Seriously, Spore?

Continuing in the popular comma Spore series, I once again have both exalting and disparaging things to say about it.  I am currently halfway through the Space age with my third attempt to play the game through to completion, this time on the hard difficulty.  It would all be going fine and dandy if I didn’t keep getting this error message every few minutes:

So, once again Spore is battling me every inch of the way — determined to deny me an enjoyable game.  I seriously want to love this game… but these bugs are killing me.  I’ve tried searching the EA support page, which is about as much help as a blind seeing-eye dog (which I’d already discovered a while back when trying to order a replacement Rock Band guitar), and while it seems there are multitudes of other people having problems, no one has reported this specific error.  So, if anyone out there knows a fix to this error, please leave a comment on this post or sling a message to southerngamer@gmail.com.