A Review: Don't buy CIV5 for Mac

[bweeper]

I played Civ 5 last night and my review is very simple.

Gameplay - what gameplay, the FPS was <1 the whole time. I have a 2009 MPB with the high end video card. It's fast enough for you old man. The port simply sucks. The game is unplayable at low resolutions with everything turned off. Since most of the new graphics over civ4 consist of having 30 guys in a unit instead of 3, I can see why it would be slower.

Ok, so after that, the AI was ********, actually ********. They never did a single thing with a military unit that was anything other than ********.

Only being able to have one unit on a tile at a time was ok after awhile, but ultimately very annoying. Workers would build roads around each other (which costs money now), units just wouldn't go where you told them b/c they couldn't with no feedback as to why.

The entire game consists of pressing the right hand button to bring up 'change production' or 'change research' etc.. Then you wait. What are we waiting for? A menu to pop up and the view to scroll to what we're looking at. Oh, by scroll I mean rendering a few frames on the way.

I could go on. There are huge UI inconsistencies with previous games. Spacebar doesn't do anything. Why? Who knows? moving units is absurdly difficult with left click, since there is a left drag-click and a left click.

This game felt like the authors were going to port it to Facebook. Not worthy of the Civ nameplate and not worthy of your money.

I really wish I had my $50 back.

Note: Evidently the PC side doesn't suffer from the performance issues. I literally had every graphic option turned down to the lowest setting. If they fix that, then it will go from a complete waste of a game to a horsehockey one.

 

[Sxslippy]

Thats probably the funniest review of Civ V yet lol.

 

[Skwink]

I played Civ 5 last night and my review is very simple.

Gameplay - what gameplay, the FPS was <1 the whole time. I have a 2009 MPB with the high end video card. It's fast enough for you old man. The port simply sucks. The game is unplayable at low resolutions with everything turned off. Since most of the new graphics over civ4 consist of having 30 guys in a unit instead of 3, I can see why it would be slower.

Note: Evidently the PC side doesn't suffer from the performance issues. I literally had every graphic option turned down to the lowest setting. If they fix that, then it will go from a complete waste of a game to a horsehockey one.

Perhaps you should turn up the graphics to get a better looking game.

 

[bismarrck]

This is completely a wrong review, a wrong one!
I got a mid-2009 MBP with 9600mgt 256 vram and plays rather fine under OS X. With resolution 1440x900, Terrain/Overlay/Water/Texture High and others low, sync on, the game runs not very smoothly but fully playable on small maps 8 AI until turn 600. I have just 'finished' one game after 10 hours playing and no crash!

 

[dojoboy]

Keep in mind, the Mac version was released without the recent patch for the PC version. Aspire is currently working on the patch. So, it's obvious that the PC version has fewer glaring issues atm.

 

[Lachlan]

Too late for me !

So we have currently at 1.09 version, it is not the first day 1.00 version of Civ 5 for Windows, i think that the future patch will be famous for most peoples who use a Mac...

Quid of unofficial map maker or unofficial scenario maker for Mac Civ 5 ?

If not the game is not so bad and it runs well...

 

[autumnmist]

This is completely a wrong review, a wrong one!
I got a mid-2009 MBP with 9600mgt 256 vram and plays rather fine under OS X. With resolution 1440x900, Terrain/Overlay/Water/Texture High and others low, sync on, the game runs not very smoothly but fully playable on small maps 8 AI until turn 600. I have just 'finished' one game after 10 hours playing and no crash!

You're playing on small maps... from my experiments so far, it seems the bugginess is FAR worse the more tiles are in the maps.

 

[Methos]

You're playing on small maps... from my experiments so far, it seems the bugginess is FAR worse the more tiles are in the maps.

Then play on small maps.

Everyone, remember that after Civ V went gold Apple released an OS update that is causing problems. Aspyr has already stated it and that they are working on a patch that they hope to release within a month of the Mac release. While I can agree that you may desire to play on larger maps, or have less bugs, you should at least be willing to play on a smaller map setting until the next patch is released, especially if the smaller map setting appears to be working fine (or with less bugs).

 

[civ_king]

If we can get the OS patch and the Worker AI by Christmas I'd be thrilled

 

[bweeper]

I wanted to give the game another chance so I played a duel tiny map. I ended up playing in the two-D mode. This has a few weird side effects. First it's amazing that after five versions they went back to civ1 graphics. Second, with no graphics it let's you focus on the gameplay. The gameplay sucks. It really does. Who made this game?

I just can't see much depth to this game. Most of the buildings and wonders are nerfed. Diplomacy. Lol. The only moderately good idea in the game is city states and in return they took out so much. It's so much simpler. WHY is the ai so bad

Honestly it's a worse sequel than masters of Orion 3.

 

[Helmling]

I played Civ 5 last night and my review is very simple.

Gameplay - what gameplay, the FPS was <1 the whole time. I have a 2009 MPB with the high end video card. It's fast enough for you old man. The port simply sucks. The game is unplayable at low resolutions with everything turned off. Since most of the new graphics over civ4 consist of having 30 guys in a unit instead of 3, I can see why it would be slower.

Ok, so after that, the AI was ********, actually ********. They never did a single thing with a military unit that was anything other than ********.

Only being able to have one unit on a tile at a time was ok after awhile, but ultimately very annoying. Workers would build roads around each other (which costs money now), units just wouldn't go where you told them b/c they couldn't with no feedback as to why.

The entire game consists of pressing the right hand button to bring up 'change production' or 'change research' etc.. Then you wait. What are we waiting for? A menu to pop up and the view to scroll to what we're looking at. Oh, by scroll I mean rendering a few frames on the way.

I could go on. There are huge UI inconsistencies with previous games. Spacebar doesn't do anything. Why? Who knows? moving units is absurdly difficult with left click, since there is a left drag-click and a left click.

This game felt like the authors were going to port it to Facebook. Not worthy of the Civ nameplate and not worthy of your money.

I really wish I had my $50 back.

Note: Evidently the PC side doesn't suffer from the performance issues. I literally had every graphic option turned down to the lowest setting. If they fix that, then it will go from a complete waste of a game to a horsehockey one.

When it first came out the PC version did suffer from the same performance issues. Aspyr has released basically the same thing that came out for the PC. I've got to say, they should've held back a few weeks until they could match the updated PC version, but too late now.

 

[bweeper]

Here is a little complaint. So I want to find the city with the highest production to make a wonder. Can't do it. The city list if you sort by production sorts by finishing time. So you can't get an overview of your cities.

This game sucks. Is it piracy if I pretend I bought the Mac version of civ 4 and play that? I only had the pc version.

 

[Skwink]

This game sucks. Is it piracy if I pretend I bought the Mac version of civ 4 and play that? I only had the pc version.

Yes it is. If you do do it, you may get banned from here.

 

[iamliberal]

Did he just say he didn't actually play the Mac version? I'm very interested in real reviews. If he is reviewing the PC version, his post/thread should be moved to PC reviews, imo.

On another note, it seems like I might be best waiting another month or two to buy Civ 5 until these initial kinks are worked out in patches.

 

[AlanH]

Did he just say he didn't actually play the Mac version?

No. That was a reference to Civ4

 

[AlanH]

Is it piracy if I pretend I bought the Mac version of civ 4 and play that? I only had the pc version.

Yes, of course it is. Please don't discuss software piracy on this site. It isn't allowed.

 

[Virtual Alex]

Lol at the piracy comment! Why would you even ask!? (However on steam they let you uninstall the mac version and install the PC version. Which hopefully is the future of gaming.)

The steam forums are clogged up with unhappy mac users saying this game runs like crap. I am a little angry, I just purchased it last night (haven't played yet, the DL was 2 hours) I was looking forward to playing tonight. Looks like it will hardly work. Definitely a huge blunder to release a game that is so unstable. Did they even test the mac version? Seems so unlike a big name company to release a defective game like this. At least they are planning on patching.

Alan: have you had a chance to try this yet? How is it working for you?

 

[manu-fan]

I have played one complete game so far. No problems other than it being a little laggy with re-draws.

I played on Standard size map.

Now I'm playing on a Large map and I'm getting lots of re-draw issues (sort of whiteish graphics that then takes a while to fill in the details). I'm struggling through it though.

I thought it was maybe because I'm on an older iMac with only 2GB of RAM. I'm really thinking of getting a new iMac (was ready for a new one now anyway), and am pretty much certain it will be better on a faster Graphics chip and 4GB of RAM.

Cheers.

 

[bweeper]

I'd just like to rant some more...

So I can see why firaxis made some changes to the game. They wanted to be able to port it to a phone and play it on that. This explains the 2D mode and why they simplified so much.

I have read that a lot of the performance issues revolve around the AI, where some of the changes to the game have made it harder to write an AI, ie harder to write a program to play go than chess. With that said, the game is completely broken.

In my duel game, I wanted to scout the enemy. Oh, ok. How? No spies, can't do recon missions w/ air (at least that I could see).

its clear to me that some suits got a hold of the design docs and forced the devs to make this game run on an iphone. They dumbed down the UI so you can play it with a single button. Don't be surprised to see this game come out for the iphone and android w/ just the 2D mode. Even Civ Rev on my phone, which I consider a rather large turd, is better than this game.

Why are barbarians popping up within seconds of being killed in exactly the same place? Why? Did they playtest this? The game plays like this: hunt barbs, hunt barbs, play 100 turns waiting for a few buildings, hunt barbs, hunt barbs, hunt barbs..

oh btw, the barbarians are entirely incapable of ever hurting you because they capture your workers, never seem to attack cities, can't destroy units (because they are so incredibly moronic.) So the barb hunting ends up being incredibly dull and uninteresting. Sure you get a little XP and you can get some gold. Wow. Amazing. A mini-game in a strategy game. Count me amazed.

City states: why? It adds a bit of variety, but not much.

As others have said: no religion, no espionage, no scouting, combat that might be more interesting, but instead seems dull and uninspired. The UI seriously blows. Why do i have to click 15 times to add something to the queue. Why is there a checkbox for 'show queue'? The UI is so infuriating.

As I said before, there are no tools for figuring out how to get an overview of your empire, for things like 'most production, etc.' Workers when automated are basically inept. I found them running back and forth across the continent instead of finding nearby jobs.

What the designers missed was that what civ4 needed was to run faster, not slower. The endgame was so filled with tedium, and they fixed that by lowering the number of units, except instead of being faster, it's slower BECAUSE THE GAME IS WRITTEN LIKE .

So on all their design points they failed. Every one. There's not a thing that makes this a better game than Civ4, or even Civ2. The 2D mode made the game laughably like civ2 except with shittier graphics. Why add something like that? Obviously because without the 2D mode, the game is unplayably slow.

just for reference my machine:
macbook pro dual core 2.8gigahertz, 8 gigs of ram, 512 meg 9600M GT video card.

 

[manu-fan]

As I said before, there are no tools for figuring out how to get an overview of your empire, for things like 'most production, etc.'

There's a pull down menu up in the top right of the screen, to the left of the 2/3 other buttons. You can choose 'Economic Overiew'.

Cheers.