If you can reach the main menu before it crashes, ensure UI Scaling is set to 100%. Values above this are known crash triggers.

If the crash is caused by an unmapped resolution or graphical setting conflict introduced by a recent monitor or Windows update, resetting your preferences will fix it.

The game will attempt to play the file, fail silently (or quickly), and move directly to the main menu, skipping the renderer handshake that was causing the freeze.

For Windows 10 and 11 users, certain "optimizations" can ironically cause crashes.

Try running the .exe directly from the install folder (usually steamapps/common/Total War THREE KINGDOMS/bin/3k.exe ).