Aspyr Media announced Tuesday that its Macintosh conversion of Sid Meier’s Civilization IV has reached its gold master development milestone and is now in replication. The company expects the game to start shipping to retailers on Monday, June 26, 2006. Civilization IV costs $49.99.
The latest incarnation of the legendary strategy game series created by Sid Meier, Civilization IV follows a similar pattern: You’re the leader of a human civilization, which you have to uplift from its stone-age beginnings to a modern empire. You have at your disposal the ability to use military might, diplomatic skills, cultural and technological development and other capabilities to achieve that end. It all depends on how smart you can manage your resources, get along with your neighbors and apply your people’s capabilities.
Civilization IV sports a brand new graphics engine that renders the landscape and what’s going on in 3D. Along with that, gameplay has been streamlined, and the interface has been simplified to help appeal to action game and real time strategy game enthusiasts.
A flexible tech tree offers you more strategic choices to help uniquely develop your civilizations, and civilizations can grow larger than before. Multiplayer capabilities include LAN, Internet and Play-by-email (PBEM) options. Multiplayer capabilities are cross-platform.
Other new features include civics options, seven religions that can be unlocked through research, “Great People” points, promotions that emphasize specific unit traits and more.
System requirements call for Mac OS X v10.3.9 or later; G5/1.8GHz or faster (Intel included, it runs as a Universal Binary); 512MB RAM; 3.5GB hard disk space, DVD drive, 64MB VRAM and one of the following graphics systems: Nvidia GeForce 5200, 6600, 6800 or 7800; ATI Radeon 9600, 9650, 9700, 9800, X600, X800, X850 or X1600.