The other day I clicked on the Civ icon after about a month without playing and I get a very odd message for a macintosh:
"The application Civilization IV quit unexpectedly."
I'm unused to receiving error messages without some sort of description, and especially unused to having an application refuse to even start up without some sort of change prompting the matter. I can't think of what could be wrong with the app. I downloaded some warlords mods a few months back, experimented with the editing features of the game, but the worst problem I ever got was some uncooperative xml files.

I've approached the root of the problem at the original vanilla application. I've reinstalled it several times, deleted all the old libraries, and even created a new account on my Intel Macbook with OS 10.5.2 (it has definitely worked many times after I installed 10.5.) Nothing significant has changed about my computer's format, and I updated vanilla to its most recent version with absolutely no success.

The report details look something like this:

Process: Civilization IV [154]
Path: /Volumes/Civilization IV/Civilization IV/Civilization IV.app/Contents/MacOS/Civilization IV
Identifier: com.aspyr.civ4
Version: ??? (???)
Code Type: X86 (Native)
Parent Process: launchd [66]

Date/Time: 2008-03-24 18:03:35.358 -0400
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.2 (9C31)
Report Version: 6

Exception Type: EXC_BAD_INSTRUCTION (SIGILL)
Exception Codes: 0x0000000000000001, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread: 0

Thread 0 Crashed:
0 com.aspyr.civ4 0x0001df71 IDirect3DDevice_Mac::Clear(unsigned long, _D3DRECT const*, unsigned long, unsigned long, float, unsigned long) + 911
1 ??? 0x02ae5929 0 + 44980521
2 dyld 0x8fe12e76 ImageLoaderMachO::doModInitFunctions(ImageLoader:: LinkContext const&) + 246
3 dyld 0x8fe0e723 ImageLoader::recursiveInitialization(ImageLoader:: LinkContext const&, unsigned int) + 307
4 dyld 0x8fe0e809 ImageLoader::runInitializers(ImageLoader::LinkCont ext const&) + 57
5 dyld 0x8fe04102 dyld::initializeMainExecutable() + 146
6 dyld 0x8fe07b5f dyld::_main(mach_header const*, unsigned long, int, char const**, char const**, char const**) + 2975
7 dyld 0x8fe01872 dyldbootstrap::start(mach_header const*, int, char const**, long) + 818
8 dyld 0x8fe01037 _dyld_start + 39

Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (32-bit):
eax: 0x0001df71 ebx: 0x02ae611a ecx: 0x00000000 edx: 0x0001de6f
edi: 0x00000001 esi: 0x00001504 ebp: 0xbfffe178 esp: 0xbfffe14c
ss: 0x0000001f efl: 0x00010246 eip: 0x0001df71 cs: 0x00000017
ds: 0x0000001f es: 0x0000001f fs: 0x00000000 gs: 0x00000037
cr2: 0x0001df71

Binary Images:
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Any ideas?

Welcome :wavey:

Path: /Volumes/Civilization IV/Civilization IV/Civilization IV.app/Contents/MacOS/Civilization IV

Do you have a whole volume assigned to Civ4 and called "Civilization IV"? Or are you trying to run the software from the DVD?

I've tried both, the error reports are identical. I can't imagine what about my computer has caused the CD to error as the hard drive copy. I deleted all the preference and library files, and updated a newly installed copy to the latest version; I even made a separate account just to run the application.

My question was: Are you trying to run the program from the DVD? That is what I suspect from looking at the Path definition in the crash log you posted. You can't do that. You have to copy the Civ4 folder from the DVD to your hard drive, then double click the copy of the Civ4 application on your hard drive, not the one on the DVD.

I have run it both from the CD and from my hard drive and gotten the same error report with the exception that the filepath is different, expectedly.

There is never any point in trying to run it from the DVD, it doesn't work.

However, that does indicate that the source of the problem may be the same from both locations. Perhaps that means that OS X is seeing the place where you have tried to install it as a read-only location, like the DVD.

Have you changed the account you are using to run Civ4?

Try running Repair Permissions?