Sid Meier’s Civilization IV for Mac hits beta

17 Comments

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV for Mac has hit beta status. The game, scheduled to ship later this month, is licensed from 2K Games and is under development for Mac by Aspyr Studios.

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV comes-to-life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world that expands the gameplay experience. This latest installment takes the franchise to new heights with the addition of new ways to play and win, new tools to manage and expand your civilization, all-new easy to use mod capabilities and various multiplayer modes and options.

Key Features:
* Faster-Paced Fun – Gameplay has been streamlined for a tighter, faster, and more compelling experience.
* Greater Accessibility and Ease of Play – An easy-to-use interface will be immediately familiar to RTS and action game players, and newcomers to the series will be able to jump in and play.
* Tech Tree – Flexible Tech tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations along unique paths.
* Grow Bigger Empires – More Civilizations, Units, and Improvements to enhance and grow your empire.
* Multiplayer – LAN, Internet, and Play-By-Email offer players all-new strategies and ways to play when competing or cooperating with live opponents.
* Team Play – Whether playing multiplayer or single player, team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading, and shared territory that delivers a plethora of new strategic and tactical options.
* Beautiful 3D world – Sid Meier’s Civilization IV comes to life with a beautiful 3D world, dozens of fully animated units (including culturally unique units), and totally customizable armies. Cities and wonders will appear on the map. Wonder movies are back!
* Mods and Community Tools – Designed from the ground up for modability, the game contains a powerful map editor with XML and Python support.
* Choose Your Leader – Most Civilizations now have two leaders from which to choose, with each Leader having traits that provide various bonuses to the player.
* Civics – With the discovery of new techs, civic options can become available. Freedom of speech or slavery? Hereditary rule or open elections? This creates endless government choices and possibilities.
* Religion – Now there are seven religions in the game that are unlocked through researching. When unlocked, the religion spreads through a player’s empire allowing them to use the religion to help manage happiness, gain gold and create Great Prophets.
* Great People – As the player uses specialists they gain Great People points in the city that is utilizing the specialists. Great People include the Artist, Tycoon, Prophet, Engineer, & Scientist. They can be used to get free techs, start Golden Ages, or join a city to increase its output.
* Promotions – Each unit has a promotion path that emphasizes specific unit traits. Promotions include bonuses to Attack/Defend on specific terrains/features, movement bonuses, sight/visibility bonuses, and increased withdrawal chances.
* In-Game Cinematics – Sid Meier’s Civilization IV has over 40 in-game cinematics.

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV is rated “E10+” for “Everyone 10 and older” by the ESRB and is available for preorder at Aspyr.com.

For more information, fans can visit Aspyr’s site: http://www.aspyr.com/games.php/mac/civ4/ or 2K Games’ official Web site: http://www.CivIV.com

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17 Comments

  12. Shuzuluza:

    Yep, Civ IV is another great example of why integrated graphics sucks big time.

    People in here often trumpet “the MacBook and Mac mini aren’t for gamers!” but Civ IV is one of those great must-have games that appeals to a much wider market than “gamers”.

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  14. Jake:

    “Is this a Universal Binary?”

    Civ IV requires a G5 or a Core Duo, and since Core Duos and dual-core G5s are equivalent we can conclude that it is definitely a universal binary.

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  16. Actually the current Intel integrated graphics aren’t as bad as older integrated chipsets, and some windows users are already playing Civ IV with GMA950 chipsets, so there is no reason why it won’t work on a macbook.

    In fact, some people have installed Civ 4 using bootcamp on macbooks and it runs fine if you let it auto choose the graphics.

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  17. Finally … the last link holding me to the PPC architecture is about to be broken! OK … it’s going to require a buffer system than I was planning to buy, but a 2GHz mini might be available not too long after CivIV goes Gold. Civ requires a game-level graphics card? Wha-4? Right now I don’t use the power of my graphics card much except to play Diablo LoD, but I might need a card for that, too.

    We really do need something that splits the difference between the mini and the PowerMac – and the iMac doesn’t do it right now. The iMac is a mini with a bit more oomph and a built-in monitor. NICE package, but there’s no room for a graphics card and the CPU speed has never been a match for the Big Box. Sure, it would cost twice what a mini costs – or would that be “half what the PowerMac costs”? – but it would not steal many sales from either and would widen the appeal of the entire platform.

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