Insane Civ IV System Requirements announced

[ejday]

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I will purchase C-IV and attempt running it on my 1.5 Ghz G4. I'm a little short of CPU speed but I've got a full GB of memory and an ATI Radeon 9700 with 64 MB (which I'm guessing is fairly typical for PBs of this model).

Prediction: Will start fine, crawl in the later stages.

Will report back results.

 

[promethean_beta]

Mac C-IV hits Final Candidate!

Wow, that was quick.

 

[ejday]

Mac C-IV hits Final Candidate!

Wow, that was quick.

Ironically, they still haven't updated the Game Agent. They've got the CoD2 req's up in all their G5+ glory, but still nothing for C-IV.

...And CoD2 is still listed as "early development"!

Makes me wonder what maneuvers are still happening behind the scenes.
...Or who fell asleep at the wheel.

 

[metalhawk]

Brad - thanks for the great port. Being a developer myself (not games though) I have some insight into what you've been through - take a good long break

Some insight the Win side - I was able to get this running on 4 of my PCs for net play:

It plays great on my Dell 9300 with a 256MB nVidia 6800 go card
It also plays perfectly on my primary desktop: A64 3200+ Radeon 9800 128MB
It plays with some very minor glitching on my file server (Athlon 2500+, Radeon 8500 AIW 128MB)

It plays acceptably, but slow and in low resolution on my daughter's dell 700M which is ~1.7 Ghz, 64MB shared Intel onboard graphics (and it's not the 950 which is a better chipset).

So, from that insight, I'd think that it *could* work on the integrated graphics intel machines, such as the mini or the MacBook. I'd also think that a G4 with a 9800 or even 9600XT should be capable.

Just my 0.02. I'm looking forward to trying it on the Mac side, my work is finally getting me my first Mac in a long time (since OS 8, yike! )

 

[football751]

So, from that insight, I'd think that it *could* work on the integrated graphics intel machines, such as the mini or the MacBook. I'd also think that a G4 with a 9800 or even 9600XT should be capable.

I can tell you it DOES work on the MacBook udner XP, with all High settings and the full resolution movies. So unless they really screwed up the graphcis in teh Mac version, it should run on a MacBook/Mac mini.

BTW, I have 2GB RAM, which helps a lot with the late game.

 

[metalhawk]

Yeah, I'd expect it might. That is a way better spec'd machine then the 700m that I have - higher processor, dual core, and more memory, plus a "better" onboard graphics chipset.

So yeah, I'd expect it to Run on them. I guess Brad is saying it will but will have slow down in the endgame. I'm not sure I've pushed the 700m all the way through to an endgame, so there's a caveat..

 

[IronMac]

Glad I looked in here after a couple of years. No way that I can currently afford to buy a machine to run this game. I never thought the day would come when a turn-based strategy game would require the latest state-of-the-art monster machine.

 

[metalhawk]

I understand..I don't think "Stat of the art monster" is required but, yes, this is (was) probably one of the highest spec'd Turn Based Strategy games to come out relative to state of the art. I guess everyone's going this way, look at Heroes of Might and Magic V! I actually was only able to get that one running on 3 of the above listed machines. No go on the 700m.

 

[AlexandrNyetski]

The requirements are hardly insane - though they do seem to indicate the game is primarily supported for newer Macs.

When I get my copy of the game, I'll post up on these forums how well it works on my system (20" iMac Intel Dual Core, 1.5 GB RAM)

 

[Gyathaar]

I dont have a mac.. but I just did an experiment to see just how low spec I could go on PC and still be able to run civ4.

I dug out an old first generation Athlon from 99, running at 540Mhz (should be comparable to around 500 Mhz G4 I think).

384 MB ram .. a gforce 256 graphics card with 32 MB video ram .. running 32 bit color in 1024x768 res.

Could load a modern ages huge map.. but it took around 10 mins or so to load.. and was pretty slow.. mainly because of little ram I think.

a normal size near industrial ages map loaded in around 1 minute.. and I could play with around 5fps with lowest graphics settings...

not a setup I would like to play on for extended periods, but it ran

 

[AlanH]

Thanks Gyathaar, interesting input.

At my advanced age, life's now much too short to wait that long for a game to load. I'll play around with Civ4 on my existing system (about twice the CPU and RAM of your Athlon, but with a comparable video card) but only to investigate compatibility with GOTMs, mods etc. and to adapt my Mod Installer to work with it. That's if and when Civ4 ever swims the Atlantic, of course. Apart from that, I'll wait for Apple to put together a Conroe-based tower to supercede my current rig. That should work, I think

 

[ejday]

I dont have a mac.. but I just did an experiment to see just how low spec I could go on PC...

not a setup I would like to play on for extended periods, but it ran

Actually, that's pretty handy. Thank you!

Gives me a better feeling that I just might be able to coast for a few more months on my 1.5 GHz G4.

Unless MacSoft announces they're coming out with NWN2. Between C-IV and NWN2...? MacBook Pro would become an irresistible force.

 

[Leighgion]

Hey folks,

Just discovered this forum after poking around in the wake of the Civ IV shipping announcement.

I was rather shocked like the rest of you by the system reqs, but even though I've mostly quit gaming, I've enough loyalty to the Civ franchise that I went ahead and preordered. I've got a dual 1.8 G5 that fits the min spec, and a few other Macs which do not, but at least one of which might run quite reasonably. I shall certainly test and report.

 

[macwhiz]

It strikes me that we Mac users are a bit spoiled when it comes to equipment requirements.

Because Macs don't die from component failure at an early age... because the OS still runs on Macs with CPUs three generations old... because most programs don't tax the processor... we forget what life is like on the Windows side.

If you could even find an eMachines from 2001 that still functions and hasn't had a slew of replacement parts... never mind find one on its original owner... I don't think you'd find it could run Civ IV either.

Most PC owners I know that play games upgrade their machines every two to three years. That seems to be the useful lifespan for a Windows box.

A two-year-old Power Mac would be a dual 1.8GHz with a minimum nVidia GeForce FX5200 Ultra video card. Aside from needing a RAM upgrade -- and does anyone really try to run OS X with just 256MB RAM? -- that system meets the specs.

A two-year-old iMac would be the 1.6GHz iMac G5 with an nVidia GeForce FX 5200 Ultra. Same difference, really.

As for the portables, the main reason Apple switched to Intel chips was because IBM and Motorola couldn't deliver competitive laptop CPUs. PowerBooks have been anemic CPU-wise for some time.

I think it's perfectly reasonable to release a 3D game with advanced AI targetting computers made in the last two years. It may be a bit unusual to us Mac people, but it's not insane by any stretch.

Apple releasing new consumer systems with crippled video cards that can't be upgraded, that's insane.

 

[awb]

Actually, plenty of people are reporting that the MacBook plays Civ 4 above adaquately in Windows XP and Vista. The advantage of Windows is it dynamically allotes memory instead of having it fixed to 64 mb (the integrated graphics can actually go up to 224 MB on the current setups). Therefore, the limitation is in Mac OS X drivers for these computers.

I'm not an expert, so I suggest people read this thread on MacRumors:

http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=209511

 

[floppymoose]

Am I ever glad I waited to buy a new iMac. That Intel iMac with 2GHz processor, 2G RAM, 256MB VRAM is going to run Civ IV splendidly (crosses fingers)!

That's exactly the machine I have except I only have 128MB VRAM. It runs PC Civ4 beautifully under Boot Camp. If it's as good with the mac version you will be very satisfied. The screen is also beautiful.

I'm looking forward to getting the mac version and using it on that machine and also my other machine, a dual 1.8 G5 with GeForce FX 5200 (64MB VRAM). I'm a bit surprised that this nice dual G5 tower turns out to be the minimum mac that is recommended.

I have a G4 iBook that I am replacing with a new MacBook. Neither of those portables will run it.

 

[Drahkkael]

i'm glad i have a new and shiny dualcore powermac G5 mwa ha ha ha ha ha

but seriously, that is gay...i might not buy it just to protest. maybe civ 5 will require 8 processor cores and 2 quabaglobytes of space ram?

 

[AlexandrNyetski]

i sincerely HOPE that civ 5 requires 8 processor cores and 2 quabaglobytes of RAM ... in fact, i hope that civ 5 requires me to have my own personal distributed computing setup.

why, think of what could implemented, what kind of great game system could be created, on 8 processor cores with 2+ quabaglobytes of memory ... it would put all other strategy games ever created to shame.

 

[AlexandrNyetski]

Civ5 ... requiring IBM Blade Cluster!!! Yes!

 

[ejday]

...maybe civ 5 will require 8 processor cores and 2 quabaglobytes of space ram?

quabaglobytes? Hm. When I first read it, it looked like "coagulobytes" – which is the minimum amount of RAM required to make your blood congeal (when reading the specs on the side of the box).

My prediction: By the time Civ 5 gets made (and, more significantly, ported), the average tamagotchi will have 8 processor cores and come standard with 156 boatloadobytes of memory. Our "Macs" will actually be the name of the AI-driven robot we keep around as a maid.