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OS X Civilization V

bluebomberman said:
Sadly, fellow user pionata and I tried a clash of civilizations with a few others and it was even more unstable with the latest patch. Multiplayer's pretty broken right now.

"Restart the clock." (for the next patch)
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Indeed this was a complete disaster: launch with 6 players, crash on first turn. Launch again with 5 players, crashed on turn 18.
Only duels are somewhat stable.
 
mike in the STL said:
I'm running (trying to) the PC version of Civ 5 on my imac with parallels. The terrain starts out ok then refreshes black. I messed with the video settings, no luck. Anyone encounter this?
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You are aware that Parallel only supports a limited set of 3D instructions passed to the GPU. For modern gaming, utilising raw GPU power, this is useless. Just boot into your Windows via Bootcamp and you can enjoy the game at its fully, provide your Mac meets the requirements for Civ5.
 
Hi guys,

I own a mid-2010 iMac 21" i3 and and was thinking of picking this up. A little concerned though about performance. Is it worth getting or will it just run like a dog on my Mac?

The other option would be to pick up Civ IV on the cheap. Currently on sale on Steam in the UK for a fraction of the price of Civ V. What do you recon? Civ IV or Civ V?
 
TristUK said:
Hi guys,

I own a mid-2010 iMac 21" i3 and and was thinking of picking this up. A little concerned though about performance. Is it worth getting or will it just run like a dog on my Mac?

The other option would be to pick up Civ IV on the cheap. Currently on sale on Steam in the UK for a fraction of the price of Civ V. What do you recon? Civ IV or Civ V?
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Currently, on low settings, I am running it ok on my early 2009 Macbook.
 
TristUK said:
Hi guys,

I own a mid-2010 iMac 21" i3 and and was thinking of picking this up. A little concerned though about performance. Is it worth getting or will it just run like a dog on my Mac?
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I just jumped into the Mac world with a new 13" MBA (maxed out).

One of the first things I did was download Steam. To my surprise, it said I could download Civ V which I previously loaded and played on my PC. What surprised me was my PC version was store bought. I didn't realize I could buy a store game, register it with Steam, and then download it to another machine (especially jumping from PC to Mac). Impressive.

As far as Civ V, I haven't had any issues at low to medium graphic settings with my new MBA. Doesn't seem to play any slower than my Windows laptop which is faster on paper. The opening screen actually plays cleaner (not choppy) than my PC.

If I were you, buy Civ V and enjoy.
 
mattwallace24 said:
IOne of the first things I did was download Steam. To my surprise, it said I could download Civ V which I previously loaded and played on my PC. What surprised me was my PC version was store bought. I didn't realize I could buy a store game, register it with Steam, and then download it to another machine (especially jumping from PC to Mac). Impressive.
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The joys of SteamPlay.

Steam is now being used by several publishers as a form of DRM - you can buy the game at retail and it will then activate via Steam. This has the bonus of any updates are also done via the Steam platform, keeping your players up-to-date without any effort, as well as the title being available as a download in the future as once registered on Steam you can download as many times as you like.

You can actually tell where a title is sourced from, as under each game's properties there is a section that will list Retail or Steam Store for the game as well any DLC. Interestingly, you can mix and match as well - I have a retail copy of Empire and Napoleon Total War, along with my store pre-order bonuses, but my DLC is from Steam.

There are a handful of titles with SteamPlay that go further, and give you access to the Mac edition as well - Civ being one of them. It's a great feature, I just wish it was more common.
 
peskaa said:
Interestingly, you can mix and match as well - I have a retail copy of Empire and Napoleon Total War, along with my store pre-order bonuses, but my DLC is from Steam.
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How does Empire Total War run on your machine (the Mac Pro in your signature?). I'm a big Rome Total War fan but am leery of moving up if the battle scenes are jerky.
 
PatrickCocoa said:
How does Empire Total War run on your machine (the Mac Pro in your signature?). I'm a big Rome Total War fan but am leery of moving up if the battle scenes are jerky.
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Smooth as butter with everything maxed out - this is in Windows though, I don't bother with trying to get anything running under OS X that isn't designed to be.
 
peskaa said:
Smooth as butter with everything maxed out - this is in Windows though, I don't bother with trying to get anything running under OS X that isn't designed to be.
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Works fine for me in OS X maxed out. People always complain but in reality they just don't meet the requirements. It is as good as a port as possible.

Anyway, bumping this again for Mac Players:
The biggest Steam Mac group for this game now has near 100 members. Please join if you play the Mac version.

http://steamcommunity.com/groups/CIV5MAC

Mac patch due in 2 weeks maximum according to Aspyr.
 
It's still crash happy but their is another hotfix coming this month. I wish I could play with the DLC civilizations in multiplayer though.
 
pionata said:
Works fine for me in OS X maxed out. People always complain but in reality they just don't meet the requirements. It is as good as a port as possible.
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Mac patch due in 2 weeks maximum according to Aspyr.
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I hope this second patch will resolve my stability issues with the new Civ (on iMac 3.6 w\ 5670). I've gone back to playing Civ IV : BTS for the moment. I know it will get there, as it was exactly the same with Civ IV when it first appeared. Lots of problems that nearly all got sorted as the patches came out.

Note the nearly though. Still got that sudden blackout thing where you have to zoom right out and back in :D
 
pionata said:
Works fine for me in OS X maxed out. People always complain but in reality they just don't meet the requirements. It is as good as a port as possible.
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I have the latest, maxed out Macbook Pro and I cannot max things out. How the **** can you make requirements for a computer that isn't out yet? Surely you're not suggesting that all Apple customers should buy Mac Pros? That's a more niche product than a PC gaming rig.

And second, it's NOT an as good port as possible, because they only ported the DX9 version, even though OS X supports OpenGL 3.x which is capable of almost everything that DX11 can do.
 
eobet said:
I have the latest, maxed out Macbook Pro and I cannot max things out. How the **** can you make requirements for a computer that isn't out yet? Surely you're not suggesting that all Apple customers should buy Mac Pros? That's a more niche product than a PC gaming rig.

And second, it's NOT an as good port as possible, because they only ported the DX9 version, even though OS X supports OpenGL 3.x which is capable of almost everything that DX11 can do.
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I'll need to check it again, but the last time I played the DX9 version of the game it looked terrible compared to the DX10/11 one. Maybe my settings were just too low but the majority of them were at Medium.
 
eobet said:
I have the latest, maxed out Macbook Pro and I cannot max things out. How the **** can you make requirements for a computer that isn't out yet? Surely you're not suggesting that all Apple customers should buy Mac Pros? That's a more niche product than a PC gaming rig.

And second, it's NOT an as good port as possible, because they only ported the DX9 version, even though OS X supports OpenGL 3.x which is capable of almost everything that DX11 can do.
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I really dont understand your ranting. The macbook pro is not a hardcore gaming machine. And please do not tell me apple bills it as one. You can play the game, it will run on your machine. In fact it will run on medium settings pretty well. I have a 2 year old imac with a dedicated graphics card that will only run the game on low-medium settings. Im happy I can run the game and having a blast with it. The fact that you cant max out the settings should not bother you as much as you've been ranting about.

If you want to max out the settings, get a mac pro with a dedicated hardcore card. If not please be happy you can play it! There are thousands of users who have a mac that is a few years old who cant.
 
eobet said:
I have the latest, maxed out Macbook Pro and I cannot max things out. How the **** can you make requirements for a computer that isn't out yet? Surely you're not suggesting that all Apple customers should buy Mac Pros? That's a more niche product than a PC gaming rig.

And second, it's NOT an as good port as possible, because they only ported the DX9 version, even though OS X supports OpenGL 3.x which is capable of almost everything that DX11 can do.
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Your talking about gaming with a laptop and your expecting to max things out? Are you expecting Mac ports to be somehow "magical" and run fine below specs? I have a i7 iMac and it runs fine maxed out, just like Starcraft 2 runs fine maxed out also. Can you run Starcraft 2 maxed out on your MacBook pro?

Why would you want OpenGl3 if your computer cannot run OpenGl2? And it's a strategy game, not Crysis.

The arguments saying Civ5 for Mac is a bad port are not realistic. It has, of course, all the bugs of the Pc version. And like all big budget games it require a recent desktop mac to run flawlessly. But it's the same freaking game and runs pretty much the same in OsX or Windows. There are some players in the Mac group who said the game even is faster between turns on Mac.
 
Blair230 said:
The macbook pro is not a hardcore gaming machine.

If you want to max out the settings, get a mac pro with a dedicated hardcore card.
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Sorry for butchering your comments in my quote, but laptops are best selling machines by far. The Mac Pro isn't even targeted at consumers, it's a machine for business (but I guess you could argue that the Macbook Pro is as well).

pionata said:
YI have a i7 iMac and it runs fine maxed out, just like Starcraft 2 runs fine maxed out also. Can you run Starcraft 2 maxed out on your MacBook pro?

Why would you want OpenGl3 if your computer cannot run OpenGl2? And it's a strategy game, not Crysis.

The arguments saying Civ5 for Mac is a bad port are not realistic.
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Ok, first I must admit I was wrong on one account. I thought the Macbook Pro was just as fast as an iMac, but that was wrong.

However, I CAN run Starcraft 2 maxed out if I want to. All the graphical options from the PC version is there! The thing is, I cannot run Civilization V maxed out even if I want to, because even with their latest patch, released just a few days ago, I am not able to select the highest detail settings!

OpenGL3 and OpenGL2 is not about speed, but about features, but despite this, Blizzard managed to port over all of their graphical features to the Mac, while Aspyr chose a cheap way to do it, and still doesn't fully support the latest Macbook Pro hardware. In fact, in two patches, only a single thing was fixed from that perspective (the intro bug).
 
You are being unfair to Aspyr. Even if you were to run civ V in bootcamp, you would be unable to select alll the bells and whistles because unlike SC2, civ V uses DirectX11-specific features. The 330M is a Direct10 card.

If anything, you should be complaining to Apple for skimping on the MBP's graphics (and opengl drivers, which as I understand don't have all of DirectX11's features) but as you say the MBP is not designed for gaming.
 
New patch fixed pretty much everything with the singleplayer (even through the Ai could still be improved).

All that's needed now is the multiplayer and hotseat patches. ;)
 
I realize I'm over reacting, and I shouldn't take this so seriously, but when I see the head of Aspyr posting that it's the best possible port, I get slightly angry. If he would have said that the port needed work, I would have appreciated it more, but I guess I'm weird because I like people who are honest... anyway:

Cougarcat said:
You are being unfair to Aspyr. Even if you were to run civ V in bootcamp, you would be unable to select alll the bells and whistles because unlike SC2, civ V uses DirectX11-specific features. The 330M is a Direct10 card.

If anything, you should be complaining to Apple for skimping on the MBP's graphics (and opengl drivers, which as I understand don't have all of DirectX11's features) but as you say the MBP is not designed for gaming.
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I wanted to do that for a while now, so what the heck, I restart into my Bootcamp partition on the same Macbook Pro and put it on download while I was out. Here's my experience:

  • After installation, the launch menu asks me if I want to play the DX9 or DX10/11 version. The menu tells me that the latter is recommended (maybe that's the standard text, though, but it runs).
  • The intro kicks in, and I press Esc quite quickly as usual. I'm a bit surprised when it cuts right about when the elder's face show up and he barely has time to begin to speak. The first run in Windows is faster than the a normal run in OS X.
  • I change my graphics settings and restart the game, and the intro barely has time to start panning the camera inside the tent before the game menu shows up. Wow.
  • In the DX10/11 version, all settings to medium, except shadows that I set to high, has the game running fairly. It's slightly choppy, so I'm suspecting that this won't run that well later in the game. But at least I have lovely shadows! Oh, and the mouse cursor has a proper alpha-channel shadow as well.
  • I switch to the DX9 version. Again, the intro barely has time to show the tent, certainly no sign of the elder, before I'm in the game. I set shadows to medium this time, and the game is buttery, silky smooth! The difference between Windows and OS X performance is like night and day.

When I play it on the Mac side, I consistently need to wait up until the vikings set sail on their ships before the bloody intro skips to the game menu. Also, when starting a game, the intro speech has well enough time to complete. In Windows, it starts in less than 10 seconds.

So, bells and whistles? Check. And are you sure Apple's OpenGL drivers are to blame for the abysmal loading times on Aspyr's port?
 
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eobet said:
So, bells and whistles? Check. And are you sure Apple's OpenGL drivers are to blame for the abysmal loading times on Aspyr's port?
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Pretty sure. SC2 suffers from the same problem. Loading games takes much longer in OS X, when it's loading shaders.
 
Cougarcat said:
Pretty sure. SC2 suffers from the same problem. Loading games takes much longer in OS X, when it's loading shaders.
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What shaders are these, I wonder, when I'm forced to run detail settings at an absolute minimum?

I'm also curious when mods and cross platform cloud saving will start working... (it's been deemed impossible by Aspyr, then hinted at as coming, then semi-hacked by users... quite a mess).
 
Can you buy the PC version of Civilization V Game of the Year Edition and download and play the Mac version from steam, and will the map pack work too?
 
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