Crashes and running out of memory should probably be separate issues.  You can always open your task manager and see how close you're getting to using it all up though in any event...

Unfortunately 8GB is sort of the new currency these days, 4-6GB just has trouble cutting it...

Of note, Stardock did insert a setting that would keep you from starting a galaxy that is outright too big for your memory - unsure how good it is at the edges (ie as you get built up and use more memory - where their prediction/cut-off is)...

https://forums.galciv3.com/464513/page/1/

Honestly though - I would highly recommend just springing for some more memory, IMHO.

cheers

This is a very valid point, if it is indeed memory constraints that are leading to crashes.

-tid242

out of curiosity whats the op's graphics card?

Yesterday I had a battle hangup problem (tried watching several battles in the same turn, first worked fine, but the second one didn't come up). But that is known problem. However, I was forced to kill the game in the task manager and to my surprise I saw that the game used over 5 Gb of RAM at that moment (have 8 myself)??

If 4 Gb is the minimum spec, you should be able to play all map levels ( I played on excessive myself), if that's not possible it should be mentioned as well.

Like I said: if that is the case, and you are not able to play certain maps with just 4 Gb, it should be mentioned somewhere, that's all. One of the key arguments at the moment to promoting Galciv III as a new game, and not as Galciv II .5 is the possibility to have insane map sizes with lots and lots of players. If that's not possible because of memory restrictions: just say so, or grey out certain map sizes.

I play it on minimum and it plays smoothly. I tried higher settings and it's still ok, only stutteres when bloom UI is on and anti-aliasing turned up. But you would expect that. Even the largest maps I don't expect to be able to play without significant delay with specs near the minimum.

I expect people to be able to play without any crashes even with the barest minimum specs however. Since the optimisation is still underway hopefully the source of the crashes will be found out.

I think for most people it's safe to leave this on to system managed. I tend to set it to a fixed amount, at least twice my RAM.

OK I used to have 2 AMD 6990's in Crossfire  and every 2 minutes or so the game would freeze for 30-40 seconds. I replaced my cards with my brothers old card a 7970 and I have no more issues. Not only that but my W.E.I went from 7.7 to 7.9  My room is a lot cooler now too...lol 6990s generate a lot of heat.

PS: my other stats are: Alienware Area-51 (2009) Intel i7CPU x990 @3.47GHz  3.47GHz (why it shows the GHz twice I've no idea) and 12GB RAM and WIN7x64

i used to run on a 4gb mem system and while i crashed semi frequently 3x in the first hundred turns then stable for 100 turns then unplayable. these crashes were clearly identified as low memory

i would get a windows popup saying windows is running out of memory we suggest closing some or all of the following programs
galciv 3

then a few turns later something to the effect of 

Windows has runt out of memory and is shutting down the following program
galciv 3 

Same as this no warnings on my crashes either.

First up I have to say the optimisations between beta 6 and 5 have been huge though I cannot comment hugely about 6.1 because I updated my ram at the weekend but in doing so my video card (old card noticeably not performing to what it should - a Nvidia GTX 680) decided to die and no longer function so instead of a Ram upgrade alone I've got a Graphics Card upgrade as well (Got a cracking deal on a R9 285x). However I've got to say running galciv today was smooth as anything immense galaxy, tight clusters, all AI's occasional on pretty much all settings with all game settings as default. My system is a AMD Fx 8320 running 8 cores at 4.1ghz, 12gb ram and a 2gb R9 285x, which is hardly a high end system (cost me £400 total to build this year - including a 1tb hard drive but no OS, which is less than a console but will kick make them look poor), though it is modern.

Since I've been playing since beta3 I've got to say this game has come along so far and is really looking solid now and even with 4gb ram the optimisations in removing the freezes and crashes have come along miles.

The Hex grid is big as well if you have it up for the entire galaxy its pretty draining.

Thank you for this, and sorry for your issues. We will get those crashes through support and make sure they get addressed.