The game plays the cutscene, and then just goes back to the Galaxy client. If I hit escape, thats all I get.

Try this:

The issue I had at the start was that the game would state "DirectDraw error"...Running in compatibility mode did not fix this, running as admin did not fix this--nothing worked.

It turns out that in Windows 7, the DirectDraw freaks out a bit, and some great people figured out the cure.

You can read about other tech issues here at these forums: http://swgb.heavengames.com/cgi-bin/forums/index.cgi

But the solution is actually here on the Age of Kings Heaven website--a program you can DL, then target your Galaxy folder, then *poof*, you've got a fixed DirectDraw error and can play the game. It's wonderful.

http://aok.heavengames.com/blacksmith/showfile.php?fileid=11108

Love this, love this...nostalgia fix taken care of. Hope this helps!

This still doesn't work for me. explain what you mean by "target your Galaxy folder."