What to buy? CivIV Mac or PC (via Bootcamp)

[gnunix]

Howdy. My first post here.

I own a MacBook Pro that I can run CivIII on fine, I have the mac version. I want to purchase CivIV but I'm wondering if I wouldn't be better off just creating a windows installation and running CivIV on that.

I am thinking that the windows versions have more mods and faster bug fixes than the mac. I am also gathering that Beyond the Sword will not be available for the mac.

What are your thoughts? I'm fine either way, although I must confess I'd love to be able to play CivIV on the mac... but if my experience is going to be anything less than the best I'd go through the trouble of setting up a boot camp partition in a heartbeat.

Thanks for your time.

 

[Welnic]

I like BTS a lot more than vanilla or warlords. I would just go ahead and install XP and then buy vanilla and BTS. I bought my copies through Direct2Drive so that I don't have to keep track of the cds and my Macbook Pro is always ready to go.

 

[rabber]

I would also recommend a Windows install. The major reason is that the best mods available are Windows only. They usually have custom .dll files and there is currently no way to translate these to run on the Mac. My personal feeling is that this is bad way to write a program, but then again what I know about writing software would barely fill the head of a pin.

 

[Civ4Dominator]

I'd also second the first two replies here.

Grab vanilla and BTS for windows and run it through bootcamp. BTS has a lot of the main features from warlords plus a bunch of great new features (my favorite is the revamped espionage system).

 

[dutchking]

I like BTS a lot more than vanilla or warlords. I would just go ahead and install XP and then buy vanilla and BTS. I bought my copies through Direct2Drive so that I don't have to keep track of the cds and my Macbook Pro is always ready to go.

I do agree, I like BTS a lot more than vanilla or warlords, its a whole different game. XP is pretty cheap and its not that much trouble to get bootcamp and install it. (I have a version of bootcamp from before lepoard came out, so you'll have to get that to get bootcamp now) Or you could use parallels or crossover, but AFAIK they don't have as good hardware support and you can do anything in bootcamp that you can do in XP on a mac, which isn't 100% true with either of those. I'd get bootcamp if I were you. Also, when you buy the game all you have to get is Vanilla and BTS, warlords is installed with BTS if you only have vanilla.

There are multiple benefits (and pains in the @$$) of getting XP and running bootcamp, but ultimately its up to you. Looking back I've gained a lot from it and also have wasted a lot of time fixing something with screwy windows. It might not be worth it to you depending on how you look at it. On average if you know what you're doing the installation will take an hour and a half and if you're delicate with the system no technical difficulties will come your way.

 

[gnunix]

Thanks so much for all of your replies. I have CivIV, Warlords, and Beyond the Sword now... all for PC. I had a chance to play them on my PC last night! My PC is not nearly as good as my MacBook Pro, but for other reasons I've decided to order a new hard drive and do a fresh re-install of everything on my mac. So I have a 7200RPM 300 GB drive for the MacBook comming my way and 4 gigs of ram.

When that arrives... lepoard then bootcamp/windows... then everything else. I'm so pumped. My boss has been bugging me to install Vista (yuck!) for the longest time. His reasoning... "when our business decides to upgrade you'll be familiar with it..." Little does he know that we are not going to Vista if I have anything to do with it! But at least they have financed in part a pretty sick upgrade for my Civ needs.

I've been a fan of the series since I played Civ II on Coral Linux. Then I bought CivIII for the mac (not complete). I haven't played for about 2 years now... so last night was a blast! I look forward to playing with some of you.

Thanks again.

 

[dwhee]

BtS really revitalized a sort of dead game for me. I stopped playing Civ after I got tired of Warlords, and after BtS came out it felt like a new game. So I'd get the PC version just for that.

 

[iamliberal]

I've posted about this in a couple other places too... I just got BTS for pc and started playing it in Bootcamp a couple weeks ago, and boy do I love it! I mean I hate having to switch into windows, but the game is incredibly fun! I find the changes with espionage and corporations add whole new dimensions to the game - especially corporations. Firaxis finally created a mechanic to manage resources.. it really deepens the gameplay. I now have reasons to amass as many resources as I can, not just one of each, and this has adds a more comprehensive aspect to trading and diplomacy. I think they did a steller job.

The passive espionage is a wonderful and long overdue change. I love being able to see my opponents troops in the military advisor screen, for example. And managing another area of the budget is nice. I'm not a big fan of the active espionage though (building spies, sending them out, doing missions, etc.). When customizing a game, you can turn espionage on or off, but I wish I could turn on the passive espionage features and just turn off the active missions stuff. But oh well, maybe I'm just not used to it yet. I just get tired of micromanaging so many things... lol, I'm the type of guy that controls each and every city build selections and worker! Now I have corp executives and spies to micromanage too, ugh.

 

[OscarWildebeest]

Ah, we're falling like flies... I've just ordered XP and Civ for Windows. Never thought I could look myself in the mirror, but...