• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I got the same Problems with Win7 64Bit. One thing that fixed it for me was starting the Game with Administrator Rights. It does still crash from time to time but least i can play around 1-2 Hours in a Row till it crashes again. And hooray for Autosaves then ;)
 
With Win7, try the following:

1/ install in c:\games\rome, not under c:\program files\...
2/ disable UAC
3/ run game as admin
4/ disable desktop composition
 
If you right-click on the game icon there's an option to disable desktop composition when you run it. If you Google "disable UAC" and Windows 7, you'll get instructions on that.