Troubleshooting Civilization V

[Sea-Monster]

Hello guys.

recently i bought Civilization V on steam. Great game and man do i love it.
Problem is, it seems to be rather hard on my grafic engine. Even in lowest grafic settings it's still horrible slow and lags way to much to be any good.

The thing is my iMac is only a year old and that shouldn't really be a problem hardware wise.
Here are my specs:
ATI Radeon HD 4850
Intel Core 2 Duo - 3,06 GHz

so i should totally be able to play the game.
Am i the only one with the problem or do the rest of you experience lag issues.
Im not sure if it is my computer or it is the ported version of Civ V that sucks?

help would be nice, thanks.
Sea-Monster.

 

[stridemat]

Have you installed the latest patch from Civilization?

 

[Sea-Monster]

Yes i have.
I bought the game via Steam, so steam is set to update automatic.

 

[stridemat]

The ATI Radeon HD 4850 only has 256 MB of graphic memory. As you can see below that only just meets the minimum requirements. The games producers recommend 512 MB.

Minimum Requirements

Operating System: Windows® XP SP3/ Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: Dual Core CPU
Memory: 2GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 256 MB ATI HD2600 XT or better, 256 MB nVidia 7900 GS or better, or Core i3 or better integrated graphics
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 9.0c

Recommended Requirements

Operating System: Windows® Vista SP2/ Windows® 7
Processor: 1.8 GHz Quad Core CPU
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Hard Disk Space: 8 GB Free
DVD-ROM Drive: Required for disc-based installation
Video: 512 MB ATI 4800 series or better, 512 MB nVidia 9800 series or better
Sound: DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®: DirectX® version 11

 

[Mackilroy]

The 4850 has 512 MB, not 256.

Sea-Monster: Try decreasing the resolution you play at. Having a quad-core would also be a benefit, but you can't upgrade there either…

 

[doh123]

lower resolution and lower graphics... while the 4850 is decent, it doesn't have the power to max out Civ5 at the native res of your screen.

I'm currently playing it on the new 6750, and I'm keeping most of the settings pretty low, but its nice and fast.... but even then playing a bigger map later int he game it still quite slow. Civ4 was that way too when it first came out,.. it made top of the line gaming machines cry. Even Civ5 on Windows caused problems for some PC gaming machines.

 

[stridemat]

The 4850 has 512 MB, not 256.

Sea-Monster: Try decreasing the resolution you play at. Having a quad-core would also be a benefit, but you can't upgrade there either…

My apologies, I had a temporary brain fart...what makes this worse is that this it the exact same graphics card I have in my iMac. I can however run Civ5 of medium to high settings without much difficulty (I do have the i5)

 

[AspyrRyan]

What kind of lag are you seeing? Problems scrolling, length between turns, or something else?

Aside from graphical settings, resolution and map size will have a pretty significant effect on the performance of the game. The patch we're working on should help a little, especially with time between turns.

 

[Sea-Monster]

What kind of lag are you seeing? Problems scrolling, length between turns, or something else?

Aside from graphical settings, resolution and map size will have a pretty significant effect on the performance of the game. The patch we're working on should help a little, especially with time between turns.

Lagging scrolls, long loading time. the worst case (rare though) casual crashes.

but to be honerst, it is the lagging scrolls that annoy me.. especially when i look at my buddy's crappy PC and it just dosen't lag "over there".

i did try playing it with the lowest settings, helped a bit but not much. It's still lagging when i scroll around on the world during 1600 where most of the world is taken.
it's a real shame because it is a great game.. in my case a patch would be welcome.

 

[zurichuk]

Lagging scrolls, long loading time. the worst case (rare though) casual crashes.

but to be honerst, it is the lagging scrolls that annoy me.. especially when i look at my buddy's crappy PC and it just dosen't lag "over there".

i did try playing it with the lowest settings, helped a bit but not much. It's still lagging when i scroll around on the world during 1600 where most of the world is taken.
it's a real shame because it is a great game.. in my case a patch would be welcome.

Cannot check at the moment, but isn't the Mac version 1 patch behind PC? (Mine was 2 nights ago). I believe there is a pending patch (217?) coming which is apparently quite good on turn times etc etc

 

[zurichuk]

Cannot check at the moment, but isn't the Mac version 1 patch behind PC? (Mine was 2 nights ago). I believe there is a pending patch (217?) coming which is apparently quite good on turn times etc etc

Yes Patch 1.0.1.217 was released on PC March 1st, with a huge list of fixes, balancing and optimization, until it comes out on the Mac bootcamp gets a more regular airing.

 

[Sea-Monster]

i suppose that explains alot.
just weird that other Mac gamers run the game smothly.
ill be patience.