I've put together a Wine wrapper for Civilization IV, allowing it to be played on Linux almost like a native game & with no Wine knowledge required.

Simply run the build script to create the wrapper. If the installer files are not alongside the wrapper build files then the path to them will need to be specified either by passing it as an argument to the build script with -respath="<path>" or by setting an environment variable named WINEWRAP_RESPATH containing it. You can change the path to build the wrapper in and the name of the wrapper directory with the -buildpath= and -dirname= arguments. The build path can also be set with the WINEWRAP_BUILDPATH environment variable.

The output will be a directory containing the game set up within a preconfigured Wine prefix, along with its own copy of Wine, extracted game icons, documentation, and start script(s). From there simply run the start script to play. The start script also includes options for creating a shortcut, configuring the wrapper etc.

(to uninstall simply delete the game directory and any shortcuts you created, and the game's user data directory in ~/.local/share if you don't want to keep your saves & settings)

User data is stored under ~/.local/share/civ4complete

Full details are in the readme.txt and release notes. Here is the download link:

civ4_wine.tar.xz
(345.4 kB, SHA256: fab8cb294b5d390ad02a8b834ba317397211acbe6db39d62f7fd174fe0bf149c)

Last updated 2021/07/11

The wrapper uses Wine 6.0. Wine and Winetricks will be downloaded automatically if not present; to avoid redownloading for other scripts the downloaded Wine package will be stored in ~/.cache/winewrap

In addition to Wine and Winetricks, the msxml3 redistributable will also be downloaded. This will be stored in ~/.cache/wine/msxml3 to save having to redownload it if it's needed again for something else.

Due to the size of this game I haven't been able to give it anywhere near as much testing as I would like to but so far it's been almost perfect for me, and others appear to have had good results with running this game in Wine as well. However if anyone runs into any problems then post in this thread, Adamhm's Linux Wine Wrappers - News, FAQ &amp; Discussion and/or The "Judas&trade; does this run in Wine" thread v1.173.

Multiplayer has not been tested and may or may not work.

For more of my Linux Wine wrappers check out post 3 in this thread: Adamhm's Linux Wine Wrappers - News, FAQ &amp; Discussion

Hopefully 2K will bring Civilization V here too along with its official Linux version :)

As nice as this is, due the quirk of Civ IV being a large amount SQL, it runs surprisingly well in Wine with no modification.

It *does* require some configuration in Wine or you'll run into issues as noted in my report. Also my wrapper does a little more than merely get it running :)

I need to install Civilization IV Complete on Ubuntu. I am a total newbie and I am looking for something very easy. Preferably a PlayOnLinux script. Unfortunately, PlayOnLinux has scripts only for CD and Steam versions of CIV, not GOG. Please help!

As I said, I am a newbie and I don't understand the instructions contained in the readme file of the script above. The script above requires that some other utilities are installed first and I just don't understand... So I need something easier.

Thanks!

It's easy :) Open the software manager, then search for & install innoextract, icoutils and wine from there if they aren't already installed. You can also install them from the terminal instead with the command:

sudo apt-get install innoextract icoutils wine

Next, extract the civ4_wine.tar.xz archive and place the GOG installer files alongside the files from the archive, then run the civ4_wine.sh script. I'd strongly recommend using the terminal to do this so you can see any error messages that pop up if there are any problems. There should be an option in the file manager to open a terminal in the current directory (a menu option, or a button or so); you can then run it like this:

./civ4_wine.sh

When it's finished, there will be a directory named "Civilization IV Complete". Move it to whereever you want it "installed" to if it isn't there already, and to play the game, create shortcuts etc. you can run the start scripts & use the menu (you can run the "make-civ4-shortcuts.sh" script in the support directory to create shortcuts for all of them in one go).

@adamhm Thanks so much for this wrapper. It works like a charm!

I had some problems with the installation (using the updated wrapper) to Ubuntu 18.04.
I resolved the issues by installing the packages unrar and cabextract (plus those mentioned in the readme file), then everything went smoothly.
So I recommend to run this command before the installation:

sudo apt install innoextract icoutils wine unrar cabextract

Your wrappers have been very useful and have been using them as a basis for building one of the Twitch Prime version of Civ4 Complete.
There are a few issues with non-english systems I noticed:

1. init_prefix creates folders "My Documents" etc., but wine localizes these folder names, so on non-english locales it still creates links to the directories in $HOME. This can be overcome by setting LANG=C in init_prefix.

2. Civilization 4 itself uses the localized directory names independently of LANG and LC_ALL,
you can however call Civ4 with the argument "/ALTROOT=C:\something" to change its save data directory.

Thanks for bringing this to my attention; I had neglected to consider how other locales would affect my wrappers. I've investigated & got a fix more or less ready - I'll try to make that available as soon as I can :) Just need to do some more thorough testing first.

All of my wrappers have now been updated with fixes for this & neither of these issues should be a problem any more :)

Bump!

Thank you so much for your help! :)

Hi Adam, thanks for your work on the wrapper! It works great on the Fedora 29 laptop I have with Nvidia GTX 1060 graphics running the proprietary drivers. However I'v got issues on a Fedora 28 Cherry Trail device - GPD WIN with the built-in Intel HD video. The game shows the Windows-style loading dialog, then changes the cursor but then the screen turns black when the full-screen mode kicks in. I can't do anything from this point apart from rebooting. Tried waiting on the screen for a few minutes but that didn't help. Would appreciate any advice.

Issues like that happen with various games from time to time on my system with Intel graphics. Seems to be driver issues :/

Try starting it in a virtual desktop using the "desktop=d" argument and/or setting LIBGL_DRI3_DISABLE=1 when starting the game and see if that helps.

(Also when a game freezes but keeps stealing focus you can try quitting with alt+F4, or use a terminal session to kill the game with "./start.sh kill". Or set a key combination for xkill then just press that combo + click to terminate - I'd still recommend using the start script's kill option if you do this though to make sure that the wineserver is stopped).

Would you please put this wrap somewhere else other than dropbox? I've tried using dropbox in Firefox and Chrome and I've tried registering too, I've also tried disabling ad blocker. When I click on the file, it just shows me the text (except for one which it says it can't show me) in a form that does not allow copy/paste. This link https://www.dropbox.com/s/i61hftdf02crwsv/civ4_wine.tar.xz?dl=0 does not work for me.

Or if there is another source than that drop box link, please tell me, I've read OP up and down and I'm struggling to understand how to make it work.