Hi there,

I have seen lots of discussion about this, but reading about it simply confuses me and does not give me many answers. I do not know much about "Boot Camp" or other things like that, so please forgive my ignorance on these issues. Any help would be much appreciated.

I forked over 50 bucks for Civ4 for my MacBook G5, 2.2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2 GB 667 MHz SDRAM, 144 MB of Video Ram, running on 10.5.2. I read something about MacBook's not being supported (bizarre considering the processor is the same that would be in a normal Mac), but I got it anyway because I heard of it working for others.

It works, it runs, etc. - however, when I try to turn the grid on, it crashes, and gradually units turn pitch black. Other than that, the only other thing I can think of is that the game in general is a bit sluggish when I'm zoomed out or when there are a lot of things happening. I feel like the game is not that pretty or advanced enough to where it would run kinda slow sometimes on my machine, which has plenty of RAM and free space. Neverwinter Nights 2 and Command and Conquer 3 ran better than this, which does not make any sense.

I'm a long-time Civ fan since Civ1, and the game is amazing for sure, but I really wish Aspyr would perfect a product before releasing it. Especially if its going to be on an Apple machine.

Thanks!

Hello, welcome :wavey:

You haven't found any answers, because there are none.

You and I may well agree that Civ4 should not need the cutting edge of graphics hardware. However, it seems it does require advanced hardware graphics acceleration because it is build around a high spec 3D graphics library. Your MacBook has an Intel integrated graphics chip set, and does not support the full suite of hardware acceleration features needed by Civ4. If you read the minimum requirements for Civ4 you will probably find that your graphics hardware is not included. Hence your problems with black terrain, slow zooming etc. The crash when turning on the grid is a reported "feature" of Civ4 on some Macs.

By all means report your concerns to Aspyr, but I suspect they will simply respond that your hardware is not a supported configuration.

Footnote: Your MacBook is not a G5. A G5 is a non-Intel CPU; Apple doesn't include them in any Macs now; and G5 CPUs have never been installed in a Mac portable.

Thanks for the quick response. That is regrettable - I suppose I will continue to play it like this. It might be because I am playing on a huge world map using all of the Civs (the Giant Earth Map download)... I'm sure that slows it down quite a bit as well?

Is there anything that can be done to make the performance a bit smoother? I am playing it in a window right now... would it be better to play it full screen?

Thanks again.

I don't have a MacBook with integrated graphics, so you need advice from someone who does. I'm not aware that there is any difference between full screen and window mode.

Certainly, huge maps and lots of civs and units will stress the system more than more modest games. You could try reducing graphics settings if you haven't already. Go into Options->Graphics and select the minimum level first. and see if that improves things.

On that note, how do I get a huge Earth map to have less than 18 civilizations???

I think you create a Custom Game at the Single Player menu. Change the left hand status column of leaders to 'Closed' instead of 'AI' to reduce the number of active players.

I run CIV on a Macbook with almost your exact same specs (2.0ghz/2.0gb). I haven't seen mine crash when I turn on the grid, but I rarely use the grid. My best advice would be to just avoid the grid. Most Macbook folk have that bug. To deal with the black terrain, zoom out to world view and back in. There will be some black left, but not so much as to obscure the game. I never even try to play any maps larger than standard, and even on a standard map, the end game is sluggish. I've never run it in a window, I'll try and check out how that behaves next time I play.

As always, contact Aspyr. You'll get an unnecessarily dismissive response, but it can't hurt to let them know how many people deal with these bugs.

I have an update. I have been playing Standard games lately, and the performance has actually been surprisingly good. I do not get the "blackness" as much, and when I do, a game restart usually works. The zoom out works sometimes too, thanks for that advice. The game is not really sluggish at all on Standard maps, except, as you said, near the end of the game. But sometimes even the end runs okay. It really must depend on how much activity and units are present in the game.

On a side note, I had a lot of fun playing 18 civs on a tiny pangaea map, and it was not sluggish at all because of the size, but it turned out to be a really fun game. It is a shame, though. I was really looking forward to a massive world map game with 18 civs.