Did a pretty exhaustive search for this and didn't find anything, so here comes my problem:

Civ 4 launches and loads fine, and I can get to the first turn, but as soon as I end that turn, the game freezes and doesn't come back for probably 10-15 minutes. I can hear the CPU fan kicking into high gear during most of that time.

P4 2.6 GHz, 1 GB RAM, XP SP2, NVIDIA something-or-other from 2003, DirectX 9.0c 4.09.0000.0904 - I do not believe that horsepower is a problem.

The game did this under both the 1.61 and 1.74 patches.

Any suggestions?

welcome to CFC :band:
does it go on after the 10-15 minutes?

Thanks! :)

Yes, it unlocks after that time.

I've done a complete format/reinstall of XP and reinstalled Civ 4 - same thing.