I recently bought and installed EUII on my laptop. The game launches ok...the Paradox intro and historical context video (the one in the church) play fine. But when it's time to move on to the main menu, the game freezes and then I get a "Critical error!" message:

"--- Fatal error: could not initialize video!
---
Do you want to continue?"

With the classic Abort, Retry, Ignore options.
Ultimately leads to "runtime error" message on the eu2.exe file.
"abnormal program termination"

Seems odd a video error would occur after the intro video seems to work fine. Has anyone else run into this? I have Windows 10 64bit.

I've tried running with adjusted compatibility settings--different variations of "Run as administrator", "Disabled full screen", and between "Windows XP Service Pack 3" and "Windows Vista Service Pack 2". I've seen XP SP2 as a possible solution, but it's not an option on my computer. Is there a way to add it?

Really appreciate any insights.

Windows 10 and EU II and the story goes... a pain to run, I know.
I gave up and tried for the glory, instead, and runs ok under windows 10.

Gave up as well. At least EU III works on my machine.

You know, you're not wrong; such mess can piss someone off.

But try FTG. Way smoother than euII. Heck I'm in no way a "EU connoisseur" or a grand strat guy if that's a thing but I'm diggin' these games more and more and it's something special to dig them according to their release time or whatever. Happy gaming!

For whatever reason, the game seems to work fine for me on my desktop (980 gtx), but falls over dead on my laptop with integrated graphics with the same problem you describe above. I spent some time fiddling around with it this morning, and I think I might have a solution, but wanted some other folks to help test it out if possible.

This relies on a custom compatibility layer to be installed. Google for 'WineD3D For Windows' by Federico Dossena. Download the latest Pre-Vulkan build.

1) Make sure you have DirectPlay installed. Open Control Panel. Click on Programs. Click 'Turn Windows features on or off'. Go to Legacy Components. Make sure DirectPlay is checked.
2) Copy ddraw.dll, libwine.dll, & wine3d.dll from the download into your EU2 directory. This is normally "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG Galaxy\Games\Europa Universalis 2" if you installed through GOG Galaxy.
3) In the EU2 install directory, rename the 'avi' folder to 'aviold'. This disables the intro films, which seem to cause problems for whatever reason.

Start the game and hopefully it will fire up for you. You may experience a black screen during loading
for 15-30 seconds, but it should load to the title screen afterwards.

Didnt help :(