Retrospect
Warlord
I'm in the renaissance era and suddenly all crashes stopped, even that nasty crash-on-load. I've played a few games in the raw and these are my observations:
1) The game is the most unstable in classical-medieval times, mostly in classical. In later eras all bugs suddenly go away so I think it's something to do with events/units/abilties of that time or maybe with revolutions components being affected by something from medieval times.
Also I've noticed that switching Combat Effects off makes the game much more stable (just the checkbox which gives you "battlefield" on the tile; the Influence should be left on it doesn't make a huge impact on the cpu, but I believe battlefields appearing and disappearing may make a huge hit on your processor).
2) Salt. Yeah, it's a problem. Since the salt appears only in desert some maps basically lack it. I'd say, we need some "patched" mapscript which checks all resources avaliable and if there's less than 2-3 deposits of salt it replaces some common resources with it. Also I don't see why it should be in desert only: make more spawning possibilities. Because glassware is needed, and I usually end with a single salt in one continent and a single stone resource on another. Which makes no sense. Maybe add more variety to possibility to make glassware.
Any CTD's that I get are usually (if not always) in the classical/medieval period. In the previous version I just assumed it was due to Barb Civs turning into full Civs or minor Civs being destroyed. But yes I have to agree that the game is at its most unstable during this time.
As for salt, it does spawn on plains also. However on the mapscript I use (RandomMapScript) there 'seems' to be less plains generated in the ROM version. So as a result there isn't much room for salt to appear. After saying that I have had games where there has been no salt/only one salt/ five, six and more salt
