I had no issue installing the patch, but the EA Help advisor I spoke to could not tell if my game was updated to the latest patch, because the numbers didn't match. Took me about 25 minutes to download an unnecessary patch plus 5 more minutes to unzip and run the patch, wasted 1/2 hour of my weekend and 1/2 hour of the EA guy's workday. Maybe there's a reason the numbers don't match, but it seems wasteful to me.
Incidentally, I was able to get the game running again by restoring files from a backup drive. I'm doing reasonably well now, I'm just posting here in hopes that my experience will be of use to others. Issues seem to arise with TS3 that aren't fixed by trashing cache files or preferences, or even reinstalling the full game + expansions + stuff packs. But 5 minutes in Time Machine fixed the whole mess for me.
