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Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Ehhh..it's ok.

Written by JH from Hilliard

Mar 19, 2009

O.K. I bought this game, always having thought it was the exact same as age of empires, just a different version. This one I didn't care for so much as I didn't realize it was turn based before I bought it. I didn't do enough research. If you're not familiar with turn based, it's nothing like Age of Empires. Your units can only move a few tiles at a time, and then you have to end your turn and let the other civilization make a move. Luckily the Apple store is allowing me to do an exchange, which I will be exchanging for Age of Empires III. The apple store has great customer service.

28 of 75 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great game, but....

Written by JB from Burnaby

May 8, 2008

I love this game, but it seems very unstable. Even after installing the patches for this and "Warlords" I find the game crash prone and buggy. I run it on a MacBook Pro and Mac Pro 8 core (2.8GHz) and I find that eventually either the ice and 'improvements' start to go black, or the game simply quits. The patches have reduced the frequency of both, to a minor degree, but it still goes Ka-Boom at irregularly regular intervals. Four stars for the game, minus one for the glitches.

56 of 81 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Dissapointed

Written by CC from Tampa

Sep 17, 2007

Civ IV itself is actually very mediocre in comparison to "Call to Power". Concepts are limited, units unimaginative and futurism barely present. So much emphasis on Military - takes away from the essence of the original game that so many of us have played consistently over the years. Scoring system also heavily dependent on military action - the pacifist/environmentalist is not recognized for the ingenuity and diplomatic skills required to become a superpower without ever going to war. For the first time ever, I am bored with the game in under 6 weeks of owning it. I will get warlords expansion and hope for a miracle but not optimistic. I had assumed that in an era in which the planetary ecology is in jeapordy as a result of man-made climate change, that the makers of the game would have gone further down that path and perhaps blended some of the concepts from Sim-earth into this latest version. In CIV IV, you don't see global warming until you use nukes. Hoping for a solid expansion soon.

18 of 35 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Where is the MBP-specific software update from Apple?

Written by CT from Sterling

Aug 16, 2007

In response to one of the reviews that reads:

"Just wanted to let everyone know that one of the MBP-specific software updates from Apple fixes the issues that I (and everyone else, it seems) had on our latest gen MacBook Pros. Game now runs without any problems."

I'm having the same problem with my MacBook Pro. I did the Aspyr update, but that doesn't seem to help.

Anyone have any other patches or updates that might help.

This is my favorite game when it works. Guess I'll just play Civ III until it does.

20 of 30 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Not good on the Mac Book Pro

Written by BL from Everett

Jun 24, 2007

Used to play Civ IV on my old powerbook G4 1.5 Ghz. Man was it slow. Great game though. Bought the new MBP 2.4 Ghz Duo and was so psyched to play it as it was supposed to be played! Darn thing crashes all the time. Pretty much unplayable. Great while it works though! Everything I read points to it being an unsupported video card... that just sucks!

13 of 21 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

QUIT LYING!

Written by SC from Shoreline

Jan 18, 2007

Im tired of all you jokers saying that the game wont run on your computers. I have an iMac G5 that is almost 2 years old, and I run the game on mostly medium settings. Guess what? It runs great. Why the 3 stars then? Graphics are nice, there was obviuosly alot of thought put into it, BUT You cant get far in the game unless you follow Mr. Meiers idea of what a great civilization should be. I wouldnt recommend this game, but I will admit that I did spend hours playing it.

35 of 80 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great game! But not for Intel Macs.

Written by AK from Boulder

Jan 4, 2007

Okay, don't get me wrong. This is a spectacular game, but there's one huge issue.

It just freaks out in Intel Macs. I've got a Macbook Pro with upgraded memory, which runs next-gen games really well. This game should run, but it doesn't. It freaks out.

If you've got an Intel Mac, don't get this game.

43 of 97 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Poor performance on intel macs

Written by AP from Atlanta

Oct 18, 2006

Go to the aspyr.com website and look in their support section. There are some knowledge base articles about Civ 4 and how to speed it up as well as a patch to the game.

I'd post the link here but this form won't let me.

Look at the min requirements if you have a macbook before buying. Macbooks have a 64mb intel video card and aspyr recommends 128mb and an nvidia or radeon card.

57 of 87 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Many game features improved, but new UI/graphics suck

Written by SM from Vancouver

Sep 24, 2006

I have been a Civ junkie since the original. There are a lot of exciting and interesting new game play features in this release. With all that they have added it should be the best Civ ever; but, the UI and excessive graphics get in the way of the strategy. I wonder if they are trying to appeal to wider audience and just not making anone happy. I was rather disappointed. Three major complaints: 1) No popup window at the start of the turn to notify you of world events. 2) The graphics are just too busy, it's hard to notice when an enemy is close by -- until they attack. 3) The way the zoom our "feature" works is just stupid -- not to mention buggy, globe view always places the wrong image on the screen.

As for speed comments: on my 2.66GHz Mac Pro with 256MB of VRAM and 4GB of RAM. Everything plays very smoothly even with all the resoultions and graphics quality turned up as high as they go -- even with tonnes of other apps in the background or windowed. I wish it would play nicer with dual monitors -- why can't it use both of my 23" cinema displays? At a minimum it shouldn't turn the other one black and unusable.

Civ III proved that turn based strategy games will always top real time strategy games. I wish it ran on my Mac Pro.

58 of 95 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great game

Written by JJ

Aug 12, 2006

works horribly on intel iMacs. Full of bugs. Every time i start it up I have to watch the entire intro movie, and it crashes every 10 minutes or so

43 of 63 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Really Fun... the First time

Written by CG from Leesburg

Jul 28, 2006

With my Intel iMac the game ran fine from the most part. Towards the end, when i was at war with two places at the same time, and there were a lot of units moving and a lot going on, it slowed down a little. My iMac has 1.83 GHz, 512 MB RAM, 128 vRAM, it meet all the system requirements, and all but one of the recomended specs. The only problem i had with this game is i could only play it once. I got bored after the first game, one reason is because the start is basically the same every game up until at least the AD time periods, but i don't last that long before quitting or moding. Which is the other problem, when i started my second game i discovered the World Editor. Now i have trouble fighting the urge to mod, and both way (modded and not) seem to bore me. I had a lot of fun with Civ III, i was able to play that one a lot more, i don't know what the difference is now. I think i will be putting my game up on ebay soon, so if you have not bought it already look out for a used Civ IV game.

42 of 55 people found this useful