I had the exact same problem.  Then I remembered that I haven't defragged my C drive in forever so I did.  Now it works great!  I would recommend trying that.  It worked for me.

deleted.

It is strange that Stardock forgot this point of the Gamers' bill of Rights: Don't need to connect to Internet for playing SP.

sigh

clearly, people are failing to read what im writing. or im failing to communicate. so let me try again.

i launch the game

i pick "single player" from the menu.

i click "tournament"

i click "new"

i pick a demigod.

i click "normal"

i see a scoreboard. i click "continue"

i get the loading screen, with the animated... whatever that thing is supposed to be that looks like a tramp stamp.

i sit and look at that for 20 minutes. (yes, 20 minutes. and no, i didnt actually sit and watch it the whole time. just to pre-emptively counter the pedantry i know is going to follow.)

i get bored.

i alt-F4.

i come here and bitch.

the end.

no doubt. if that turns out to be the case, im going to ask them to put their money where their mouth is in the form of a refund.

I would of probably rather my game not load then just lag terribly, makes me think my computer is totally screwed up.

sigh id rather have the beta client back. at least THAT actually worked. and didnt pretend to have a lame excuse for a single-player game. whatever happened to campaigns anyway? first sins with no campaign, now this...

Have you tried skirmish? If that fails to work then post your system specs.

skirmish works. takes a loooong time to load, like 3-5 minutes, but it works. nothing like the 20 seconds launching a custom game with AI (ie, a skirmish) took in the beta.

and no, no logging in or creating accounts for any of the single player features. so server problems dont really explain why it wont start.