OK. I got the factions to work without crashing but...

[Seign Thelas]

Now that I have that working, if I click start campaign it loops back to the single player menu. How can I fix it?

[Makanyane]

Have you got -show_err on your shortcut?

If you have it should give you a message when you exit the game after returning to the menu.

To apply right click your desktop shortcut select 'properties' and type
space-show_err
after quotes at end of target line so it ends up like

".....Rome - Total War\RomeTW-BI.exe" -show_err

[Seign Thelas]

It says Expected faction - must add at least two factions to the world.

What that means is beyond me.

[Makanyane]

It means you've got an error in descr_strat before the end of the second factions listing. When the game hits an error in descr_strat it stops reading everything below that point in the text file - so it thinks you haven't got two factions! (did the show err message give a line number before the 'expected faction'? - if so look there)

A number of mistakes will do this - common one is trying to use a 1.2 descr_strat that has the 'win conditions' section below the playable factions for a 1.3 or above patch (as game no longer recognises that section). Lots of other errors can do it just having one odd character at beginning of line or a comment that lost its ';' will do it.

If you can't spot it upload your descr_strat somewhere e.g.
http://www.megaupload.com/
and post the link here so we can have a look.

[Seign Thelas]

Okay, fixed the looping problem, now when I start a game, a turn in, in between turns there's a CTD.