http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=30144
--- Comment #2 from Andrew Eikum aeikum@codeweavers.com 2012-03-12 13:06:02 CDT --- Indeed, this is a known application bug. See this review, for example:
========== Finally, AOM2 suffered from a horrible bug (on my 64-bit Vista system) where almost all dialogue lines are cut-off halfway through. I had to rely on the subtitles for 99% of the game. The recent patch available from the City Interactive website made no difference to this at all. http://www.gameboomers.com/reviews/Aa/AOM2/AOM2.htm ==========
Since it only occurred for me once on my Windows installation, we might be able to tweak Wine's behavior to trigger the bug less often, at least.