I tinkered around with Cultures on my older PCs a little bit and found out, that it won't run on XP or older. The problem is the winmm.dll file. Deleting it will make the game run, but the Redbook Audio, eg. the game's music won't run.

If you want that to work you can use the winmm.dll from another game that uses Redbook Audio. I used Alien Nations (Die Völker).

I would post the dll if I was allowed to post links, but I am sure you can also find a version that works on xp with google.