Running Civ 4 in window mode for multitasking - need help

[JiggaMan08]

Hi all,

I just got Civ4 for Christmas and am running it on my MBP. Because the games are so long, i'd like to run it in window mode so that I can multitask with other work I am supposed to be doing.

The problem I seem to be running into, is if I click out of the window during a multiplayer game it just seems to pause the game (as in nothing moving including countdown timer) so in order to see if my turn is up I have to keep clicking back into the window. Is there a way to click out of the Civ window and still have it run/alert me that it's my turn??

Thanks all, happy new year!

 

[AlanH]

Hi, welcome

Yes, the user interface freezes when the game is not the frontmost window. However, game processing continues in the background, so if your inter-turn delays are significant, all you need is a way to detect when it's done. One suggestion is to set Autosaves to happen every turn, and tell OS X to notify you when they do. They are created at the end of each inter-turn sequence, when control returns to you.

Here's the procedure:

• Open the file /Users/alan/Documents/Civilization IV/CivilizationIV.ini in TextEdit or another text-only editor.
• Change the entry for autosave frequency to: AutoSaveInterval = 1
• Save the modified file.
• In Finder, right click the folder: /Users/<your_name>/Documents/Civilization IV/Saves/single/auto and select Services->Folder Actions Setup. Older versions of OS X had "Enable Folder Actions" instead.
• A window should open with a Sheet containing a list "Choose a Script to Attach". Select "add - new item alert.scpt" and click Attach.
• In the main Folder Actions Setup dialog, check the box to "Enable Folder Actions", and close the dialog.

Hope this helps. I can't test this on any version of OS X older than Lion, but I think it should work at least back to Leopard (OS X 10.5), though the detailed setup process may vary a bit.