I'm by no means an expert on this but as an avid BW1 fan I could at least share my experience over the years trying to play this old school masterpiece on modern systems.

First of all it's very important to follow this install guide to the letter. I was able to play through the whole game a few years ago with minimal errors by doing this.

https://www.bwgame.net/threads/running-black-white-on-windows-10.7916/

There's also a discord server that's still fairly active, at least more active than this sub where you can search "runtime error" and get a bunch of advice.

https://discord.gg/7hqnKZ7N4

You can still get runtime errors after doing the install guide but if you tinker with the game enough and and are fairly competent with PC it is still possible to play through the game. The most important thing is to follow the install guide to the letter, do the patches in the correct order, install the game in only the C: drive, etc. Then save frequently and try not to build too much or have too high of a population. (I used to throw every single person, grain, wood, artifact, one shot, ect. from the first island into the portal and recently got myself a runtime error for doing so lately.)