Any help at all would be appreciated.

[Zip Zipskins]

Hi. Uhm, I'm very new to this site. I've kinda lurked about before but suddenly got the urge to join today, mainly because I have some questions and I was wondering if I could get any answers.

I've been a fairly die-hard player of Civ II for years and years, that is, until my old Performa picked up a virus (presumably due to my sister's penchant for downloads)

I am a Mac user almost exclusively and so I picked up a new G4 through some friends, but my old Civ II CD is so scratched it will not install the game on this new computer.

My questions are: 1. Why is it so difficult to find a Macintosh version of Civ II these days?

and 2: Is there any way I can still play Civ II on my new Mac WITHOUT buying another copy of the game (is there a patch that I can use to convert the Windows version to a Mac version, etc.)

Any answers at all would be great, and I'm sorry if this question has been exhaustively explored in the past.

Zip

 

[Mercator]

Welcome!

My questions are: 1. Why is it so difficult to find a Macintosh version of Civ II these days?

Because Macs just aren't used as much as PCs, especially for games. And even for the PC it's hard to find Civ2, simply because it's a 10 year old game.
Well, except for the Civilization Chronicles thing they released a little while ago. I don't know if they have any plans to release a Mac version for that.

and 2: Is there any way I can still play Civ II on my new Mac WITHOUT buying another copy of the game (is there a patch that I can use to convert the Windows version to a Mac version, etc.)

Do you already have a Windows version then? Or is it just that you would actually be able to find a copy of Civ2 for Windows, but not one for the Mac? I'm sure you should be able to find it on eBay or something at least.

There's no legal way to still play Civ2 without buying another copy.

I think there must be some Windows "virtualization software" for the Mac. A program for the Mac that allows you to run Windows applications on your computer. But unless there's some free, open source thing for the Mac (like Wine, which allows Linux to run Windows programs), that's probably going to be more expensive than buying Civ2 (if you can find it).

Actually, if you have Mac OS X, I think Wine should work on that too.

In any case, running Civ2 for Windows on a Mac is not trivial (nothing a patch could do), so you'd best head off to the Computer Talk forum here, or some dedicated Mac or virtualization forums if you want to try that out.

 

[Zip Zipskins]

Thanks a bunch, I kinda feel like I'm revealing my inexperience. I really do appreciate the advice though.

Yeah, it's a lot easier to get ahold of copies of Civ II for the PC (Mac copies on eBay are running in the 50-60 dollar range every time I check) so if I could virtualize it, it should be much easier.

Thanks!

 

[Mercator]

You'll have to be careful with the virtualizing though. It usually has its limitations. The "virtual Windows" will always run programs (much) slower and not all programs will work (well). Oh, and I'm pretty sure that you'd actually have to install Windows inside that virtual environment too, which means you need to actually buy Windows too... That seems to be the case with Microsoft Virtual PC anyway. So that would set you back way more than the 50-60 dollars for Mac Civ2.

But if you have Mac OS X, Wine is probably your best bet. That's free and doesn't require a copy of Windows either. I don't know how well it works, though... Or actually, they have a list of which applications are supported, and how well they are supported. Civ2 doesn't seem to fare so well.

 

[iambenben]

Late reply but go on amazon.com (or .co.uk if you are where i am) and it should be on sale there, used probably. I brought civ2 and the scenario expansion from there, both purchases only set me back about £10