Civilization VII is out for those who’ve splashed out on the Deluxe or Founders Editions of the game, and that means it’s ready to play for Mac owners. But how does the Mac cope with the game’s shiny new graphics?
I’ve been putting Civilization VII through its paces on an M1 MacBook Pro, a machine that just about meets the game’s minimum requirements, so if it plays smoothly on that, it should be good for pretty much any Mac based on Apple Silicon.
Here’s what I’ve found from my first couple of hours of gameplay. Of course, the real benchmark for Civilization VII performance is when you’re 400 turns in on a fully loaded map, so I’ll keep updating this article as my game progresses.
Civilization VII System Requirements For Mac
Just as a reminder, here are the system requirements for Civilization VII on Mac.
The minimum requirements are:
- M1 8-Core processor
- 8GB RAM
- M1 graphics
- 25GB storage space
The recommended requirements are:
- M2 Pro 10-core processor
- 16GB of RAM
- M2 Pro graphics
- 25GB of storage
The MacBook Pro I’ve tested the game with has the following specs:
- M1 Pro 10-core processor
- 16GB of RAM
- M1 Pro graphics
The MacBook Pro I’m testing with is connected to an external 4K display, running at full resolution (2,560 x 1,400). I’m running on the game’s “high” graphical settings.
Civilization VII On Mac: Performance
The good news is that the Civilization VII is running super smoothly on my M1 MacBook Pro. My heart sunk when the game initially crashed during the opening cinematic sequence, but that appears to have been a random blip. After that, the game has run flawlessly.
I will again preface these comments with the fact that I’m only a couple of hours and 50 turns in, and the game will place greater demands on the system as it progresses. But so far, everything has been very slick – much smoother than Civilization VI was on the same hardware, in fact. (Presumably because this new game is optimized for M1 hardware, whereas Civ VI was initially created for Intel-based hardware).
Scrolling across the map is flawlessly slick. There’s no stutter or dropped frames as you sweep across the landscape, nor is there any lost details in any of the new battle animations when you enter combat.
Loading a saved game is much quicker than it was with Civilization VI, where you could often find yourself waiting 30 seconds or more for the game to open. In my tests, it took around 13 seconds for the game to load.
I have the brilliant iStat Menus running to measure the ongoing performance of various components on my MacBook. Its graphs reveal that while CPU load definitely increased during my Civ VII sessions, it didn’t rise above 40% utilization. Memory “pressure” didn’t exceed 65%.
The real demand was, unsurprisingly, on the GPU cores, which were being pushed to the near maximum when the game was running. It will be interesting to see if this becomes a bottleneck as the game progresses.
The increased GPU activity definitely put a strain on the MacBook Pro. It’s very rare indeed for the MacBook’s fans to kick in at all, but they did during my Civilization VII sessions, albeit I only noticed this when looking at the stats. They were still whisper quiet, rotating at around 1,500rpm.
It will likely hammer battery life if you try and play unplugged too. Total power consumption peaked at around 60W during gameplay, whereas it normally toils at between 15-20W.
This article will be updated as my game progresses, but for the time being, the signs are very encouraging indeed if you plan to play Civilization VII on Mac.
