How to make Civ4 for Mac work better

[waltham845]

Might I make a suggestion to those that have PPC with ATIcard and want to overclock the VRAM and GPU itself. Try out ATIccelerator_II_1.0.6b over at Versiontracker, or macupdate or whatever. This might help out. However I am not recommending it unless you want to try a hardward mod that might smoke your card and reduce your battery life. (for those of you that have laptops) I do use it and have overclocked the GPU (6%) VRAM (5%). I have a single processor 1.8 G5 with a radeon 9800pro with 256mb of VRAM. It runs CIV4 fairly decently with specs set on high and large map with 5 civs. Still no ambient music though. So will have to wait for the patch.
Civ on

 

[Zaimejs]

Is there a way to tell if the overclock is actually helping (frame rate counter or anything?) and is there a way to tell if the overclocking is damaging my system? thanks for the head's up... I love tinkering.

 

[gfeier]

gfeier, that's about what I'm noticing. I started a game in 10.4.7 and it had no sound at all. But when I started the game, then opened the saved game, I now have ambient music. Still no sound effects, but the game is running very smoothly. When I load saved games they seem to run better than when I start a new game. Does that make any sense? Anyone else noticing this?

I think the sounds may work better in later eras. I saw something like this on my old machine with C3C.

 

[forlon_hope]

I have an intel mac (2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, 128 VRAM) and everything has been working fine (with the exception of combat sounds and animations). At the beginning of every game there's very little music, but i think that's because the turns are so short, it only lasts for maybe 10 turns though

 

[waltham845]

@Zaimejs,
The only way that you could possibly tell is if CIV4 had an Frame per second counter built in, there isn't one in the program that I could tell. It won't let you overclock too much, I notice artifacts(white pixels) coming up on screen when I pushed the card too hard. Thats when I had to back the settings off. As for damaging the card, i would assume that you have to use your own best judgement on that. I usually listen to my GPU fan, it has a whine that I can hear above the G5 fans. Hope that helps....

 

[WHarris]

I've been running the game in OS 10.3.9 and have had sound problems from the begining... so I don't thin 10.4.7 is the problem, like I've read in other posts.

Same here.

 

[Thinine]

I have to echo all of the problems reported in this thread. On my quad, even when hidden the game takes ~200% of my CPU. Sometimes a bit less, but I never saw it get over 205%. Strangely (at least to me, as an ameteur programmer) Activity Monitor reports it has 12 threads, so I'm not sure why it isn't being spread more evenly. The 200% was always just 2 processors.*

 

[yvovandoorn]

Didn't Civ IV initially have a ton of ATI related problems as well on the Windows platform? Just digging back into my brain and I remember threads about how much the game sucked with an ATI video card (specific catalyst driver versions and what not).

In any case I have 10.4.7a (for those needing to update from 10.4.7 to 10.4.7a make sure you delete the receipt in the /Library/Receipt folder otherwise it *may* freak out) and no sounds. Graphics seem ok so far and no crashes that I can report. I also had my brother boot off of a firewire drive with 10.3.9 installed with his 15" PB G4 1.5ghz (ati 9700) and there are no sounds either.

I personally have a 20" iMac Intel Core Duo (2.0ghz / 1.5gb of ram) with 10.4.7a and the cpu is hovering between 170-185%

 

[bio_hazard]

Didn't Civ IV initially have a ton of ATI related problems as well on the Windows platform? Just digging back into my brain and I remember threads about how much the game sucked with an ATI video card (specific catalyst driver versions and what not).

Yes- I pre-ordered that, and there were a lot of problems, and not only directly related to driver issues. Major memory leaks too, causing massive paging to the hard disks and frequent crashes. It was to the point that users were creating and distributing their own patches on the forums. Firaxis did not really put in any kind of appearance if I remember, the developers would do radio interviews promoting their product, and I think people got pissed because the game kept getting rave reviews when lots of people buying the game could not actually run it.

 

[Josh Wolf]

Brad,

Is there any info you need to investigate the PPC CPU spiking? I'm happy to provide...

 

[Zaimejs]

Had my first crash today. I'm not sure what caused it, but I was dominating Caesar... so maybe he had something to do with it.

 

[ejday]

I've had a couple... Don't remember the first – it happened in the normal course of gameplay –*but after reloading and doing the same thing over again, it didn't happen again so I chalked it up to flakiness.

The second happened when I was dabbling in the WorldBuilder and added either a lighthouse or a harbor (I forget which) to a city with no ocean access (it was on a "lake") – and that consistently crashed it...

 

[von Tirpitz]

Well first of all thanks to Brad for bringing this masterpiece to our beloved macintosh plattform!

But thats of course not the only reason for my posting here. Moreover I write to tell you about my personal experience with Civ 4. Just bought my copy a couple of days ago and played it about 30 hours. And I experience exactly the problems some mentioned here on my iMac G5 2.0 Ghz, 2 GB Ram, ATI 9600 (128 MB) and OS 10.4.6 ...

I also have broken sounds, continous slowdowns and the mentioned "nightfall" problem. (usually seems to appear once after 1000 AD, after exit and reloading it works fine again)

Once had a crash too. Overall it's still "playable" for a real fan of the series, but not really enjoyable at all. Hope you already found out more about what is causing the trouble and working on a patch ? Please don't repeat the mistakes of Firaxis and keep the community informed about the progress.

 

[macwhiz]

You don't appear to be having kernel panics, and you say windowed mode is faster, which is not what the Intel Mac users appear to be saying. How much faster is windowed mode for you?

Possibly the gains are due to running with a slightly lesser resolution... but when I switched mid-game, it was the difference between "really jerky when you pan" to "mostly smooth."

I didn't have any kernel panics, but then I didn't build any scouts, either.

 

[Skippy_Kangaroo]

There are also a number of non-fatal bugs in the program. Should probably send my beta-testing report into Aspyr...

I've played a few games through and am at 2005 in a standard sized map with 6AIs on it. I'm uncertain if the game is slowing down during other civilization's moves - the screen scrolling is inherently jerky anyway because of the acceleration they use. It induces a feeling of vertigo in me so much so that I had to turn off watching moves.

Anyway, invariably it can't roll to the next unit properly. It's not the same as being slow and laggy, its a real bug.

For example, it will highlight a cavalry unit but give you information as it it were a worker with some really screwy estimates of turns to complete (e.g. Irrigate <I> a farm, 347045 turns to complete) and you can't actually do anything with the unit anyway but have to select another unit and come back. Basically the info in the bottom left corner of the screen gets stuck in the wrong place and the net result is that you can't actually do anything with the (apparently) selected unit on the screen because it's not actually the one the computer thinks is selected.

Non-fatal, but frustrating. Kernel panics are bad, but can be mitigated. Messed up interfaces are much harder to get around.

Anyone else experiencing this?

 

[Rance Mohammitz]

Thought I'd post my experiences with the game.

Im running with a Dual 1.8 G5. 1Gig Ram. GeForce FX 5200 64mb. Mac OS 10.3.9 (just haven't got around to getting 10.4).

Have played 2 full games, and about 15 hours of game play. Odd thing was the game I finished last night, said I'd played for 3 or so hours, but I'm sure it took me at least 5 or 6.

The graphics seem to be running pretty well for 64mb. A bit sluggish when moving around the world, but no too bad.

Have tried upping the graphics to see how it goes. Didn't have any problems when I did, but only tried it out for short periods, usually on small maps

Same sound issues as everyone else. Get nimoy on techs. Get founding religion music. And the back ground music seems to play (be being a metal head I turned it off pretty quickly). I figured that until the sound are fixed I'll just turn the sound off completely. That seemed to speed up the game a bit too which was nice. I got the sounds to work on start up only twice. First time I booted up, and once randomly a couple of days ago (don't know what I did to deserve it). Each time the in game sound seemed to be a bit more, but cut out pretty soon after.

I've never played it on PC so I don't have anything to compare it to in terms of performance (Similar to Civ 3. There's still some units in that game that I've never heard the sound for). The game its self is fantastic. Just trying to ween myself off all my Civ 3 habits that I've built up over the last few years.

 

[ejday]

...For example, it will highlight a cavalry unit but give you information as it it were a worker...

Anyone else experiencing this?

Sounds like lag between where the game thinks the cursor is where the computer actually shows it...

Haven't had that one but I did get laggy enough that the roll-over popups for the techs just stopped displaying. I think it's a memory issue – if I saved, bailed and went back in, it would be fine (or "fine enough").

 

[CaptainScarlet]

I've also keep getting this very nasty bug.

Where something when I select a unit or gets auto selected after a turn, and I lose ALL control over everything. I cant click on anything, esc doesn't do anything, your stuck and screwed if you haven't saved.

If I reload a saved game, the bug doesn't happen at the same unit, it's random.

I also noticed the same bug, when I moved a unit before I gave him a promotion.

It's got to be worst yet. I can handle the sound the Kernel panics, but I cant stand this. I'm not going to play or recommend the game until this is fixed.

I run a 17' Macbook Pro, with 2gb of ram, and the 100 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.

On an up note, I have no speed problems at all.


Cheers!!

 

[The WAB]

I can handle the sound the Kernel panics, but I cant stand this. I'm not going to play or recommend the game until this is fixed.

I run a 17' Macbook Pro, with 2gb of ram, and the 100 gb 7200 rpm hard drive.

Indeed it should not be recommended to anyone like it is now. Ive never been so frustrated with a piece of software like with Civ4. I'm having a Windows deja-vu.

As stated somewhere the craphics card issue needs to be fixed on Apple level? OMG this can take upt 2 months as 10.4.7 was released last week.

This was really the most hyped rip-off of the year and as Vista is delayed to next year I think it will stay like that.

 

[NoMan]

I just experienced my first crash. The computer completely locked up, I had to press the Powerkey to shut it down. As far as I can tell, there is no crash log, nothing in the Console list that looks like Civilization or Civ. Restarting from the previous AutoSave did not reproduce the crash. I think it crashed right after the AutoSave as I was trying to open a city screen. I have a 2.16 GHz 15" MBP with 2 GB RAM. I am running 10.4.7. I had Activity Monitor and Entourage open. I am running in clamshell mode. Civ was using close to 200% of the cpu, at least at times.

The performance has actually been quite good. Compared to the same computer under Boot Camp I think the Mac version is at least as fast, it definitely starts up faster. The Boot Camp version has quit unexpectedly on rare occassions but it has never locked up the whole computer. I think this is the first time this computer has crashed at all since I got it around Memorial Day.

Between the hard crash and the no sound, it's back to Boot Camp for me. Waiting for the Miracle Cure.

Edit: I should add that I set the graphics to highest on both Mac and Boot Camp. I didn't change the default anti-alias settings.