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Is Civilization V Worth Buying?
- Thread starter Jae Hokes
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It's half price on Steam for the next 22 hours or so.
I'm still hesitating though. The demo didn't catch me, and the Mac-version is still a crappy port.
I'm still hesitating though. The demo didn't catch me, and the Mac-version is still a crappy port.
I thought about it too given it's on sale, but some people still say that Civ IV is the better game, and the specs required for Civ V are high when I could probably get the same enjoyment out of IV for less demand upon my machine.
All-that-crashing.
Or rather not starting at all.
I've spent countless hours in order to run Civ5 on my wife's Mac Pro 1,1. My internet connection sucks badly, since I live far away from (the real-life) civilization and I use a satellite service with a 512k downlink. Imagine downloading 3 gigs of patches only to find out this game will never run on a GT7300...
Once I bought another graphic card for the Mac, it started to work more or less OK (if some hiccups during scrolling is to be called OK on a Mac Pro with 8GB RAM, SSD and a 4870), but the lack of load/save for multiplayer local network games is just a lame joke for me. Not to mention we need Steam (hey, let's download another round of patches for the Steam client alone, because otherwise we can not play a fully patched game!!!) installed and I do not like it at all.
I pre-ordered the game on Amazon just like I did with all the previous Civ games. I actually bought two copies of it, in order to play on two computers at the same time. I've paid more than £80 for both. I think the publisher knows Civ5 is a very, very bad product, as it was available as a download for a fraction of this price.. http://dealmac.com/Civilization-V-for-PC-and-Mac-downloads-for-11-updated-/476665.html
Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant game and I enjoy playing it for countless hours, but the whole experience is actually quite bad. I still treat it as it was a beta version and hope for a massive patch (here comes my downloading again).
The iMac graphics chips are not upgradeable; only on the Mac Pro can you change the graphics card (which is actually a card, rather than a chip on a PCB as in all other Macs). The iMac, whilst being a desktop computer, is mostly laptop components inside.
I recently acquired Civ 5 as part of the Steam Summer sale. I bought a 2K games pack for $80 that included Civ 5, Civ 4, and all the bundles, as well as a ton of other games.
That said - I really enjoy Civ V - more so than Civ 4.
It removes the "Stacks of doom" that I used to always hate since the original Civ games.
It runs quite well on my late 2008 MPB. However, I have heard that the most recent patches and balances have not been upgraded into the Mac version of Civ V.
That said - I really enjoy Civ V - more so than Civ 4.
It removes the "Stacks of doom" that I used to always hate since the original Civ games.
It runs quite well on my late 2008 MPB. However, I have heard that the most recent patches and balances have not been upgraded into the Mac version of Civ V.
I'm on an late 2008 aluminum unibody MacBook with a 2.4 Intel Core 2 Duo processor with integrated NVIDIA 9400M graphics (officially not supported) and 8 GB RAM. Civ 5 works fine for me. It's a little slow at times, but it works and looks just fine.
works fine for me... but I have an ATI/AMD GPU... nvidia GPUs are being more problematic with graphics in Lion
I've always loved Civ so yes, Civ V is worth buying 
I love it. A fair number of vets think it's dumbed down a bit - probably so - but this makes it much more accessible for newcomers/casual players. I have it on both Steam and from MAS (wanted to support Aspyr, and this is the version I currently am playing). Hopefully, we continue to see updates and more DLC now that the delta updates are available with Lion. We've yet to see updates to the game from Aspyr, which is kind of bothersome; so maybe they were just waiting for Lion so we don't have to re-download the entire game again.
I have the 2011 13" MBP and the game plays fine in Lion. Definitely recommend a mouse, although a trackpad is fine for on-the-go.
My only complaint - and I believe this is an OS X issue, in general - is you can't game on one screen in dual-screen mode. I want to play on my home display while having iTunes/iChat open on my MBP screen but it doesn't work. The running app takes over both (main display is game, secondary is black).
I love it. A fair number of vets think it's dumbed down a bit - probably so - but this makes it much more accessible for newcomers/casual players. I have it on both Steam and from MAS (wanted to support Aspyr, and this is the version I currently am playing). Hopefully, we continue to see updates and more DLC now that the delta updates are available with Lion. We've yet to see updates to the game from Aspyr, which is kind of bothersome; so maybe they were just waiting for Lion so we don't have to re-download the entire game again.
I have the 2011 13" MBP and the game plays fine in Lion. Definitely recommend a mouse, although a trackpad is fine for on-the-go.
My only complaint - and I believe this is an OS X issue, in general - is you can't game on one screen in dual-screen mode. I want to play on my home display while having iTunes/iChat open on my MBP screen but it doesn't work. The running app takes over both (main display is game, secondary is black).
That's a good question. I remember my Civ V saved game on Steam Cloud NOT being able to show up in OS X Steam, but that has been noted in other games as well. I don't see why manually moving the save would be a problem though, unless the files are handled differently.
FYI - Civ V (Steam) is on sale today for $17USD. I just bought it, and can't wait to give it a go.
Ok, I got Lion this past Friday and while Civ V still works, the loading times have significantly increased. During the opening movie, I can only skip through to the title screen until after the son walks into the tent. Additionally, when loading a saved game, the game now takes ages (at least over a couple minutes) to load before the "Continue Your Journey" button appears.
One minor inconvenience is that fast transitions across the map now take a little longer to render the terrain.
Granted, once gameplay starts, the game is still eminently playable.
Also keep in mind that I am playing on a aluminum unibody MacBook with integrated NVIDIA 9400M graphics, which is officially not supported.
Congratulations, console generation. Now you've taken the Civ franchise, too. You can play it right in between Crysis and Duke Nukem Forever sessions. How awesome is that.
For some mysterious reason it was released for computers. Minor oversight by 2K Games, I'm sure. These are the same people who destroyed the Pirates! franchise. They should team up with Bethesda Softworks (the folks who destroyed the Fallout franchise) and make a Civ game with elves and dragons.
The great thing about Civ 5 is I can uninstall it.
For some mysterious reason it was released for computers. Minor oversight by 2K Games, I'm sure. These are the same people who destroyed the Pirates! franchise. They should team up with Bethesda Softworks (the folks who destroyed the Fallout franchise) and make a Civ game with elves and dragons.
The great thing about Civ 5 is I can uninstall it.
Just know that if you buy this game from Aspyr, you will be plagued by bugs which are years and years old and likely to never be fixed (black border cursors and buggy alt-tab just like in their Civ 4 port) and also lesser graphics than you will get in Windows (shadows cannot be enabled for me on the Mac side and I'm ignored by Aspyr support after continuing to ask for a fix).
This has made me to vote with my wallet and never buy another Aspyr game.
This has made me to vote with my wallet and never buy another Aspyr game.
Amazing. Last time I tested Civ V on the OS X side (Snow Leopard) I could never skip past until the vikings appeared. However, on the same unibody Macbook Pro in Bootcamp, I can almost always skip past at or before the son walks into the tent.
If you're new to Civ and *maybe* coming from Civ IV (and found it too complex), and/or if you're really into today's shooters, then Civ V is probably right up your alley.
If you're a Civ veteran (going back to Civ I and II days) then don't even bother. It's a lot of flash and no substance. It's a broken turn-based war game (1UPT? Really??) masquerading as an empire-building strategy game.
Civ as a series faithful to Civ fundamentals is done. Civ V represents a palpable and definite break with the past, for the worse, in terms of management, strategy, and just plain old logic.
There are probably three choices at this point:
1) Keep playing the previous Civ installments until you die. Really. Their replay value, some with mods, is more or less infinite. The Civ community has done a wonderful job. Check out Civ Fanatics.
2) If you're looking for more Civ, but an even greater challenge, then Europa Universalis (the newest being EU III) is your hookup. EU III, in terms of sheer substantive, meaty strategy, makes Civ look like Pac Man.
3) The Total War series looks like an interesting alternative. I'm drifting toward it thanks to the current situation.
No amount of patches and expansions will fix Civ V. For the simple reason is that 2K Games' entire approach to the series is completely different, and to be honest, pretty messed up.
If you're a Civ veteran (going back to Civ I and II days) then don't even bother. It's a lot of flash and no substance. It's a broken turn-based war game (1UPT? Really??) masquerading as an empire-building strategy game.
Civ as a series faithful to Civ fundamentals is done. Civ V represents a palpable and definite break with the past, for the worse, in terms of management, strategy, and just plain old logic.
There are probably three choices at this point:
1) Keep playing the previous Civ installments until you die. Really. Their replay value, some with mods, is more or less infinite. The Civ community has done a wonderful job. Check out Civ Fanatics.
2) If you're looking for more Civ, but an even greater challenge, then Europa Universalis (the newest being EU III) is your hookup. EU III, in terms of sheer substantive, meaty strategy, makes Civ look like Pac Man.
3) The Total War series looks like an interesting alternative. I'm drifting toward it thanks to the current situation.
No amount of patches and expansions will fix Civ V. For the simple reason is that 2K Games' entire approach to the series is completely different, and to be honest, pretty messed up.
that is all 100% opinion.
I've played all Civs and expansions since the original, and I find Civ5 the most fun and best one ever.
I agree with you that Civ 5 is extremely enjoyable. A lot of the micro-management in Civ 4 went too far, but I digress. I joined this thread to comment on the quality of the port from Windows and just how atrocious it is!
On large maps, once the game gets to around turn 250 or so, I experience severe slow-downs while scrolling around the map as well as graphical corruption in the form of grey areas, red and white checkerboards and very slow re-draws.
My Mac is a 2.66 GHz Mac Pro with 8 cores, 12 GB of RAM and a Radeon 5770. I've tried running without any apps open in the background. I've tried trashing the prefs. I've tried running windowed. I get exactly the same problems whether my resolution is 1920x1200 or 1600x1000 or 1280x800. I also get exactly the same problem whether I use the default settings or I turn all the video options to their minimum settings (or their maximum, come to that!).
However, when I boot to Windows and play, then the game runs just fine with all the video settings at their maximum, although it is then prone to random lock-ups (a different issue entirely and rare, it must be said).
The weird thing is that, when I use the Steam cloud to play one of my late game (around turn 400) saves on my 2009 MBP 13" with the "unsupported" 9400M, admittedly on minimal video settings, I see similar performance. That can't be right!
I honestly can't recommend anyone trying to play this game under OS X Lion in its current condition. Boot to windows to play it and, if you haven't got windows, stick to Civ 4 and deal with the stacks of doom.
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I have a 6750 1gb, so the crappiness of the port isn't as noticeable to me...
but it is Asypr isn't it? They haven't done anything but crappy ports in many years. If you see "Aspyr" on it, don't except too much. I haven't benchmarked anything, but When I was running the Windows versions ported with Wineskin, I think it was actually running consistently better. SLightly slower overall, but the same speed even on huge maps.
but it is Asypr isn't it? They haven't done anything but crappy ports in many years. If you see "Aspyr" on it, don't except too much. I haven't benchmarked anything, but When I was running the Windows versions ported with Wineskin, I think it was actually running consistently better. SLightly slower overall, but the same speed even on huge maps.
if you are a civ fan from the old times then its worth to buy and play civ5. It has a lot to offer when compared to older versions and trust me it will give you loads of fun for long hours.