Road to Independence crashing / freezing

[Jasan Quinn]

Every time I try to play Episode III of the Road to Independence, it stalls on the loading screen; the bar never progresses beyond around 10% full no matter how long I wait. When I CTRL+ALT+DEL to get task manager, it lists Empire as a non-responsive program.

Any ideas of patches or workarounds, because I would like to be able to play the Grand Campaign as the U.S.