Today is the first time that I also experienced the same issue like described here.
I was playing ranked 2vs2 game (about 30 minutes long). At some point of time the game just disappeared. No error, no information - just return to the Steam and ready to start AoE III DE again.
I have played 200h in the game so far and haven’t seen this issue before. The only change that I made recently to my laptop was graphic drivers update a few weeks ago.
So, I’m pretty confident that the issue was not caused by my laptop. Unfortunately I don’t have any more valuable information - I dont’t have recorded game.
My laptop:
Platform: Steam, Windows 10
Graphic card: GeForce GTX 1050,
CPU: Intel Core i5-7300HQ
RAM: 16GB
If there are any special traces that can be manually enabled during the game to help troubleshooting, please let me know. I can try to gather more data if crash occurs again.