I just got CIV4 <ver. 1.61> and installed on a intel iMac and when I ran CIV I got a error message that python failed initialization. Anyone know what the issue could be?

Hello, welcome :wavey:

1. Are you running on a case sensitive file system?

2. Have you installed any mods?

You can enable Python error logging by opening ~/Documents/Civilization IV/CivilizationIV.ini in TextEdit and changing the following line:

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 0

to

; Enable the logging system
LoggingEnabled = 1

Then, when you get the error, there will be more information about what went wrong in ~/Documents/Civilization IV/Logs/PythonErr.log. Open this text file in TextEdit and copy/paste it here and I'll see if it gives more clues.

Yes, I am running a case-sensitive file system. Is that the problem?

Quite likely. Aspyr say the problem is that some filenames use inconsistent case in the software as handed over by Firaxis. They couldn't correct the names for the Mac version because it would mess up the CRC checksums used by the software when running cross-platform multi-player games, so Civ4 ends up requiring a case-insensitive file system.

One option is to create a case-insensitive disk image using Disk Utility (in /Applications/Utilities), and install Civ4 and a user account home folder in it. The run with that user account. A real physical partition, formatted to be case-insensitive, would work, too.

If you don't want to run any mods, then you may be able to get away with only having Civ4 on the case-insensitive file system.