My ideas:
2 guesses:
either ascendancy is ascendancy.zip meannig you have to unpack it first, although not sure if your os opens zip as normal dirs or opens a wizard to unpack.
if this is the case, unzip it ofc.
other thing is that dosbox is a dos emulator (
), and ascendancy is too long a filename for dos, so:
after having started dosbox and having c mounted to your c:\dosbox\cdrive, type this in:
c:
cd ascend
cd ascend~1
setsound (follow program guides)
ascend
ascend~1 is abit of a hassle to write so i suggest copying the files from c:\dosbox\cdrive\ascend\ascendancy to c:\dosbox\cdrive\ascend.