I've run into an issue loading advanced games (300+ turns in, 50+ hours invested) playing Intrigue expansion.

I'm playing the largest map size on a machine well below the recommended RAM but that's never caused load failures. Extreme wait times sure, but not crashes. Attempting to load my most recent saves causes 10-15 minute loading time followed by the game crashing to desktop. The odd thing is that the last save was made by loading the second-to last save, which loaded normally. Now that previously-working save won't load. I CAN load a new game with the same settings and a save of the current game at about 10 hours in. I have a few intermediate saves I'm not willing to risk loading until I can hopefully figure out what's gone wrong with the latest two - I'd prefer not to corrupt those saves as well.

In both cases attempting to load those saves results in a corrupted game file, as confirmed by repeated checking of the game files with Steam validation.

Any ideas what might be going on?