original civ 3 was working fine. just purchased crusader. steam downloaded content. hangs in loading screen (after hitting green play button).

checked some posts. uninstalled game about 5 times now. validated game (settings [next to green play button]->validate files) always says there is "1 file fail to validate and will be reacquired", which nevert seems to happen. never happens. cleared steam cache according to another post. no effect. turned off antivirus. no effect. moved from installing on e: drive (with all my other games) to c: drive. no effect. removed game and every freaking instance of every gal civ 3 file I could find anywhere. no effect after rinsing and repeating a few more times. Come on Stardock, this should not be so hard. Oh yes, reinstalled vs c++ runtime. no effect. Just updated my video driver 2 weeks ago. I seriously doubt that's it.

*sigh*

please advise.