Aight so when using Wine, AoW1 just instantly fails silently upon launch, no error message to see. When using proton it technically works - clicking randomly I launched the tutorial, judging by the sounds - but the screen is black all the time and shutting down alt-f4 it throws an error:
Exception EWin32Error in module VCL30.dpl at 00010E4F
Is that not sufficient these days? I might take another look; this is one of those games that I intend to keep running one way or another until I die.