This is how we were able to solve this crash internally -- through crash reports sent in.

Cool, I'll start submitting more reports then -I have high hopes for this game, it's got a lot of potential, and I'm quite willing to help with bug-quashing where able.

On an unrelated, but positive note - I went back and played MoM, and found I was missing some of the features from FE - that was encouraging! 

As I said, I have high hopes for this game, it's already quite fun in the early game.  BUT, It suffers painfully during the mid->end-game period, just as most (all?) 4x games do.  It just seems to suffer *more* than most.  I've yet to see a game where my tech has gotten past the early/mid tier before it's over - hitting *end turn* repeatedly and holding off winning just to see another victory condition is not fun.  Make later techs relevant, somehow, and keep on working.  The game is definitely fun in the early stages, find a way to stretch that fun over longer games!

With the changes Derek posted so far, those will really help to make later game play more exciting and interesting. I'm sure the presence of more regular armies and magic generally will give it a different feel, plus faster-researched tech to make game progression less grind-ish.

I was also encouraged to hear making the game more approachable. UI improvements will help a lot in that regard, as well as clarifying some game mechanics.

Back to the topic at hand, I speculate that perhaps the auto saving combined with the auto-turn feature and the strange order of events for pop-up notices like research, getting items, etc. all crashed together. Literally!