BAT 2.1 - Game crashes after/while loading a later savegame

Newer saves of my most recent games are not loaded. I hear the usual sounds one hears at the beginning of a round when the loading bar is full, but then the game crashes to desktop without displaying any graphical component of the main interface (world map etc.) first.

An "unusual" property of the game is that many players (me included) spawned colonies. Also there are many continents.

The problem did not occur while playing the game, it came up only when loading one of the more recent savegames. I have the last working savegame and some ten non-working ones. I cannot attach them, because they are bigger than 1MB per save.

If you need more information or some of the files, please let me know.

Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH
Application Name: Civ4BeyondSword.exe
Application Version: 3.1.9.0
Application Timestamp: 4a0c27e6
Fault Module Name: Civ4BeyondSword.exe
Fault Module Version: 3.1.9.0
Fault Module Timestamp: 4a0c27e6
Exception Code: c0000005
Exception Offset: 005437f7
OS Version: 6.1.7600.2.0.0.256.48
Locale ID: 1031
Additional Information 1: 8485
Additional Information 2: 84853502223d8164a31468861a7c3d71
Additional Information 3: a4ea
Additional Information 4: a4eacf9d27e5ee8cb3a70ac0035eb8ab

Keep up the good work!