I can reproduce this. I run it under debugger and strace and nothing. But now I tracked it.

When user press button "Start with empty board", it starts generating new board, which takes some 15 seconds without any visibility. So user press also 'Start'-button which then crashes because there are no scenario chosen.

So there are two issues:
A) Start button crashes if no scenario selected:
*Fixed and reported to the upstream: http://developer.berlios.de/bugs/?fu...&group_id=2929

B) Starting empty map should not take so much, or it must be indicated, or dangerous buttons must be disabled.
*"Start with empty board"/"Start with random village" - should look button, not text.
*Why it takes so much time? (src/lincity/init_game.cpp:159)
*Pressing 'start' is not fatal anymore.