Highest Diplomatic Screen Quality on Mac is "Medium?"

[Packherd]

I haven't seen this referenced specifically yet, so I'll ask. Does anyone know why I can't increase the quality of the Diplomatic Screen animations beyond "medium?"

[Jaybe]

I strongly suspect that your video card is too weak to do better. If vid capabilities are not up to the task, it can result in the game crashing on you (you probably don't want that).

It has happened to me with a strong vid card and a huge map. Caused me to make autosaves every turn so I don't lose so much if it recurs.

--
Just noted you said "on Mac;" I was referring to windows though it still applies. Unless you have a desktop (not iMac), it is unlikely you will be able to upgrade conveniently.

[MxM]

It could be that there are no DX11 cards on Macs. Even on PC, "high" with good DX10 card, such as GTX260 does not work together with in-game AA. Honestly, I have not notice the difference between high and medium. You probably will be able to see it if it is side by side, but just from my memory it is the same.

[Packherd]

Oh gosh, I should hope there's a difference between "medium" and "high," because medium for me looks like flipbook animation of Madame Tussaud sculptures.

The other graphics aren't much better.

The video card in my desktop Mac is an NVIDIA GeForce 9400. Am I misremembering this, or was there not some issue with NVIDIA products working uncooperatively with Civ4, once upon a time?

[Wiglaf]

The GeForce 9400 MORE LIKE THE PEEFORCE 9400. The card has worked uncooperatively with every game ever released because it is terrible.

[Asher]

It could be that there are no DX11 cards on Macs. Even on PC, "high" with good DX10 card, such as GTX260 does not work together with in-game AA. Honestly, I have not notice the difference between high and medium. You probably will be able to see it if it is side by side, but just from my memory it is the same.

I'm pretty sure it's because higher than medium diplomatic screens were heavily dependent on a DirectCompute program to do some kind of texture decompression (which is what sites like AnandTech use to benchmark DirectCompute performance). There's a counterpart to DirectCompute that can function on Mac, OpenCL -- but I'd imagine it was a lot of work to change so they didn't get around to it.