This is a known issue for a lot of people.  

Other than repeating that you should check that you have win 7+ and 8 gb of ram, and that you are not running programs in the background while playing GC3, I don't know much else to say except I was rather hoping this would be better in beta 4.    It's not a huge problem for me, only freezing every hour or so, but I can playing GC2 for days with no issues.    Of course I haven't tried an immense map in GC3 yet either, freezes may be much more frequent.

The problem with these random freezes is that they are nearly impossible to troubleshoot.    You can submit a ticket though, just to let them document it.

You can also force a dump with Windows' "task manager" to include in your ticket. The dump is likely to be quite huge, so it would be best to put the dump file into a "dropbox" like facility and share the link to it in the ticket text.

Thanks for posting your issue, Lucky Jack is right and a dump file would help if possible. Would you kindly, submit a ticket via our support system so that I can better assist you with your issue. After following the link, run the support tool, include your steam name, describe the issue you are having and then send us the zip file to greatly speed up the process!

Link to forums for explanation:

https://forums.galciv3.com/452855/page/1/

Link to support tool:

http://sd.stardock.com/Support/supportToolTest/SDSupportTool.exe

the next time it happens I will try to do that.  Thanks.  I have Windows 8.1 and 16gb of ram.  It's only using 2.6gb when it freezes up.

I have a similar issue- except that it freezes for 5-10 seconds and then resumes again.  Almost like the game is thrashing the graphics card RAM or some such thing.

Yeah, I noticed it freezing yesterday as well.  I'm thinking it might partly be due to background programs and running an immense map--although I've got the processor capacity and plenty of RAM as well as an NVIDIA GTX 770 video card, so I'm running a pretty up to date machine--it runs DA:I and E:D without too many problems.  Next time it happens I'll submit a ticket with a zipped dump file.

With this new version, it sometimes just completely crashes out.  No warning, no freezing and no error message.  Just completely quits out.

ive been noticing a lot of freezes while exploring the tech tree after mousing over many of the techs (3/4 of them) the game tends to freeze it appears to be a graphics freeze as i can open menus and interact with them if i know what im doing the mouse pointer moves but nothing else changes on the map

the longer ive been playing before opening the tech tree the less techs i can mouse over before this happens

a new game (or after reloading a game) i can look over about 3/4 of the tech tree

after a few turns i can look at around 10+ techs after a dozen turns only 1-2 techs

this is probobly because im only using 4 gigs but otherwise i can run the game fairly well 

If anyone missed it from above, please see the following if you are having an issue:

Page thrashing is a potential problem here. Don't forget that GC3 is one of the first games to be programmed in 64 bit addressing mode. That means it can use an awful lot more virtual memory than games that don't. The potential ratio is something like  1:10 to the 32nd power. 64bit games will page thrash where 32bit games will not. This is why you have seen so much discussion on how much RAM GC3 needs to operate smoothly. The MINIMUM requirement is 4GB RAM, the recommended amount is 6GB, and these figures are the targets Stardock has adopted for the release. During EA programs you can expect a game to need just a bit more. I have seen GC3 (plus OS and everything else I had running) use over 6GB.