[Wine] Unable to start Empire: Total War

[Deleon]

Hmm I have the same issue as you originally had: it just says it's starting but then nothing happens (for me it closes the wow status pop-up). 
I checked the console and it resulted in the following errors:

$ wine Empire.exe
err:module:find_forwarded_export function not found for forward 'd3dx8.D3DXGetImageInfoFromFileInMemory' used by L"C:\\windows\\system32\\d3dx9_36.dll". If you are using builtin L"d3dx9_36.dll", try using the native one instead.
err:module:find_forwarded_export function not found for forward 'd3dx9_36.D3DXGetImageInfoFromFileInMemory' used by L"C:\\windows\\system32\\d3dx9_40.dll". If you are using builtin L"d3dx9_40.dll", try using the native one instead.

I have yet to search the forums for this error, but at least it's better than no errors :)
I'm not running off the daily though, using a precompiled one from xubuntu.