Is Civilization worth the angst?

December 1, 2008 4:05 PM

I've finally convinced myself that it's time to get Civilization IV, but after reading some reviews I'm worried about the lag/crashing problem (although even the reviewers that complain about the lag still seem to love the game). I've read this question and this question, but was wondering if anyone has more recent info - new patches, newer Macbook eliminates the issue?

I'm using a Macbook purchased in January of this year (OSX 10.5.5), but I'm honestly not technical enough to know what other info you might want to know (if you tell me *exactly*where to look, though, I'm sure I could figure it out). So my question boils down to this - will I be ripping my hair out as the game crashes every 4 minutes, or will I enjoy myself for hours on end and only experience infrequent moments of lag?

posted by spinturtle to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

It's a brilliant game. Get it.

Never had it crash on Windows, and they are good about releasing patches. So, in the rare event that you see a problem, it should be fixable.
posted by wfrgms at 4:36 PM on December 1, 2008

I have a Mac Mini purchased around November 2007 (10.5.5, 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM) and the game runs just fine, despite warning me that this machine does not meet the system requirements. The graphics might not be as nice as possible, but it's definitely playable.
posted by Bigfoot Mandala at 4:54 PM on December 1, 2008

That's single player mode, BTW. I've never tried multi.
posted by Bigfoot Mandala at 4:55 PM on December 1, 2008

Save early, save often.
posted by knowles at 5:02 PM on December 1, 2008

It crashes a lot for me (first-generation Core Duo iMac); autosave is my friend. The annoyance does not prevent me from playing this game. In fact, I can't . . . stop . . . playing . . . it . . .
posted by mcwetboy at 5:03 PM on December 1, 2008

I've run Civ IV on my machine (a MacBook Pro purchased c. April '07) extensively, with no problems that I can recall. Like Mr./Ms. Mandala, though, I've never tried multiplayer.
posted by Johnny Assay at 6:30 PM on December 1, 2008

I play it waaay too much on my MacBook Pro. It runs pretty well, without much lag. There's occasional graphics glitches, and it crashes once in a while in the late-game (although it auto-saves the last few turns, so it's not as annoying as it might be - it's sometimes a reminder that it's time to go to bed :-)

One warning - The Beyond The Sword extension is Windows only, and it looks like it's never going to be released for the Mac, so if you're anticipating wanting that (it looks cool - better espionage and modern warfare) you might want to run Boot Camp and XP and get the Windows version. (I haven't tried it under Parallels or any of the other VMs.)
posted by chbrooks at 7:27 PM on December 1, 2008

You're really going to be more happy if you go the Boot Camp route. I finally got fed up with unpatched bugs and the unlikelihood of getting BTS.
posted by nathan_teske at 9:48 PM on December 1, 2008

I have a first generation white macbook, I think the lowest end version and in generation. I upgraded my ram to two gigs, however, so I guess I am a little better off (still have the integrated graphics, though). It is my understanding that the new macbooks have a better graphics card. I can, however, only speak from my experience-- namely, when playing civ 4 on bootcamp through steam, there are very few problems. The only problems are occasionally if you try to scroll out too fast to the globe view, it stutters. Also, sometimes there is a lag between clicking on the "stresstwig, it's your turn!" and when your turn actually shows up. I attribute that to the fact that the first turn needs to compute a little bit, and compensate for last turn's results. Anyways, I also played the game on Steam with Crossover Games. It worked, but not very well-- graphical settings had to be turned down, such as textures and resolutions, in addition to animated units I think. If you have a copy of Windows you could install as a bootcamp partition, it is universally agreed upon that this is the route to go-- the video drivers for Windows are so much better than for OS X. Also, the pc version is cheaper than the OSX (aspyr) version, as is the case with a lot of games that have been ported.

If, however, you simply can't go through bootcamp, here is what I would do-- download the demo of crossover games, install steam, and then install the civ 4 demo. While this will not perfectly emulate your experience, if you buy the mac version, it will show you the worst possible scenario-- generally Crossover is worse than native running, either in bootcamp or os x-- but I bet it will play, and if the way it plays is alright by you (and with a newer macbook, I'm sure it will be) then buy it!

Seriously though, if you want to play games on a macbook, bootcamp is the best thing to do. I play Team Fortress 2 with the mefight crowd here, and after tweaking got it working enough on bootcamp-- with crossover, it was pretty bad.
posted by stresstwig at 10:28 PM on December 1, 2008

Well, I have an older Macbook (Jan 07, I think) and I've never had any problems with running Civ IV.

Then again, my laptop does seem to have magical powers. A friend of mine is an Apple tech and I was talking to him on IM the other day and mentioned all the programmes I had running. He blinked* and said something along the lines of "I know the macbooks are plucky little beasts but yours is amazing! It shouldn't be able to do that!"

I remember downloading the demo, and it worked fine, and then bought the game and it claimed my system didn't meet the requirements. But it still works OK. The only thing I've ever had problems with is dropping the connection during network play, but that could easily be down to my dodgy wifi...

So, I wouldn't hesitate. Civ IV is fantastic, I love it. If you have Bootcamp, it might run better on, and be cheaper to buy for, Windows. But I haven't had any problems on OS X.



* Fine, fine, it was metaphorical blinking. It was IM, I couldn't see him. But he sounded like he would be blinking...
posted by badmoonrising at 1:55 AM on December 2, 2008

Civfanatics is a great site for all things Civ. You might try posting in the technical support and/or Macintosh forums.
posted by Perplexity at 5:10 AM on December 2, 2008