Civilization IV in 4k resolution, and higher

Sorry if there is an topic for this. Search didn't come up with anything.
So. Is there a way to increase the UI and font size in civ iv? Playing in modern resolutions is really tough, because you can't see the text. Some solution that would work with civ 4: colonization too would be perfect. Any tips are welcome. Thank you.

I heard even Windows 7 is crap in 4K, good luck getting a Windows XP compatible game running well under 4K

I dont know what you heard about win7 and 4k, but it works flawlessy for me.
Thank you for your input anyways.

RE: 4K in Windows 7, the fonts don't scale as well as they do in Windows 8.

I didnt know, because I only have 7, and it looks fine for me. Maybe 8 is better, but I dont think it helps me playing civ4 any better in 4k.

You can adjust font size easily by editing Civ4Theme_Common.thm, which can be found in multiple locations depending on game version (original, BTS, mod etc). The common sub-directory is ../Resource/Themes/Civ4

Find the relevant copy and search for with .Font around line 357. In the section below that, you'll find the font family, style and size entries. Changing the size and style does what you'd expect. To change the font family, you'll need to use an included font or supply your own. You have to experiment to figure out which groupings are used for particular UI elements.

The issue you'll encounter when scaling fonts beyond a few point sizes is that they'll begin to outsize the UI elements in which they're contained. You'd need to perform more extensive edits to the UI art resources and theme data to accommodate significant changes.

For my own purposes at 1920x1200, I find bumping some font sizes 1 or 2 pts sufficient, though I'd like to try to work in larger icons for some elements like the units in the plot list and the resource icons in the city screen. The latter are particularly tiny.

Thank you so much. This will help me huge time!


I upped the font size by 4. It seems to be ok for 4k. Readable, but doesn't mess up too much things.
I could try for more also, but I'll leave it at that for now.
Thanks again!

Glad to help.

One approach you can use when figuring out which font group sizes correspond to which UI elements is to use an abnormally large size for each set at a time, then observe what looks out of place in the UI. You could also substitute a unique font for each, but make sure the fonts you use are compatible, or it will default to Arial, I believe. Takes some experimenting.

I am also experiencing the joys of 4K. I just started playing in 4K today. I'm excited to see how the gameplay is. It looks pretty good so far, but damn the UI is hard to read in some cases. It would be awesome if there were a mod to take care of this.

A few month ago I've tried to wrote a mod for this resolution issues.
Unfortunately it is impossible to scale all screens within Python! I.e. the Diplomacy Screen can not be modified :-(

Without scaling:


With scaling, shows problematic vertical alignment of big font symbols. (Gamefont.tga)


My approach wraps all drawing functions calls in the Python code ( see CyGInterfaceScreen, etc) and add some rescaling to X, Y, WIDTH and HEIGHT arguments. (Well, this shouldn't be done manually but automatic...)

A better solution would lift this approach into the C++ code, but this isn't trivial (Hacking of the executable or complex function hooking).

Regards, Ramk