AI moves really make the game less fun to play. I don't know how multithreaded it is right now, but however much it is, it needs to be increased, a lot.

Runs perfect with all settings up on my $1200 dell inspiron 1505 with 256MB Radeon X1400 mobility ; 1.83 GHz Core Duo w/ a gig of RAM (that'll cost $2,499 for the mac equivalent)

Also runs very well on my $1400 IBM thinkpad with a 2Ghz Pentium M with 512 mb RAM and 128 MB ATI Fire Gl Card.

Doesn't start on my iMac G3, though...bummer :(

For another data point: I'm playing Civ IV on an iMac G5 (iSight, 1.9GHz, 1.5 GB ram; MacOSX 10.4.6), and it's awfully slow.

Running it in a window seemed to help, although (as others have said) it's difficult to tell if that's for real without a frame count or some other reliable metric. My wife thinks it slows down for her as the games run on; I can't speak to that. When there's enough going on, the UI is generally sluggish -- scrolling is choppy, zooming in and out is choppy. Double-clicking on a city to see the full details and then escaping back out again is a [edit: 10 or 12 second] round trip, depending on whether or not it needs to scroll to an active unit when it's done.

One curious thing is that when I'm running in a window, I can see my CPU status in the toolbar (running MenuMeters). The CPU is pegged at 100% no matter what it's doing, and it looks like 40% of that is kernel time. I don't know if that's informative at all.

Another note about running windowed: when you switch to another program, I can see that Civ is nice'd, because the CPU gauge turns green. When you switch back to Civ in the foreground, the gauge stays green, implying that either the OS or the game itself don't re-nice the program back to normal levels afterwards.

I've tried quitting absolutely all other programs when running, to not much effect. Sound is still very choppy; when I zoom in, I can hear the environmental/city sounds, but those are lost if I've zoomed out to what'd be a reasonable view distance.

Graphics are, of course, set to the lowest possible settings. 1024x768, low res, &c. After editing the .ini to turn on the "mouse scrolling in windowed mode", I did edit another couple ini settings, turning on the "don't show background when showing movies" option. That makes movies play properly, which they weren't doing before.

Is there any other information that would be useful to anyone?

Edit #2: screenshot of game conditions (zoom, CPU usage, memory usage) at: http://ottemann.haggisnet.org/~mrh3/civ-screen.png