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Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great game, but not perfect.

Written by RZ from San Jose

Jan 7, 2009

I really love Civ games. I played Civ III a lot, and I love that game so much. But Civ IV made me so disappointed because it didn't improve a lot, Just a little bit graphic improvement and this game takes less time now. I want more units combinations and more strategies. And that will be much better if they make the relationship between countries more complex. This is a good game to play, and I will both III and IV.

13 of 16 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great

Written by TG

Dec 28, 2008

Same great game, but some technical difficulties in the movement from PC to Mac.

10 of 16 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Very good but with some definite problems

Written by TL

Oct 20, 2008

I have been a Civ fan from the beginning. This version is great when it works. The biggest problem started when I uploaded the patch. It is possible a security update from Apple caused this to take place too. The game crashes about every 10 turns you take. I read of another problem with black patches later on in the game. This is true. I found by just simply zooming out and then zooming in, it will permanently solve this little problem. The crashing is just unbearable though. I am calling the company today. I have to say, that even though the game crashes, I still play it. I just swear a lot when it happens!

67 of 82 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great Game - 1 Bug - Black Patches

Written by JR from Dallas

Sep 6, 2008

I haven't purchased a game since the 90's, but being a recent Mac user and having a love for strategy type table top games, I thought I'd give this one a try and I love it (even when the game beats me).

The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars is I've encountered a bug where cities and other areas display as black patches after an extended play time (around 5 hrs.). Since this was mentioned in some other reviews, I would have thought they would have come up with a fix by now. When it does this, I save the game and reload it and all works fine again.

No other problems, no crashes occur. Running on a MacBook Pro 4.1, 2.6 GHz, 4GB Mem., GeForce 8600M GT Video

25 of 28 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Almost perfect

Written by JJ from Lafayette

Jan 11, 2008

I love this game. the graphics are great and game play is the best it has ever been for a Civ game. My only problem is a tendency toward video artifacts (at around the 6th hour of play at the earliest) and a tendency towards crashing after 10 hours. Most people will probably not run into these problems as most probably won't play for that many straight hours.

Looking forward to the Beyond The Sword expansion pack

82 of 124 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Better than on PC

Written by PC from Regina

Dec 3, 2007

Always been a big Civ fan, I have Civ IV on both PC and my Mac. I did have an issue the first few times on the Mac but it now runs well and very fast. PC is another story, sometimes had to wait 5 minutes to load a game, not with the Mac. Now I just need to get Warlord pack and hopefully the other new pack will be on Mac soon (Beyond the Sword). I spend a lot of hours on this game and enjoy it a lot. Call to Power was my fav until I found Civilization.

39 of 70 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Runs OK on My MacBook w/Mac OS X 10.5.1 w/out game card!

Written by MT from San Francisco

Nov 29, 2007

I bought this game about the same time I bought my new MacBook w/2.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo w/2 GB RAM and then using system OS X 10.4. I also DO NOT have a game accelerator card. Although on boot-up it says that I do not have the hardware that can run the software, if I click on that window, I had no problem playing in single mode. I have not tried multi-player/online. I had an occasional unexpected quit, but I found that if you create a saved game early on, then it didn't seem to crash, at least not that I can remember. I upgraded to system 10.5.1 recently and had an unexpected quit in Civ IV, but then I saved a game in progress and it did not crash. I'm going to try to open the saved game and try playing it for a few hours. I also have version 1.74 of the game. If you have a lower version there is an upgrade patch to 1.74. I noticed that under advanced settings you can set the same to no war, so for those of us who are pacifists, we can still play and not have to kill our neighbors.

34 of 55 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

works on MacBook

Written by JM from Mount Rainier

Sep 25, 2007

The reviews from the MacBook Pro users are pretty alarming, but the game runs fine on my 2.16 GHz, 2 GB MacBook. The Apple salesman couldn't say for sure whether it would work, Aspyr warned the game didn't support my video card, and the game itself told me my hardware was below minimum specs, but it runs anyway. It defaults to low graphics, but medium and high work fine, too. MacBook lovers of Civ should get the faster processor and pick up this game.
That said, I haven't yet played all that much and am still getting used to the changes. It incorporates a lot of great stuff from Alpha Centauri (civics, more flexible diplomacy), religion is an interesting addition, and there really do seem to be more peacable ways to play. All that peace means a different pace and feel to the game, which I'm still getting the hang of.
Highly recommended to all who've loved Civ -- remember Civ I? -- new gamers might find Civ III more straightforward.

33 of 65 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

No problems

Written by KP from Madison

Sep 23, 2007

I have a macbook 2.16ghx/2GB ram with the GMA 950 video card and have had very few problems. The game crashed maybe twice the first week I had it, but since then no problems. When I load the game, there is even a message box that comes up saying my system req.'s are insufficient and it won't run, but then it does. This is a great game so don't be discouraged!

40 of 72 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

This is a good game!

Written by JP from Turlock

Sep 9, 2007

I have owned this game for over a year now. I have played it on the PC and on the Mac. I have had a lot less problems (practically none) with it on my intel imac than on the PC. (after reading some of these reviews, I have no idea what they are talking about) This game works great, and the game play is pretty good too.

If you like turn based strategy games, get this and its expantion sets!
Great game!

18 of 29 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Very Interesting but Very Slow

Written by HR from Paris

Feb 8, 2007

I love this game (very addictive indeed) and you can collect or refresh your memory on many historical facts and/or events (I also love the quote feature each time you make a technological improvement).
I'm running it on a G5 iMac with 1 gig RAM with all the graphic options set to the minimum but on a 1280 resolution: TOOOO Slow :(

32 of 58 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

Great Fun but Poor Performance

Written by WG from SAINT PETERSBURG

Jan 22, 2007

This game is very very fun. If you're a fan of the series or even just curious, you probably won't be disappointed. There is a slight learning curve, but reading the manual helps alot.

The game does run somewhat poorly on my 2.0ghz MacBook Pro, even with graphics set to lowest. It is definitely still playable though.

29 of 55 people found this useful

Sid Meier's Civilization IV

freaks out on civilization

Written by JR from Atlanta

Jan 17, 2007

i had this problem too you need to turn off your two finger scrolling on the track pad.. after i did this it ran perfect.

26 of 63 people found this useful