How to play Civ V on a MAC

[arithine]

I do not want this to turn into a flame war, please no "pc is better" or "mac is better" posts, this is simply how to get the game to run on a mac. This details how to play without bootcamp or vmware, you need an Intel based machine. The computer I have it running on is snow leopard, other OS's are untested. It has been reported that dual booting works better, this is just a solution for those who can't or don't want to install windows on their machines.

Step one: Download http://portingteam.com/zero/2010/05/steam-pc/

Step two: Install it, just drag the app to the folder you want the steam in

Step three: Open the app and log into steam

Step four: Download the game (whether you have bought the full version or just want to dl the demo)

Step five: After it downloads go to your library and hit "play game" when given the option select Directx9

Step six: Once in the game go to the graphics option and set it to windowed mode.

Step seven: play

Step eight: after your start up the game again you need to go and change the game from windowed back to full-screen and then to windowed again.


Known issues:
The fog of war does not show clouds, in minimum it is black raised hexes and above its just grayed out.

the mouse is not entirely accurate, keep an eye out for which button is glowing, not just on what your mouse is over.

[civ_king]

I'm bumping to reduce duplicate threads

[arithine]

I was hoping to get this stickeyed because so many people are asking for this, anyone else who decides to use it please posts any glitches or hicups so i can add them to the known issues.

[HarryLime]

What happened to the link? It says it's temporarily unavailable?

[arithine]

It's working fine on my end, but heres another one, to the forum thread, http://forum.portingteam.com/viewtopic.php?f=107&t=4727

[Tech Ian]

I was hoping to get this stickeyed because so many people are asking for this, anyone else who decides to use it please posts any glitches or hicups so i can add them to the known issues.

I'm not expert in this field - does it go against the stipulations detailed in the End User Agreement in any way? Although its not supported, is it within any kind of legal grey area?

If not I'll sticky

[arithine]

Let me look through the agreements, do see why it would have any legal issues.

[HarryLime]

So I'm in Steam via your link (thank you so much). What happens if I've already installed the game? Where are the files on my computer? Do I really have to spend another 3 hours installing it again?

[arithine]

There is nothing about playing on unsuported software in the EULA and steam says nothing about ports.

So I'm in Steam via your link (thank you so much). What happens if I've already installed the game? Where are the files on my computer? Do I really have to spend another 3 hours installing it again?

on your pc? how did you download it before?

[HarryLime]

No, I got Steam to open on Crossover before and I preloaded the game. But every time I tried to open it today it would just say "Launching Game" and then stop without an error message.

So I've downloaded your program and now my Steam account only gives me the option to Install and not to Play.

Thanks.

[arithine]

The c drive for crossover is at "/Users/(your user)/Library/Application Support/CrossOver/Bottles/(the bottle you installed civ on)/Other Apllication/drive_c"

To get to the games in the apps right click and hit show package contents, go to contents then root and finaly drive_c.

Hope that helps, but im not sure copying will help, I think i tried that once before and I still had to install the game I wanted, I could be wrong though.

[migs]

if i purchase the pc version and play through this hack do you think steam will let me download the mac version when it comes out?

p.s. downloading the demo as we speak. thanks for the help! i'd honestly pay $60 to play this game on opening day for mac even if they're still charging $50 for pc users. starcraft 2 runs great.

[arithine]

It's not really a hack, I got the mac version of portal though and was able to download it on the windows.

[FarmerBen]

I have not tried the method the OP recommended but I don't think it is reliable, at least when it comes to purchasing decisions for people here. Maybe if you try that method with the demo and if it works then fine. Just emphasizing that I don't think it's as simple as "come on and buy the game it will work!"

Myself and a few others have successfully ran Civ5 on Boot Camp. The thread is here: http://forums.2kgames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=87526

Hope this is helpful.

[arithine]

I mentioned to try the demo, I am not trying to cheat people out of their money, this is just another option for those who are on a mac and do not want to dual boot.

If you do dual boot and buy the game you can also use this app to play the game when you dont want to switch over to bootcamp.

[migs]

anyone know steam's policy on downloading the same game on different platforms? do they consider it two separate purchases?

[RealPolitik]

anyone know steam's policy on downloading the same game on different platforms? do they consider it two separate purchases?

I bought Civ4 on steam for the PC, and was automatically given the option of installing the Mac client.

[migs]

I bought Civ4 on steam for the PC, and was automatically given the option of installing the Mac client.

so hypothetically if i purchase the civ5 pc version and run it through the pc steam client on my mac via the OP's method (assuming the demo runs smoothly enough for it to be fun), i could download the mac client for steam when civ5 comes out and still play? it all runs out of steam right? so if you were playing on a pc today, bought a mac in 3 months, i assume you'd be able to play all your steam games on the mac after re-downloading?

[CivFanaticMan]

Thank you porting team! You guys have been great!!!

[migs]

damn, demo isn't working. oh well.

[HarryLime]

OK, it seems to be working. Thank you so much arithine. You're a godsend. I owe you a beer if you ever come to New York.

One question though. Is this really the quality I have to play on? Is there no way I can get it higher? I mean, it's still a little slow and choppy on this setting.

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l1...1at44126PM.png

[Joneleth]

It's not natively running in OSX, so you're bound to see some reduction in performance in exchange for the convenience.

[SleestakJones]

I have tried both methods at this point.

using bootcamp:
game runs fine, mouse flickers and becomes invisible when i dont do anything.

Using Steam(PC)
Looks horrible, runs laggy

[arithine]

OK, it seems to be working. Thank you so much arithine. You're a godsend. I owe you a beer if you ever come to New York.

One question though. Is this really the quality I have to play on? Is there no way I can get it higher? I mean, it's still a little slow and choppy on this setting.

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l1...1at44126PM.png

Mess with the settings one at a time, you have to refresh after changing just about anything, keep going up until something doesn't work or the game runs to laggy.

damn, demo isn't working. oh well.

What exactly is the problem?

I have tried both methods at this point.

using bootcamp:
game runs fine, mouse flickers and becomes invisible when i dont do anything.

Using Steam(PC)
Looks horrible, runs laggy

I updated the OP to say that dual booting works better. (no surprise there)

[tfordp]

Known issues: The fog of war does not show clouds, in minimum it is black raised hexes and above its just grayed out.

I'm running it with Boot camp on a three year old iMac, working fine. The fog of war was also black by default, I guess because of the (minimum) requirements. I upped the fog settings from minimum to low, so now it's white and still running good, all other settings are 'low' too but I'm not missing any quality or speed that I know of.
I'm just going to keep upping the settings one by one until the quality caps.

[arithine]

thats what i would suggest for any version.

[Wampa31]

I installed the port, downloaded the demo in steam, and can run the demo. However, all of the menus within the demo are an unreadable gibberish. Am I missing a font file?

[arithine]

Im not sure, I had that sort problem with both portal and alien swarm, try renaming the main font file and replacing it with something else (the font inside the games directory, not any of the system fonts)

[Shivetya]

I am running in my i5 iMac (first gen 27 type) using Parallels. I have dedicated 3 processors, 256mb video (4850) , and 4gb to XP/SP3 for that instance.

What I have noticed.
1. Periodically parts of the map go black, and tend to stay that way regardless if I move a unit into it. This is the only real problem I have with the game.
2. It loves to peg the processor
3. The movie at the start is very hard to interrupt, but I can do it.
4. Since I have Windows in a "window" it tends to resize a bit as the game cycles between movie, menu, and game.

I have not tried it in pure bootcamp, will do so in a bit. I did blue screen the parallels instance while in the CIV menu - but that is easy to shut down and recover from. Got an IRQL_NOT_LESS_EQUAL or such.

Any ideas if I can push more memory into XP or should I just go to 7?

[Enigmatic2004]

I've followed all the instructions up to 5, where I go to play game. At that point, I get to the mainscreen and all the writing is gibberish. Naturally, I can't change the graphics option to windowed mode because I can't read whats on the screen, so I have no idea where to go.

Is there any way to solve this? Suggestions would be appreciated.

[Shivetya]

One thing I did was edit the config file to set it to use six logical processors. In my setup I have it under Parallels XP/SP3 with three cores and four gb of ram dedicated. CIV detected my quad core and set itself up to use eight, but since eight are not actually available to it I manually set it to hopefully avoid an issue.

I still have blue screened, but I can do that in Bootcamp, just haven't proved it will do so with this game - it does with LOTRO.

My processor usage was not due to CIV, I had a run away background process I killed and processor usage was not high at all.

[aville239]

I can't download the demo with my Mac. I get the message "your platform is not supported." How are you downloading?

[wisaac42]

I have a new i7 iMac running the game in Windows 7 after using bootcamp to format a partition on my HD.

Game is working great. Every now and then there is an issue drawing completed roads, and a few combat animations get skipped, but that's it.

[FarmerBen]

Been playing Civ5 for the past few hours. Works fine. Video settings on medium. When a lot of stuff starts going on early/mid game there is some graphic lag, but no problems. On Boot Camp with XP SP3. : )

[Tempus]

I am running the game on my 2.8 gHz i7 iMac with a ATI Radeon HD 4850.

If you are so lucky as to own one of these machines, using the Steam ported into the CXZ cider engine as linked in the first post, I was able to run Civilization V.

I have it going right now, on max settings, at 1440x900 in windowed mode, while running photoshop, Safari, and a couple of webkit based apps (which have a high mem footprint). It has one graphical glitch, an odd white line that flickers occasionally when I zoom. This line goes away if I turn down certain settings to medium.

In other words, it plays like a dream.

[tfordp]

Liking a lot of the other posts further down, the not sticky ones, complaining about crashes and bugs and all sorts on their super modern extra-for-civ set ups and F-O video cards. I haven't had a single scratch since the demo came out, lovely flowing graphics, fluffy clouds, the lot

[junkets]

I have tried the method in the first post with the demo... I can set all gfx options and game options etc. All goes well until I try start the game, at which point I get stuck on the loading screen. The Civ5 music keeps playing even after I quit Steam (PC)... Anyone else encountered this? Any ideas? Thanks.

[Xyth]

I cannot get the demo to work using this method. I get to step 5 successfully but after that I get a black (sometimes white) screen after a bit resizng. It looks like it's trying to open a window or display but it can't. Things I've tried:

- disabling spaces
- trying different OSX resolutions
- disabling automatic graphic switching (MBP i7 15" NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M)

Is there someway of editing the demo's graphic settings without launching it? Any other ideas?

[arithine]

It may take a while to start up, just let it do its thing for a while.

[Bane1090]

So I have managed to get the game to run in that I can get to the main screen. But once there, everything is gibberish. I saw you mention something about editing the text files earlier, can you elaborate on that solution?