I'll just repost my message from the other threads I responded to that have this similar problem:
I found a fix... the problem is the video files in game (namely the intro video and possibly the wonder of the world videos).
Go to your file browser where you installed the game. I.e.: D:\games\call to power 2\ctp2_data\default\videos ... (not sure what the default directory as I installed to a custom directory)
In there you will see a bunch of video files... cut those and paste them into a temp folder (dont delete them). Now launch the game.. it should work now (it does for me).
I tried re-installing the wonder of the world videos, but after I build them and the video tries to load, the game crashes... so just remove the videos and when the game tries to find the videos and can't find it, it ignores it and just continues to let you play. Works great for me.
You can always view the video files in windows media player outside of the game if you want to see them.
Hope it helps.