Yep, make sure you're updated to the current beta if you're going to use them. There's no point running a beta if it's not the very latest. This particular issue was fixed in 1.3b2.

Hopefully that issue hasn't been reintroduced, since the final is due tomorrow... at any rate, you should be able to temporarily solve the issue by setting your regional settings in control panel to US English.

Unfortunately it did not work. Most of my settings are in US English already - but I changed everything I could find to US English; did a restart. No luck. Which exact settings are we talking about?
Getting a bit frustrated. Any other suggestions? Should I report a bug report somewhere?

Thanks Kryo. (Sorry about the double post - I thought something went wrong and then Icould not delete my post)
Indeed I do use the European style of numbers, did not try to switch that one back since it did not seem very relevant. As you may know in particular the date styles are different - most Europenas prefer to have the day before the month - therefore I always switch that and en passant also switch the numbers - but that is not major.
[Also even though I did notice the Stardock logo I just thought you were a helpful gamer - so the bit about hte bugreport was a bit silly then.]
(So this is what beta testing is all about huh?