Aspyr releases Civilization IV Beta 1.61 Rev A

9 Comments

Aspyr Media, Inc. has released a free patch for Sid Meier’s Civilization IV.

Civilization IV Beta 1.61 Rev A

This update contains the following fixes:

– Better performance on certain Macs (particularly G5’s) that exhibited excessive CPU use in the original release. The game should no longer run dual CPU’s to 100% capacity.
– Some missing sounds will now play correctly. Other sounds may still be inaudible. A future official release of the Rev A patch will address those.

The download (15 MB) is available here: http://www.macgamefiles.com/detail.php?item=19218

9 Comments

  1. Thank you. I just played 6 hours yesterday and had all the above mentioned problems. Version 3 had better sounds. Hope they make it able to run on higher res, as well.

    Still a brilliantly addictive game that changes and develops as it goes along. Looking forward to the upgrade.

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  2. Yeah, I’m sorry. But this has to be the worst port Aspyr has done yet. Don’t get me wrong, I love Aspyr and I do believe they do the best they can.

    But Civilization IV is a failure. I have a 20″ iMac, 2GB RAM, 256 MB Video RAM and it runs barely OK. On a standard-size map, at med-low graphics the game becomes unplayable after the Renaissance era / entering Industrial revolution. And I hear it runs horribly even on the top of the line PPC G5’s with decked-out video cards. Funny thing is, I borrowed my roommates Civ 4 copy for Windows, installed it on Boot Camp, I can run that MAX resolution and textures on a standard-size map for the entire game without noting any slow-down.

    So yeah… Civ 4 for Macs sucks. Sadly, it truly is a great game. So if you have PPC, stay away. If you have a x86 Mac, get the Windows version and play it in boot camp.

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  3. downloading now. i’ve had all the described problems running on a dual 2.5 powermac with nvidia 256mb 6800 gt vidcard. both procs maxing out at 100% was shocking to me, even doom3 doesn’t tax my tower like civ4!

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  5. BriAnimations:

    oh man, that’s so sad. I was looking forward to buying Civ IV Mac edition for my MacBook Pro. Are you sure the latest patched version runs poorly (compared to Windows version) even on an Intel Mac? I could buy the Windows version, but I would feel kinda bad.

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  6. I haven’t tried it again since the upgrade, but Aspyr said that they still haven’t fixed the audio problems that came from porting it over from PC (she gave no reason or apology). She implied that they would.

    I decided to upgrade my video card, Radeon 9600 Pro, 64 MB VRAM. Any auggestions? Should I even bother?

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  7. The patch fixes all the performance issues up Civ4 on my 1.8 Ghz iMac G5. The graphics are really smooth now, without any infernal delays. There’s still some sound glitches, but with this patch, the game is more than playable – it is in fact, highly addicting!

    The patch is a must – don’t play without it!

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  9. Busting, in all fairness, this program has higher level of graphics than CIV III, details like crashing waves and animated improvements, that try even my G5 2ghz, which is now apparenlty obsolete for games.

    The good news is that my original graphics card will do the job, and instead of maxing out both CPUs 100%, it’s now running something around @/p.

    The soul of the game is in CIV III, they just made it slicker.

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