Edit: I'm going to temper this a bit and say that this info is still not 100% solid. I don't want to encourage anyone to downgrade OSX unless they feel like being guinea pigs.

The short and sweet answer is simple: downgrade to 10.4.6. :)

Here's a breakdown of our breakdown.

Missing sounds: we took it in the shorts with 10.4.7's CoreAudio and OpenAL updates, as these broke a lot of Civ4's sounds. They should work pretty good in 10.4.6. Edit: seems this may be premature and that an earlier version of OSX (still not nailed down) works better. I can confirm that it works good in 10.4.0, but I want to try incremental upgrades to see where the line in the sand is drawn.

Kernel panics on Intel: The initial 10.4.7 release with the busted OpenGL is causing hard lockups and kernel panics on Intel iMacs and MacBook Pros. Updating to the fixed 10.4.7 (the "a" release) or downgrading to 10.4.6 will fix this.

Poor performance on PPC: turns out that the CoreAudio/OpenAL issues that are causing silent sounds are also causing performance to go in the toilet on PPC Macs (not so much on Intel). Downgrading to 10.4.6 should give you a performance increase. Edit: same as above for the audio caveat.

We're still gathering more data, but so far this is what we've got. If anyone has contrary data, please reply. My head is still spinning a bit from all this - it's a little unbelievable to fathom. I suppose I should be glad that at least there are no reported issues with keyboards and mice not working. ;)

Apparently I was due for a blast of bad karma, so I'm going to start playing the lottery with the expectation that some massive positive compensation is headed my way. :)

Brad, not to burst your bubble, but I just tested 10.4.6 on a fresh install, and I wasn't getting any sounds. I had ambient music, but no sound effects. I had my scouts fight some lions just to test it out.

I did have some sounds in 10.4 without any upgrading.

We're still gathering more data, but so far this is what we've got. If anyone has contrary data, please reply. My head is still spinning a bit from all this - it's a little unbelievable to fathom. I suppose I should be glad that at least there are no reported issues with keyboards and mice not working. ;)


I've got a dual 2.7GHz G5 with a Radeon 9650 card, 256MB VRAM, and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I'm seeing all those issues...

* No unit sounds. Well, once I did hear a plane on patrol, but that was just after loading a saved game, and the noise went away once I actually did anything.
* Glitchy music. The background music stutters a lot. I know when a popup is coming, because the music abruptly halts a good second before it pops. Sometimes the background music keeps playing when a foreign leader pops up, so I get a mash of both.
* Zooming out to the point where clouds appears is badly broken. The globe is covered with bad textures, usually related to the last popup window. Other areas go red or blue or black...
* Both CPUs are pegged at 100% while the game is running. Even if the game isn't the frontmost app and it's sitting there waiting for me to push Return to start a new turn. Neither iDVD nor Final Cut Express use that much CPU. :(
* General sluggishness. Probably related to above, but navigating the game just seems slow. Doom 3 doesn't seem to have trouble with my hardware, but Civ IV lags like... say, Civ III on a Mac II. As others have posted, running it in a window instead of full screen makes a dramatic improvement.

If you need a test subject, just say the word...

Brad,
How can you tell if you have the "good" revision of 10.4.7?

I second what MacWhiz said... running on a Quad G5 with 2.5 GB RAM... even with all the graphics set at stock, I pan around smoothly (for the most part) but as I move about the world in the beginning, I see a frame jump...

Also, went to 10.4.6 - no music, and really no sound improvements (seemingly) over 10.4.7

It is really unexpected as to why it is so incredibly demanding of my CPUs... like he said, not even encoding a DVD or what not causes my CPUs to this high...

Brad,

I have the good version of 10.4.7 and still get kernel panics with antialiasing multisamples on when moving scouts.

I've installed both the Combo and fixed Delta on my machine but still get the kernel panics reliably with AAMS and scouts while in full screen mode. It's not a problem in windowed mode. Happy to provide any further information you would like to track this down either here or via email.

(15" MacBook Pro)

I've got a dual 2.7GHz G5 with a Radeon 9650 card, 256MB VRAM, and Mac OS X 10.4.6. I'm seeing all those issues...

* No unit sounds. Well, once I did hear a plane on patrol, but that was just after loading a saved game, and the noise went away once I actually did anything.
* Glitchy music. The background music stutters a lot. I know when a popup is coming, because the music abruptly halts a good second before it pops. Sometimes the background music keeps playing when a foreign leader pops up, so I get a mash of both.
* Zooming out to the point where clouds appears is badly broken. The globe is covered with bad textures, usually related to the last popup window. Other areas go red or blue or black...
* Both CPUs are pegged at 100% while the game is running. Even if the game isn't the frontmost app and it's sitting there waiting for me to push Return to start a new turn. Neither iDVD nor Final Cut Express use that much CPU. :(
* General sluggishness. Probably related to above, but navigating the game just seems slow. Doom 3 doesn't seem to have trouble with my hardware, but Civ IV lags like... say, Civ III on a Mac II. As others have posted, running it in a window instead of full screen makes a dramatic improvement.

If you need a test subject, just say the word...

I'll throw in some of my own info here too. I'm using a MacBook Pro, 2.16GHz, Radeon x1600 256MB VRAM, 1GB RAM, 10.4.7.

* I have the sound issue everyone reports, only background music. I do hear the music change when I zoom in on a city.

* No problems zooming out, but a couple times I had all buildings & objects on the ground turn black. Zooming all the way out, then back in fixed this one.

* Both CPUs at 100% all the time - I don't know that this is really a bug, but I thought I'd mention it anyway.

* My nation's banner & unit selection icon (on the bottom of the screen) slowly got more pixelated as I played longer. Eventually the banner disappeared completely. I grabbed a couple screenshots of this: Pic 1 (http://www.enginerd.us/screens/Civ4_1.png) Pic 2 (http://www.enginerd.us/screens/Civ4_2.png)

* I had a couple of kernel panics while playing the game. I think they stopped after I installed the fixed 10.4.7 release. Just incase you want it, I saved the kernel panic logs. Panic Log (http://www.enginerd.us/files/Civ4_kernel_panics.rtf)

I was able to reproduce all of these bugs after restarting the game and my computer.

Likewise, I'd be more than happy to act as a tester for these and other bugs. I have an external drive that I can install old releases of the OS on if you want any testing done on previous versions of OS X.

Just for the record, I did some more testing with 10.4 straight up, and it runs much better overall than either 10.4.6 or 10.4.7. I loaded up the game I finished on 10.4.7, and all the ambient music plays, I can scroll out to the clouds with no graphics anomalies, and the gameplay is smoother. There are also sounds. SOUNDS!

I have the good version of 10.4.7 and still get kernel panics with antialiasing multisamples on when moving scouts.

So did you finally do the forced combo update, and does your build version now have the "a" at the end, or did you update some other way?

And for the record, play in a window is way slower than full screen.

It is really unexpected as to why it is so incredibly demanding of my CPUs... like he said, not even encoding a DVD or what not causes my CPUs to this high...

Have you ever played any other 3D games on your Mac? Pretty much all of them should peg at least one CPU.

Brad,
How can you tell if you have the "good" revision of 10.4.7?

Open the "About This Mac" dialog, click on 10.4.7. It should show you a build number with an "a" at the end. Note that this is Intel-only. The PPC 10.4.7 update was good from the get-go.

As others have posted, running it in a window instead of full screen makes a dramatic improvement.

From what I read, others have said that windowed mode eliminates the kernel panics on Intel hardware - at a slight performance cost.

You don't appear to be having kernel panics, and you say windowed mode is faster, which is not what the Intel Mac users appear to be saying. How much faster is windowed mode for you?

So did you finally do the forced combo update, and does your build version now have the "a" at the end, or did you update some other way?
My update history is:
1)Software Update 10.4.7 (Delta light) - affected by problem files
2)Direct download of full Combo updater - reputedly unaffected
3)Direct download of fixed Delta installer
4)Reaplication of fixed Delta installer in my Admin account (just in case even though it asked for my admin password before updating at step 3)

I have the 'a' and the same OpenGL framework version as you.

I have the 'a' and the same OpenGL framework version as you.

Are you getting actual entries in the panic.log file now? If so, could you post one here or e-mail it to me (brad AT aspyr DOT com)?

Poor performance on PPC: turns out that the CoreAudio/OpenAL issues that are causing silent sounds are also causing performance to go in the toilet on PPC Macs (not so much on Intel). Downgrading to 10.4.6 should give you a performance increase. Edit: same as above for the audio caveat.


Hope this info helps. I have the following system:

PowerMac G5 1.8ghz Rev-A (single processor)
1 gig RAM
ATI 9800 Special Edition (256 VRAM)
10.4.7

Performance is pretty terrible, even with 256 megs VRAM. The sound cuts out and if I got similar framerates in a fps the game would be unplayable. In Civ 4, its playable, but it really tries your patience. Hard to really equate sluggishness, but I have a feeling the performance on my system is not exactly what was intended. Let me know if there is other system information that would be helpful. :scan:

You don't appear to be having kernel panics, and you say windowed mode is faster, which is not what the Intel Mac users appear to be saying. How much faster is windowed mode for you?
Just to be clear, I at least couldn't tell whether windowed mode was faster or not - it was running at full speed in full-screen mode with everything turned up. So AFAICT, windowed mode might well have had superior performance.

Have you ever played any other 3D games on your Mac? Pretty much all of them should peg at least one CPU.

I'm not a huge gamer but I have played a few.... namely Warcraft III, Rise of Nations... I understand that these are older games and therefore less taxing

Should Civ IV be taxing 3-4 of the CPUs?

After testing 10.4, 10.4.1, 10.4.2, 10.4.6 and 10.4.7, I found the best performance to be 10.4.1. 10.4.2 played well, but the sounds seemed to be cutting out more than in 10.4.1.

I shut off all the sounds except for Sound Effects, but the only ones that played (even under 10.4.1) were the city building noises... and those were cut off almost in mid noise.

But the ambient sounds and music worked splendidly under 10.4.1, and the gameplay is faster and smoother.

I'm not sure if it's worth messing with, but maybe this information can help you figure out what went wrong in the later builds of Tiger.

It's been a long day in front of the computer intalling and updating... I now have a different version of OS X on four different drives.

Time to do some cleaning.

Are you getting actual entries in the panic.log file now? If so, could you post one here or e-mail it to me (brad AT aspyr DOT com)?

Brad -

I actually did get a kernel panic after installing the 10.4.7 'a' build, while running in a window. I have the entry from the panic.log if you want it...

But the ambient sounds and music worked splendidly under 10.4.1, and the gameplay is faster and smoother.



Too bad my Quad won't run that... I'll have to try going back to 10.4.4 and see if that makes any difference...

More information (panic logs galore if you want them and a save game that is at the right place to move some scouts and crash the computer).
I get a kernel panic if the following conditions are fulfilled:
Full screen
AAMS on (4x at the moment)
Scout moving east
Graphic level on high

The thing about the graphic level on high is that if I set graphic level to medium and then push render quality, globe quality, turn off the single unit option and high detail terrain on it is fine. On the other hand, high graphic quality with low render quality and normal terrain detail crashes.

Too bad my Quad won't run that... I'll have to try going back to 10.4.4 and see if that makes any difference...

yeah, I can't even do the "start from scratch and patch" because I upgraded my video card. the tiger disc I have is 10.4.0 which doesn't work with the 6800 ultra. :(

Hard to really equate sluggishness, but I have a feeling the performance on my system is not exactly what was intended.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. It would not surprise me for Civ4 to peg one CPU at 100%, but on a dual CPU setup, it shouldn't go much higher than 110-115% as it's not really multithreaded. So these reports that it's running at 180% on PowerPC Macs are very disturbing.

It's been a long day in front of the computer intalling and updating... I now have a different version of OS X on four different drives.

I'm extremely grateful for your patience on this. It's been very helpful.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. It would not surprise me for Civ4 to peg one CPU at 100%, but on a dual CPU setup, it shouldn't go much higher than 110-115% as it's not really multithreaded. So these reports that it's running at 180% on PowerPC Macs are very disturbing.

Its running at 187.5% on my Intel mac right now.

After testing 10.4, 10.4.1, 10.4.2, 10.4.6 and 10.4.7, I found the best performance to be 10.4.1. 10.4.2 played well, but the sounds seemed to be cutting out more than in 10.4.1.

It's been a long day in front of the computer intalling and updating... I now have a different version of OS X on four different drives.

Great work and thank you!

Unfortunately, I didn't reproduce the results. I moved one drive back to 10.4.1, but when I started a game, there was no sound, and it went really slowly. However, I did make a custom game and I played a HUGE map... so that might have altered the variables too much to do a real test. When I loaded up an old saved game, I could hear the ambient music again.

Strange. Very, very strange.

how does one revert back to 10.4.1?? I downloaded it from apple, but it won't let me install it.

You have to reinstall off your original Tiger disc, then update to where you want to be.

Open the "About This Mac" dialog, click on 10.4.7. It should show you a build number with an "a" at the end. Note that this is Intel-only. The PPC 10.4.7 update was good from the get-go.

Ah. Thanks. BTW, I'm at 1535 AD in a huge world on a MacBook and, like the MacWorld reviewer, I find the game to be "fully playable." Not perfect, mind you, but more than acceptable while I wait for the Mac Pro to show up.

Have you ever played any other 3D games on your Mac? Pretty much all of them should peg at least one CPU.

Not like this- both CPU's pinned when the game is effectively idling? Not even FPS's act like that...

I've been playing on my Mac 512 (built-in black and white monitor)...

Kidding, although not by much. It's on a PB 1.5 GHz, 1 GB, ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, running 10.4.7 (8J135). While it's jerky, I'm such a CivAddict that I find it's still playable on small maps (until I get my MBP in... who knows). For that... I'm impressed. :goodjob:

Here's another impressive bit: I've had one soft crash. No kernel panics – and I just finished a 9 hour game over several days of testing (small map and 6 civs on my gerbil-driven PB). :D

Here's one oddity: when I dabble in the WorldBuilder, the minimap starts out fine but as soon as I actually mod something, the minimap freaks out with this odd feedback loop. I don't know if this could be indicative of any other problems (or if anybody else on the planet is having this issue as well). Here's a screen grab (note the map within the map within the map...):

Ah. Thanks. BTW, I'm at 1535 AD in a huge world on a MacBook and, like the MacWorld reviewer, I find the game to be "fully playable." Not perfect, mind you, but more than acceptable while I wait for the Mac Pro to show up.

Wow, that's pretty encouraging. How much RAM do you have? It's incredible that Civ 4 may be more playable on a MacBook right now because it doesn't have driver issues related to graphics cards. I have a MacBook too (2.0 with 2 GB of RAM), so I may try Civ 4 when a patch comes out.

Wow, that's pretty encouraging. How much RAM do you have? It's incredible that Civ 4 may be more playable on a MacBook right now because it doesn't have driver issues related to graphics cards. I have a MacBook too (2.0 with 2 GB of RAM), so I may try Civ 4 when a patch comes out.

2.0GHz, 1GB RAM. I did have an occasional problem with the screen darkening (sorta like night falling) and the game slowing down, but saving and reloading fixes that. Hasn't happened since 1400 AD or so and I'm getting background music now.

gfeier, that's about what I'm noticing. I started a game in 10.4.7 and it had no sound at all. But when I started the game, then opened the saved game, I now have ambient music. Still no sound effects, but the game is running very smoothly. When I load saved games they seem to run better than when I start a new game. Does that make any sense? Anyone else noticing this?

New and loaded games act identically for me. No ambient sounds/music in either case.

Yeah, I'm sure that's the case. It would not surprise me for Civ4 to peg one CPU at 100%, but on a dual CPU setup, it shouldn't go much higher than 110-115% as it's not really multithreaded. So these reports that it's running at 180% on PowerPC Macs are very disturbing.

Not like this- both CPU's pinned when the game is effectively idling? Not even FPS's act like that...

Here's what it's doing on my Quad while idling at the main screen... like most programs, it cycles among the processors... i'd have to say, on average, I've got one near 100%, two around 60% and the 4th around 20%... if I average the 4, it works out to about 55-60%... across all four CPUs... so that's in line with what you said above... very glad to hear that it's not to be expected...

Any idea why panning around the display is smooth for the most part but regularly seems to jump (i.e, not smooth transition)... it's all subject to what appears to be a low refresh while panning around... i.e, it's not 100% crystal smooth

Let me know if you need any more information...

Thanks!

dual 1.8 G5, 3GB RAM, Ati X800XT 256 VRAM, 80 GB Raptor (0nly 30% full).
Running game at defaults as set at start up of Civ4. OS 10.4.7.

Music of game is variable; spock's voice overs clear; some sounds start and stop abruptly, others not happening at all. Combat animations abrupt.

No other programs running. Records show CPUs running at 185% making my otherwise very quiet G5 blast up it's fans ! I have never seen both CPUs run like this, and I do multitask on realtime video editing with Final cut studio progs all running together.

but the game is good..............

I've been running the game in OS 10.3.9 and have had sound problems from the begining... so I don't thin 10.4.7 is the problem, like I've read in other posts.

Might I make a suggestion to those that have PPC with ATIcard and want to overclock the VRAM and GPU itself. Try out ATIccelerator_II_1.0.6b over at Versiontracker, or macupdate or whatever. This might help out. However I am not recommending it unless you want to try a hardward mod that might smoke your card and reduce your battery life. (for those of you that have laptops) I do use it and have overclocked the GPU (6%) VRAM (5%). I have a single processor 1.8 G5 with a radeon 9800pro with 256mb of VRAM. It runs CIV4 fairly decently with specs set on high and large map with 5 civs. Still no ambient music though. So will have to wait for the patch.
Civ on

Is there a way to tell if the overclock is actually helping (frame rate counter or anything?) and is there a way to tell if the overclocking is damaging my system? thanks for the head's up... I love tinkering.

gfeier, that's about what I'm noticing. I started a game in 10.4.7 and it had no sound at all. But when I started the game, then opened the saved game, I now have ambient music. Still no sound effects, but the game is running very smoothly. When I load saved games they seem to run better than when I start a new game. Does that make any sense? Anyone else noticing this?

I think the sounds may work better in later eras. I saw something like this on my old machine with C3C.

I have an intel mac (2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 128 VRAM) and everything has been working fine (with the exception of combat sounds and animations). At the beginning of every game there's very little music, but i think that's because the turns are so short, it only lasts for maybe 10 turns though

@Zaimejs,
The only way that you could possibly tell is if CIV4 had an Frame per second counter built in, there isn't one in the program that I could tell. It won't let you overclock too much, I notice artifacts(white pixels) coming up on screen when I pushed the card too hard. Thats when I had to back the settings off. As for damaging the card, i would assume that you have to use your own best judgement on that. I usually listen to my GPU fan, it has a whine that I can hear above the G5 fans. Hope that helps....

I've been running the game in OS 10.3.9 and have had sound problems from the begining... so I don't thin 10.4.7 is the problem, like I've read in other posts.

Same here.

I have to echo all of the problems reported in this thread. On my quad, even when hidden the game takes ~200% of my CPU. Sometimes a bit less, but I never saw it get over 205%. Strangely (at least to me, as an ameteur programmer) Activity Monitor reports it has 12 threads, so I'm not sure why it isn't being spread more evenly. The 200% was always just 2 processors.*

Didn't Civ IV initially have a ton of ATI related problems as well on the Windows platform? Just digging back into my brain and I remember threads about how much the game sucked with an ATI video card (specific catalyst driver versions and what not).

In any case I have 10.4.7a (for those needing to update from 10.4.7 to 10.4.7a make sure you delete the receipt in the /Library/Receipt folder otherwise it *may* freak out) and no sounds. Graphics seem ok so far and no crashes that I can report. I also had my brother boot off of a firewire drive with 10.3.9 installed with his 15" PB G4 1.5ghz (ati 9700) and there are no sounds either.

I personally have a 20" iMac Intel Core Duo (2.0ghz / 1.5gb of ram) with 10.4.7a and the cpu is hovering between 170-185%

Didn't Civ IV initially have a ton of ATI related problems as well on the Windows platform? Just digging back into my brain and I remember threads about how much the game sucked with an ATI video card (specific catalyst driver versions and what not).



Yes- I pre-ordered that, and there were a lot of problems, and not only directly related to driver issues. Major memory leaks too, causing massive paging to the hard disks and frequent crashes. It was to the point that users were creating and distributing their own patches on the forums. Firaxis did not really put in any kind of appearance if I remember, the developers would do radio interviews promoting their product, and I think people got pissed because the game kept getting rave reviews when lots of people buying the game could not actually run it.

Brad,

Is there any info you need to investigate the PPC CPU spiking? I'm happy to provide...

Had my first crash today. I'm not sure what caused it, but I was dominating Caesar... so maybe he had something to do with it.

:(

I've had a couple... Don't remember the first – it happened in the normal course of gameplay –*but after reloading and doing the same thing over again, it didn't happen again so I chalked it up to flakiness.

The second happened when I was dabbling in the WorldBuilder and added either a lighthouse or a harbor (I forget which) to a city with no ocean access (it was on a "lake") – and that consistently crashed it...

Well first of all thanks to Brad for bringing this masterpiece to our beloved macintosh plattform! :goodjob:

But thats of course not the only reason for my posting here. Moreover I write to tell you about my personal experience with Civ 4. Just bought my copy a couple of days ago and played it about 30 hours. And I experience exactly the problems some mentioned here on my iMac G5 2.0 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, ATI 9600 (128 MB) and OS 10.4.6 ...

I also have broken sounds, continous slowdowns and the mentioned "nightfall" problem. (usually seems to appear once after 1000 AD, after exit and reloading it works fine again)

Once had a crash too. Overall it's still "playable" for a real fan of the series, but not really enjoyable at all. Hope you already found out more about what is causing the trouble and working on a patch ? Please don't repeat the mistakes of Firaxis and keep the community informed about the progress. :)

You don't appear to be having kernel panics, and you say windowed mode is faster, which is not what the Intel Mac users appear to be saying. How much faster is windowed mode for you?

Possibly the gains are due to running with a slightly lesser resolution... but when I switched mid-game, it was the difference between "really jerky when you pan" to "mostly smooth."

I didn't have any kernel panics, but then I didn't build any scouts, either.

There are also a number of non-fatal bugs in the program. Should probably send my beta-testing report into Aspyr...

I've played a few games through and am at 2005 in a standard sized map with 6AIs on it. I'm uncertain if the game is slowing down during other civilization's moves - the screen scrolling is inherently jerky anyway because of the acceleration they use. It induces a feeling of vertigo in me so much so that I had to turn off watching moves.

Anyway, invariably it can't roll to the next unit properly. It's not the same as being slow and laggy, its a real bug.

For example, it will highlight a cavalry unit but give you information as it it were a worker with some really screwy estimates of turns to complete (e.g. Irrigate <I> a farm, 347045 turns to complete) and you can't actually do anything with the unit anyway but have to select another unit and come back. Basically the info in the bottom left corner of the screen gets stuck in the wrong place and the net result is that you can't actually do anything with the (apparently) selected unit on the screen because it's not actually the one the computer thinks is selected.

Non-fatal, but frustrating. Kernel panics are bad, but can be mitigated. Messed up interfaces are much harder to get around.

Anyone else experiencing this?

Thought I'd post my experiences with the game.

Im running with a Dual 1.8 G5. 1Gig Ram. GeForce FX 5200 64mb. Mac OS 10.3.9 (just haven't got around to getting 10.4).

Have played 2 full games, and about 15 hours of game play. Odd thing was the game I finished last night, said I'd played for 3 or so hours, but I'm sure it took me at least 5 or 6.

The graphics seem to be running pretty well for 64mb. A bit sluggish when moving around the world, but no too bad.

Have tried upping the graphics to see how it goes. Didn't have any problems when I did, but only tried it out for short periods, usually on small maps

Same sound issues as everyone else. Get nimoy on techs. Get founding religion music. And the back ground music seems to play (be being a metal head I turned it off pretty quickly). I figured that until the sound are fixed I'll just turn the sound off completely. That seemed to speed up the game a bit too which was nice. I got the sounds to work on start up only twice. First time I booted up, and once randomly a couple of days ago (don't know what I did to deserve it). Each time the in game sound seemed to be a bit more, but cut out pretty soon after.

I've never played it on PC so I don't have anything to compare it to in terms of performance (Similar to Civ 3. There's still some units in that game that I've never heard the sound for). The game its self is fantastic. Just trying to ween myself off all my Civ 3 habits that I've built up over the last few years.

...For example, it will highlight a cavalry unit but give you information as it it were a worker...

Anyone else experiencing this?
Sounds like lag between where the game thinks the cursor is where the computer actually shows it...

Haven't had that one but I did get laggy enough that the roll-over popups for the techs just stopped displaying. I think it's a memory issue – if I saved, bailed and went back in, it would be fine (or "fine enough").

I've also keep getting this very nasty bug.

Where something when I select a unit or gets auto selected after a turn, and I lose ALL control over everything. I cant click on anything, esc doesn't do anything, your stuck and screwed if you haven't saved.

If I reload a saved game, the bug doesn't happen at the same unit, it's random.

I also noticed the same bug, when I moved a unit before I gave him a promotion.

It's got to be worst yet. I can handle the sound the Kernel panics, but I cant stand this. I'm not going to play or recommend the game until this is fixed.

I run a 17' Macbook Pro, with 2gb of ram, and the 100 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.

On an up note, I have no speed problems at all.


Cheers!!

I can handle the sound the Kernel panics, but I cant stand this. I'm not going to play or recommend the game until this is fixed.

I run a 17' Macbook Pro, with 2gb of ram, and the 100 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.


Indeed it should not be recommended to anyone like it is now. Ive never been so frustrated with a piece of software like with Civ4. I'm having a Windows deja-vu.

As stated somewhere the craphics card issue needs to be fixed on Apple level? OMG this can take upt 2 months as 10.4.7 was released last week.

This was really the most hyped rip-off of the year and as Vista is delayed to next year I think it will stay like that.

I just experienced my first crash. The computer completely locked up, I had to press the Powerkey to shut it down. As far as I can tell, there is no crash log, nothing in the Console list that looks like Civilization or Civ. Restarting from the previous AutoSave did not reproduce the crash. I think it crashed right after the AutoSave as I was trying to open a city screen. I have a 2.16 GHz 15" MBP with 2 GB RAM. I am running 10.4.7. I had Activity Monitor and Entourage open. I am running in clamshell mode. Civ was using close to 200% of the cpu, at least at times.

The performance has actually been quite good. Compared to the same computer under Boot Camp I think the Mac version is at least as fast, it definitely starts up faster. The Boot Camp version has quit unexpectedly on rare occassions but it has never locked up the whole computer. I think this is the first time this computer has crashed at all since I got it around Memorial Day.

Between the hard crash and the no sound, it's back to Boot Camp for me. Waiting for the Miracle Cure.

Edit: I should add that I set the graphics to highest on both Mac and Boot Camp. I didn't change the default anti-alias settings.

Sounds like lag between where the game thinks the cursor is where the computer actually shows it...

Haven't had that one but I did get laggy enough that the roll-over popups for the techs just stopped displaying. I think it's a memory issue – if I saved, bailed and went back in, it would be fine (or "fine enough").
If it were lag it should catch up. But it never catches up - it just gets completely waylaid.

Ignore this, a mistake

Having the same problems as everyone. Mitigated by running windowed - still next to no sound.

Is there a workaround so I can see the top of the window??

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iMac 20" Intel Dual Core
2GB RAM
256MB X1600

OS 10.4.7

Wasn't sure where to put this post, but Aspyr emailed in response to my questions of whether a patch would fix the sound problems.

They said that a decision was made to proceed without unit sounds due to problems converting the engine to mac binary... they also said that there is no word whether this issue will be addressed in a patch.

I was wondering if anyone else has gotten this message (I've seen it once before posted sometime last week on these forums)

I'm starting to wonder if Aspyr knew about the sound problems before they shipped the game...

I'm starting to wonder if Aspyr knew about the sound problems before they shipped the game...
Given that it seems to affect every system - not just 10.4.7 - I would be gobsmacked if they weren't aware. The alternative is that their beta testing was inadequate. Either way it is not exactly a gold star by their name.

Having the same problems as everyone. Mitigated by running windowed - still next to no sound.

Is there a workaround so I can see the top of the window??
Sure. Change your computer's screen resolution so that it's higher than the game's resolution. I'm running the game 1024x768... coincidentally what my screen resolution was at. Full screen was okay, but windowed, of course, the menubar covers the top. The fix was to adjust the computer's display to 1280x854. That "854" makes all the difference, giving the vertical space to keep the menubar from overlapping the top of the game.

I'm surprised one cannot just grab the edge of a window and manually adjust its size. A lot of programs work that way but apparently not Civ IV?

And if Aspyr knowingly shipped this game w/o sound effects ... well, let's put it this way: their bean-counters will regret the day they cut corners to ship by June 30. They sacrificed long-term potential for short-term gain. Civ IV might not sell that well because of it, which will have a ripple effect in the form of the very same bean-counters then saying it isn't worth it to port Civ IV Warlords to the Mac. The irony? These were the same folks who got the vicious circle going in the first place!

I wonder how many of these aforementioned bean-counters have business degrees? Because if they do, they're shaming the institutions that granted them.

Gatekeeper

I'm surprised one cannot just grab the edge of a window and manually adjust its size. A lot of programs work that way but apparently not Civ IV?
I'm probably wrong, but I think it has to do with the game being designed to play full screen, replacing all interface elements rather than using the OS to render them (like cursors, save dialogues, etc.). So, at the screen size level, the game sets its resolution – and that resolution it keeps.
And if Aspyr knowingly shipped this game w/o sound effects ... well, let's put it this way: their bean-counters will regret the day they cut corners to ship by June 30. They sacrificed long-term potential for short-term gain. Civ IV might not sell that well because of it, which will have a ripple effect in the form of the very same bean-counters then saying it isn't worth it to port Civ IV Warlords to the Mac. The irony? These were the same folks who got the vicious circle going in the first place!

I wonder how many of these aforementioned bean-counters have business degrees? Because if they do, they're shaming the institutions that granted them.
Shaming? Maybe. Maybe not. Look at the market at large. These days, it's all about the short-term gains and the minor blips on paper that affect stock price. The pencil ne... uh, bean counters said they'd ship Q2 – and if they don't, the analysts dock them and the stock takes a hit.

These days, considering the market and the state of technology, they'll look at "shipped on time" and weigh it against "mostly works", "high performance caveat" and "can be patched." They risk less of a market hit with "imperfect" over "didn't ship" – after all, people can't buy what's not there.

Long-run satisfaction/customer loyalty can be bought. Want proof? Look at the Microsoft market model: that crowd has the biggest percentage of pathological apologists in the tech world. Despite this, other smart people see these in-denial advocates, hold their nose and run the system. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

Aspyr is in the same boat. Figure that's it's got maybe $5 million in revenues on a good year, filter out most of that for a thin net spread among, what...? 13 employees? I don't know how much they're publicly traded (if at all), but they aren't above market rules.

Yeah, it's frustrating (especially for us)... but ultimately, in The Big Picture, shipping when they did wasn't a choice they could make.

I personally think the whole mac-gaming business is allready a corpse...boot camp, and its eventual improvements, are going to make ports fairly unprofitable. Civ IV demonstrates a badly done port, a rushed job, and one that was what over 6 months after the pc version? The game is more expensive on OSX, available much later, and buggy as hell...if i had an intelchip in my mac, i'd much rather shell out for the pc version and play it as such (patches and all, and an imminent release of an expansion pack) rather than wait and get an inferior and system-crunching version.

I personally think the whole mac-gaming business is allready a corpse...boot camp, and its eventual improvements, are going to make ports fairly unprofitable. Civ IV demonstrates a badly done port, a rushed job, and one that was what over 6 months after the pc version? The game is more expensive on OSX, available much later, and buggy as hell...if i had an intelchip in my mac, i'd much rather shell out for the pc version and play it as such (patches and all, and an imminent release of an expansion pack) rather than wait and get an inferior and system-crunching version.
Well, I really like the Mac. And I particularly like things being Mac like. So I will always have a demand for Mac games. I have to use Windows for work and it frustrates me no end.

However, if the Mac port of a game is identical to the PC version - just buggier then it doesn't seem like there is much gain. I have to put up with ugly PC stuff and I get added bugs. If it was actually more Mac-like then I'll still want the port. There is still the barrier of getting a copy of Windows so I think there is easily a market for Mac ports despite Boot Camp. But Civ IV ain't the poster child for Mac ports.

Has anyone tried copying older CoreAudio kexts (10.4.6 -> 10.4.7) onto the latest OS to see if that helps?

Has anyone tried copying older CoreAudio kexts (10.4.6 -> 10.4.7) onto the latest OS to see if that helps?

How many times do you reinstall your mac? Sounds like you like to srew up things :eek:

How many times do you reinstall your mac? Sounds like you like to srew up things :eek:

Not once. I keep copies of all originals and have not had to reinstall yet from problems caused by regressing older kexts. Not that I recommend everyone to go out and start switching kexts.

Brad mentioned that there were some audio pieces that broke the game, so if he can give the exact components I'd be happy to try and replace them with earlier ones to see if that helps.

As far as shipping a product to meet a scheduled date... there has got to be some parameters to at least make the game reasonably playable before shipping.

Consistent crashes, a hair of audio, major performance problems, and these problems being pretty widespread across many Apple HW and SW products :eek:

Don't you all think that these problems should be addressed before GM'ing a product?

Jota... sounds like you know what you're doing. Why not try that and tell us how it works? Although I tried 10.4.6, and I still had no sound effects.