Just a quick question:

Is It possible to play civ4 on a Mac and if it is, is it pretty much the same as playing it on a PC.

They have a version of civ4 for the mac already. :lol:

Im pretty sure the rules and all are the same so it should be the same game. :mischief:

I believe Warlords is out for the Mac also, but I'm not sure about that.

You can play on a Mac, especially one of the Intel ones with a separate graphics card. The biggest drawback is you can't use mods which use the SDK because there isn't anything like that on the Mac side. Both vanilla and warlords are out and patched to the same version as the PC. I played in XP on a couple of my Intel macs and the experience was pretty much the same.

So, for example, if i had a macbook i could play civ4 on it with no problems.

(all the reqirments check out except it has a Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950. I dont know if that is a good enough graphics card to play the game)

That is why I mentioned having a separate graphics card. The Intel onboard graphics don't really cut it for civ4. I haven't tried it on a Macbook but I have on a Intel mini which has the same graphics. The processor is fast enough but the lame video make scrolling around very painful. There are definitely people running it on Macbooks, but I don't think you could if you had ever used a machine where it ran well.

There is a civ4 mac forum:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/forumdisplay.php?f=199

So, for example, if i had a macbook i could play civ4 on it with no problems.

(all the reqirments check out except it has a Intel® Graphics Media Accelerator 950. I dont know if that is a good enough graphics card to play the game)

It'll run, but it's not very playable. You want at least a MacBook Pro.

(I have tried running it on my MacBook and it's ok if you turn all the GFX settings down, play on small maps with few civs and stop after the classical age, after that it gets really painful)

On the other hand it runs fine on any G5, and the Intel Mac Pros, MacBook pros, and iMacs.

What about GOTM's, and other such things like being able to use saves here at CFC. How would my CIV and CFC experience be affected?

I am thinking about getting a new laptop, and a Mac is an option rather than going Vista. But I don't think I can live without my Civilization games. :)

Mods are the biggest compatibility issue for Civ4 currently, mainly because there's no Mac SDK, so the custom DLL's used by most Windows Mod makers cannot be adapted to run on a Mac.

You can play GOTMs on a Mac, as we provide a Mac version of the HoF Mod and Mac start files for each game.

We haven't been able to support Mac players in a Civ4 SGOTM yet, as they would have to form a separate team to share a Mac-specific save, and there haven't been sufficient Mac sign-ups so far.

Other saves you find on CFC may work, but it depends on whether they have been set up to use a mod, and, if so, whether that mod is compatible.

Thanks for the response.

I don't use any mods. So, to be clear, if Joe Blow posts a save in the general discussion forum for people to review, I can load that save into my mac as long as it is not modded?

What about the bugs I have been reading about? Is gaming on a Mac (and I basically do LIGHT gaming like Civ) typically a hassle?

Yes, a non-mod Civ4 or Warlords save will load up OK on a Mac.

I wouldn't call Civ4 "light". It has some of the heaviest graphics demands of any game around at the moment, as it relies on full-on 3D animated graphics to display the world map and all of the details. Hence the problems with low-end Mac Books and Mac Minis using Intel Integrated graphics. There also seem to be issues with Civ4 on older architecture Macs, but a Mac Book Pro or a current iMac or Mac Pro should run it OK.

Gaming is a hassle on a Mac. We don't get every game ported to OS X, and the ones that are ported are typically delayed and/or short of features. No one buying a Mac should expect a rich gaming experience.

With a modern Mac you do have a 'Get Out of Jail Free' card because you can install Windows NT SP2 in a separate disk partition using Apple's BootCamp software. It's not really Free, of course - you have to have a Windows license. That allows you to play any Windows game that isn't available for OS X, as long as you are prepared to reboot into Windows to do so.

Thanks, Alan.

I should warn you that Bootcamp is a beta product from Apple. It's pretty stable as I understand it, but it is time limited. You will probably have to buy Leopard - OS X 10.5 - in order to get the full version of Bootcamp and keep it running.

Second warning - Leopard is likely to be released in the next three months or so. It will cost around $120 if you buy a Mac today with Tiger, version 10.4. However, if you buy your Mac when Leopard is released you'll get it bundled.