updated eleental, deleted the save game folder, started a new game on my four continent map played on to turn 300
had killed one ai, ws working on extermination of second, (could have wiped out three others , but were same alignment(kingdoms), so treatied them and married two of them, and ws killing magnar(they had declared war on me over 50 turns before and was on another continent.
also noticed during play even with each city having a unit with 80 prestige stationed in it when I had 10 towns I was getting approx 10 pop per turn, BUT when I built my 11th town to grab a shard on an island even with the new town having a hero with 80 prestige and EACH of the other towns ALSO having a hero with 80 prestige, the pop growth for EACH town was 0.1 so for all 11 towns I was getting 1.1 pop per turn.
and also noticed that approx 10-15 turns before crash, the event sounds during tac combat stopped playing as in I could not hear them, but the background bird tweeting was still playing.
zip file created, added dxdiag and save games
harpo