http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4487
--- Comment #36 from Toni Spets toni.spets@iki.fi 2013-08-25 00:53:53 CDT --- The reason why it 'supports' multicore is that it has single CPU affinity hack set in the exe with some tool (don't know if it has any effect on Wine though) which name I don't remember *and* it includes cnc-ddraw.
If the embedded single CPU affinity hack does not work on Wine and cnc-ddraw (as ddraw.dll) is definitely not loaded by default you get the same results of locking up. Adding ddraw.dll to overrides solves the issue because it does multiple different things to avoid that including setting the affinity.