Getting a crash in the middle of a battle is usually your graphic card crying that it's had to work too hard and long without a break. Try lowering the graphic settings (vegetation first) and see if things improve. I don't know what card you have but RTW is an old engine and does not make the most of the more recent cards.
Some of the historic battles still don't work. We tried to put 'Do Not Play' on the ones that did not work but some changes to the units have caused others, like Paralus that did work nto no longer work.
The blank pictures on the unit cards of units and buildings (the picture does not show but all the text does) is a known bug with RTW. You can usually click on another settlement and see if the images appear there - if they do you can go back and look at the original unit or building and the image is shown. If that's not the case they usually re-appear after a turn or two.