Game is basically unplayable

[jdmpwr07]

Hey guys. I am an avid Civ 5 player and recently downloaded Civ Beyond Earth for Mac. I have a 2011 Macbook Pro with an i5 (2.3) and 4 GB of ram. Just a regular hard drive not solid state (but I have over 400GB available).

I downloaded it from Steam and was excited to get going. However, the game is basically unplayable. Certain elements never load and it is extremely slow. Like, it takes seconds to just click on a unit. Backrgounds seem to never load fully as well.

I verified the integrity of the download, tried again, and it was the same. Deleted file and redownloaded, same thing. I've watched videos on the game and it runs fast, and smooth just like Civ 5 to a degree.

I have over the minimum requirements. What do you guys think is wrong? Screenshots below:

 

[oakdragon]

Looks just like it does on my system (Early 2011, 2.7 Ghz i7 and 8 GB RAM). The problem I have, and I would guess you do too, is that I have an Intel HD 3000 GPU, which does NOT meet the minimum requirements. I wish the CPU and RAM had more of an effect on performance, but sadly, they don't. I bought it anyway, full well knowing the situation, because I know I'll be getting a new system sooner or later and wanted to play anyway. I still spent til past 2:30 AM last night playing. Thanks, Firaxis, for making such an addictive game that I could mostly (almost) ignore the glitches! Thanks, (NOT), to Aspyr for not letting us disable more of the gimmicky eye-candy so more of us could play!

 

[jdmpwr07]

Looks just like it does on my system (Early 2011, 2.7 Ghz i7 and 8 GB RAM). The problem I have, and I would guess you do too, is that I have an Intel HD 3000 GPU, which does NOT meet the minimum requirements. I wish the CPU and RAM had more of an effect on performance, but sadly, they don't. I bought it anyway, full well knowing the situation, because I know I'll be getting a new system sooner or later and wanted to play anyway. I still spent til past 2:30 AM last night playing. Thanks, Firaxis, for making such an addictive game that I could mostly (almost) ignore the glitches! Thanks, (NOT), to Aspyr for not letting us disable more of the gimmicky eye-candy so more of us could play!

Ah, I didn't catch that. Yea, I do have that graphics card. Well, guess I won't be playing it till I get a new laptop lol.

 

[KingCraig]

That screen shot reminds me of playing World of Warcraft a couple years back, and the problem turned out to be a mismatch between the version of DirectX that I was running vs what the game server was running. (This was on a PC.) Not sure if this is at all helpful, but just throwing this out as a potential clue. It's probably your video card, as you say.

 

[oakdragon]

That screen shot reminds me of playing World of Warcraft a couple years back, and the problem turned out to be a mismatch between the version of DirectX that I was running vs what the game server was running. (This was on a PC.) Not sure if this is at all helpful, but just throwing this out as a potential clue. It's probably your video card, as you say.

That is at least part of the issue. The HD 3000 doesn't support Direct X 11-level graphics on a Mac.