well to be fair to all the reviewers, most systems were not having any CTD or instability issues with v1.00
I know I wasn't, and I'm on a laptop with a budget card and only the recommended RAM. The only major problem with the retail version was taht it would lag near the end of the game on every system, but for most systems, only on large or huge maps.
These later updates have fixed that aspect slightly, although they seem to have on the whole, merely made a formerly annoying, yet stable game, into an even more annoying, unstable game.
So the reviewers were completely correct in their ratings, it is the best civ GAME to come out, it has kept me addicted to it despite these performance issues, and they had not idea that the patches would damage such a nice game.
and to that end:
Hark, does it help you to know exactly what message I get from my system when Civ4 CTDs on me when I had never gotten a CTD before?
I would expect that might help you locate exactly what v1.52 does that the others didn't.