The loading bar crept forward. Sprites loaded. Flags rendered. Then—the main menu. The haunting piano of the vanilla soundtrack replaced by a custom synthwave track about neoliberal collapse. It worked.
In 2021, Millennium Dawn was heavily reliant on specific assets and map data. This crash was almost always caused by a , usually triggered by an automatic Steam update.
Try reducing your graphics settings to see if it resolves the crash issue. You can do this by: