Democracy 3 won't start

Bought it on Steam, initially it started up and I managed to click on “new game” before it crashed. Since then the game will not start at all. I click on “play” in Steam, and after the “initializing game…” window, nothing happens at all. I have tried reinstalling and restarting, installing direct x, changing prefs.ini, etc, to no avail.

I have a Win 8 PC, specs should be well good enough, resolution 1920x1080

Debug file just says:

[10:28:9:492]- ----DEBUG FILE----
[10:28:9:492]- Windows 7 detected
[10:28:9:492]- Command Line: “C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Democracy 3\Democracy3.exe”
[10:28:9:492]- Command Line argument:[]
[10:28:9:493]- Desktop resolution is 1920 x 1080
[10:28:9:497]- Initialising Sound Engine
[10:28:9:497]- Writing default options