This is everything that I wished Civ 5 was as a game. It seems to be amazingly well thought out and deep, and instead of poor insensitive characters based on historical leaders of Earths past, we get to learn the ins and outs of some eight fantasy universe factions stuck on some alien planet. And I'll say again; it indeed seems to be really well thought out and entertaining. It's the kind of game you can play off and on for probably years to kill spare time, and further master and challenge yourself with; the charm of a great strategy "board/card game" no doubt.
However, I'm inclined to believe the Mac port of this is a bit of a mess.
First of all, be warned that you will have to install a nearly 1GB program (mono framework) in addition to the game to run it's port from Windows. There is NO WARNING of that little (BIG) install comes with your purchase. So of course I freaked out when I was asked to install it; surprise!
Secondly, on my completely maxed out mid 2014 Macbook (15", Nvidia GeForce GT 750M 2GB, 16GB RAM, 1TB SSD), it will not exceed 20-27 FPS (with screen tearing.) With V-Sync on it's much, much worse... so much so the water/smoke animations on the map visibly stutter as it slows down to an average 10-12 FPS. Only turning V-Sync off will get me back up to 20-27 FPS (fine for a game like this I guess), but then there is that terrible ripping of the screen whenever I scroll the map or massive stutter when a battle animation commences. BROKE.
Screen resolutions are also completely broken on my Macbook. I can play fullscreen fine at 1680x1050, but if I go to window mode in order to Tab over to Safari in order to google information on stuff I'm confused/learning about (you can't Tab out of game in fullscreen unlike others), the bottom of the window grows beyond where the action menus appear. You can't resize the window in window mode. At 1440x900 it's window is way too small, and menu buttons become way to big and are absolute screen real-estate hogs in both fullscreen and windowed mode. Ugh... BROKE.
Also, it crashes, and it crashes quite often. Thankfully it auto-saves after every turn, but still... BROKE.
Another gripe is a lack of apparent hotkeys for certain moves, something that Civ 5 has, so why not this? My biggest gripe concerning hotkeys is something as simple as basic movement, something that is a bit of a challenge on an Apple Trackpad that we have to deal with on a Macbook. I like how in Civ 5 I can hit M, and then the radius of movement options are highlighted and I just click where I want to go. On an Apple Trackpad with "right click only" options to move, I have to click and hold down two fingers for the Mac's right click, slide those fingers obnoxiously across the trackpad to initiate movement intentions, and then slip in my left finger to replace one of my dual click right hand fingers to actually move with desired intent. Every other game I play on a Macbook, I can reassign a right click option with something like control, or option, etc. This is mandatory for Mac users IMO... even ones on a Magic Mouse. It's the caveat of using a Mac, this shouldn't be old news at this point. ASSIGNABLE HOTKEYS. Especially for something as simple as a TURNED BASED map movement in a 4x game.
Concerning a game with so many "in game fantasy mechanics" to relsish in, learn about, and master, it's a shame that it's "real world physical input/output mechanics" are somewhat broken on a Mac platform. A real shame, because with a 4x type game such as this, there are SO FEW user input mechanics that can be broken in the first place. If I can play action games such as Tomb Raider, WOW, Borderlands, Bioshock on an Apple trackpad; why the hell is simply moving up or down, left or right on a hexidonal sector such a pain in my balls with this TURN BASED game? REALLY????
Here's hoping to many, many patches in the near future. I'm guessing this game's potential is worth continued support for at least the next couple years. It's such a great set-up for being a clear winner in it's category, if not for the technical flaws... ugh.
FIx it!