Can I play it?

August 23, 2011 7:05 AM

Is my Mac laptop's screen resolution sufficient to play Civilization IV?

The game's system requirements ask for 1024 by 768 or higher resolution. My laptop lists itself as having 1152 by 720. I'm not knowledgeable enough about what screen resolution means to know whether I'm in the clear to buy the game and play it. Help?

posted by Quizicalcoatl to Technology (9 answers total)

Best answer: Your Mac's screen resolution is comfortably higher than the 1024 x 768 minimum required. Game-on.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:18 AM on August 23, 2011

Response by poster: Thanks! Is that the case because when you multiply the two numbers together the total is higher?
posted by Quizicalcoatl at 7:23 AM on August 23, 2011

Best answer: They're different aspect ratios, 1024x768 is 4:3 and 1152x720 is basically 16:9. If you can do 1152x720, you can do 1024x768.
posted by empath at 7:23 AM on August 23, 2011

Btw, I have heard that the windows version of Civ IV runs better on a macbook (with bootcamp) than the native version does.
posted by empath at 7:26 AM on August 23, 2011 [1 favorite]

It'll work. I've played Civ IV on my 2.16 GHz, 1 GB RAM macbook (the black case model), but I had to stick with the smallest map size due to lag. It was still fun to play, but games never really felt epic with only a few enemies.
posted by Homo economicus at 7:26 AM on August 23, 2011

It will probably work. If the game doesn't just let you pick 1152x720 (which I bet it will) it should be able to just scale the 1024x768 viewport down a bit, so it would all fit but just not be as crisp as if it was able to match the LCD resolution.
posted by robt at 7:31 AM on August 23, 2011

The Mac port of Civ IV is kind of poor, and it doesn't keep up with the Windows one, so you can't always multiplayer vs Windows users.
posted by Threeway Handshake at 7:36 AM on August 23, 2011

I'll agree with Threeway Handshake that the first Mac port of CivIV wasn't great, but the BtS port, which FINALLY came along, was just fine. I never had a problem playing CivIV on my Macbook at 1152x720.

The CivV Mac port, on the other hand, sucks donkey balls. I ended up setting up BootCamp just so I could play it in Windows, and it plays much better that way than the Mac version.
posted by briank at 8:16 AM on August 23, 2011

Yeah, I'm as much of a Mac person as you can get (in spite of.. or perhaps because of.. being a windows sysadmin), and I still boot myself into Windows for games including Civ IV and V. It's one place where the Windows experience just wins hands down.
posted by John Kenneth Fisher at 11:42 AM on August 25, 2011