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Civilization IV Playable on Linux

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For a long time, if you wanted to play Civilization 4 on Linux your only option was to buy Cedega. This was because Wine was lacking DirectX 9 support. Now that Wine is up to the task, you can play Civilization 4 on Linux without purchasing Cedega. In this special jumbo-sized blog post, I will tell you how I set up Civilization 4 on Ubuntu 7.04 with wine-0.9.38, but it should work on any distribution. I have not tried this with the Warlords expansion pack. This guide is targeted at Linux users with some experience with the terminal and with Wine and winecfg. Click the read more link to continue.

1. Get the pieces together:

2. Start installing:

3. Install the patch:

4. Add the no-CD executable

5. Add the native DLLs

6. Reboot

7. Setting up winecfg

8. Run Civ4 for the first time

9. Edit the configuation file

You are done at last! Civilization IV should run with a simple wine Civilization4.exe command on the terminal when you are in the Civ4 directory.

There are a few minor issues, but the game is still perfectly playable.

Feel free to leave a comment if you have a question or problem.

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Archived Comments

Shoe99

I cannot seem to get past the install. The first install window says that it has detected I need to install DirectX. I click “Next >”, and then a DirectX installer window appears. I click “Cancel” on this window, and another window appears that asks if I want to cancel the setup. If I click on “Yes”, it takes me back to the first installation window which now says that nothing has been done, and offers only a “Finish” button. If I click on “No”, it just takes me back to the window that indicates I need to install DirectX, and the same DirectX install window appears. Am I missing something here? I am running wine 0.9.44 on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

ronin

The 1.61 patch also works fine on Cassandra (Linux Mint) you can also check this out at winehq http://appdb.winehq.org/appview.php?iVersionId=5254

I had problems getting the game started before i turned on my nvidia driver support (hint to others)

This is a good guide. I’m a newbie and still managed to get it working :)

btw. Haven’t noticed any graphical errors yet

Tom

ronin,
It is probably time I tired it again with the latest Wine and my new Nvidia card. Wine is improving very quickly.

Tom

eatmonjb

hi i did all the above and i get a shader loading error at load, can anyone help?

annunaki

Thank you for the tutorial. It did not work completely but it was the most accomplished to date.

I did however get it working after the black screen freeze.

I simply added the wineHQ repository to my debian source.list

I unistalled the old wine and all libwine files then installed the new updated 9.44 wine.

No folder .wine after install. This was fixed by running winecfg in terminal which created the proper files.

I then installed the civ4-1.61 patch on top of the 1.52 patch and applied the no-cd patch for 1.61.

The new wine created a link on my desktop to use.

And it’s working like a charm.

Thanks again.

dave

So…. When will wine support DX10?
If it will, it will support more games than winXP.. hehehehe…

Jens

Hmm, I don’t have that INI file …

Tom

Jens,
The INI file is created by the game the first time it is run.

manull

Hi,

Thank you for this guide…
But i have a problem. Chause the “My Games” folder doesn’t exist, the game will not start.
Can I chreate this folder manually? If I do so, how does wine realize that this folder is the Windows My Games folder?

acrididae

I’m new at trying to get games to run in Linux. Where does one go to get a cracked executable? Is it really necessary if I have the actual installation disks?

Angus

I’m having the exact same problem as Shoe99 under Gutsy with Wine 0.9.51. Any solution?

BobBobbo

@shoe99

I was having the “wizard interrupted” message too. I tried putting the d3dx9_26.dll in system32 and it worked great!!
hth
b. bobbo

Hippie Dream

Thanks for the tutorials. It really helped. However, I do have two issues that maybe someone might be able to help me with. First, I can see trees! They are there and i can chop them down but I can see them which is fairly tedious. Second, the game only gives me ten turns when I play a regular game. I can turn off a time victory in the the custom game but not just in regular play. Any ideas?

Veon

Thanx, mate! Love your blog. Haven’t tried this out yet, but I will soon :-)

Alex

Thanks mate I have it running with wine 1.1.30 nearly perfect but cant find any way to get any sound?

any ideas would be fantastic cheers

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