I recently updated Twilight of the Arnor to patch 2.03 and tried to start a new game.  After going through the setup screens, the game shut down as soon as it should have shown the map.  I tried changing resolution, anti-aliasing, and different video drivers with no luck.  I'm running on Vista 64 bit. 

I tried later on the same computer logged in as another user, and it worked fine.  So, I went back to the original login and tried the same video setting, still with no luck.  Then I tried setting everything the same (including the race and all the game choices, not just video settings), and the game worked without crashing.  Basically, playing as the Thalans crashed when the map first appeared, and playing as the Yor worked ok.  I have no mods loaded; just straight Twilight of the Arnor, with patch 2.03.

The next thing I tried was playing as the Yor against the Thalans -- that worked ok too (but, when you start the game, you don't see the other players ships.  I didn't play long enough to see them).  Then, I tried playing as the Thalans, but set the ship appearance to be the Yor -- that game worked ok too. 

So, it looks like using the Thalan appearance for ships causes the game to crash on startup.