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I don't get this problem but I think I can give you something to look at.

It's likely not a video memory problem at all per se, but likely an address space problem. The error itself is probably misleading because it's a system memory address problem, well obviously it's not lack of vid mem since people with the most video memory will likely be the ones seeing it the most.
The people that are likely to see this crash and see it appear sooner will be those with the most video memory on their GPU, highest resolutions, along with settings that use more video memory (AA, highest textures, etc.).

What you want to track is "virtual address space", which has nothing to do with amount of RAM or or virtual memory you have. I won't explain it's intricacies, but it's something I am quite versed in and I believe it's a likely cause.
The OS has to set aside virtual addresses for the large amount of video memory you have. Those addresses are set aside, and reserved as unavailable, at boot up which lessens the amount of address space available from the pool for the OS or application space.

The only "supported" workaround, that I could suggest at this time, would be in disabling startup programs and services and background programs in hopes of freeing up some address space at boot up.
People are not aware that this is a big problem with certain games and certain video cards that have alot of dedicated video memory (example: greater than 512MB).
You're only hope is in freeing up some of the 2GB of virtual address space the game will need. Whether you are at 32 bit or 64 bit, the game is limited to 2GB address space.

The first thing I would do is disable superfetch.
http://www.bizzntech.com/2008/07/20/how-to-disable-superfetch-in-vista

That may help a lot right there and may even workaround the issue from occurring. But if that doesn't fix it, then what this will do is allow you to see how much your background programs and services are 'really' using.
You will want to get as small of footprint of system RAM being used, at startup, as possible to workaround this issue.
Next get a program that can allow you to properly track 'virtual address space,' Task Manager DOES NOT do this.
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896653.aspx

Start the the game in windowed mode, then start procexp.exe next to it.
You will be looking at the empire.exe and column that says "virtual size" (which has absolutely nothing to do with virtual memory).
Once you start approaching 1.5 or 1.6 GB (if you even get that high) watch carefully.
If this is the issue, the address size will be different on different machines, so the number in the column isn't of utmost importance.
Regardless of the number it gets up to, if it crashes around the same size in MB in virtual address space each time for you, then that IS the issue.
Although, one thing is you may have issue reproducing the crasht in windowed mode due to lower memory requirements of lower resolution using less memory.
In that case you may have to run full screen and periodically ALt/TAB.

This would be a good thing to check, it's something Vista has more issues than XP with too, since Vista's address space usage is higher with games even after Microsoft fixed their address space blunder.
If I am right and this is what is causing the issue, then it's another reason CA should have supported native 64 bit safe coding practices, because then I could at least provide a viable workaround.

And just to be clear, this problem is caused by Microsoft continuing to support 32 bit OS's and developers not supporting and writing 64 bit safe code for their games.
The limitation is due to 32 bit operating systems, and in 64 bit OS's using 32 bit binaries.

TheCookieMonster wrote:

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I then trying 1280x1024 - with lower settings, played for about thirty minutes and had the "insufficient" memory crash when I wanted to go to main menu. I've tried to free up as much of the startup ram as possible - still no luck sadly.


...however, both windowed and non-windowed, 1680/1280 settings were using about 1.8GB of the virtual size.

I'm surprised you got that high, to 1.8GB. It looks very much like you suffer from the issue I mentioned. It sounds like that just beyond the 1.8 will cause your crash.
Strange part is that somehow 1280 and 1680 didn't seem to differ much in memory footprint but I guess the difference can be small.
Vista 32 itself only allows for 2GB of 'user' mode space, while 2GB is reserved for the kernel, it only has address space for 4GB total and it's split in half. So as you start approaching that crashes will occur, since there are other applications running in user mode. Although I still think it's likely that you are not running into the 2GB user mode space limit but instead you are likely running into the 2GB application space limit at just over 1.8 (this would explain people getting with Vista 64 too).

Only real problem is that as far as workarounds go, you are very limited in options since a lot of your hardware drivers are reserving address space during startup, most notably your video card.

Are you running Vista SP1?
Those without SP1 and without the Vista Virtual Address Space Hotfix that comes with it will definitely have issues here.

PM me if you want to try a workaround I have.