Even during the beta I never ran into out of memory issues once I used this. Turned the game from unplayable to playable for me. Yes its a band aid until Stardock fixes the issues. For me it was either wait until the issues are fixed to really play the game, or do this.
I'm running 64bit windows 7, so with a 32bit OS you may run into the issues, I don't know since I haven't tested with it. 

not 100% sure how it will work on XP 64bit so let me know. I am not sure if there is something required to enable it on XP 64bit.

There are several little apps online that will label the executable as large address aware, as well.

I like the silent approval you've been given for this.  They can't officially say they approve of you posting a modified exe file for their game because it would give their lawyers brain hemorrhages and heart attacks.  On the other hand they seem to be pretending not to notice this post until they come up with a more permanent official solution.

First let me say that this stopgap of yours has worked great for me so far.  Thanks for posting it- I was trying to find a way to force Win 7 to do this by clicking through every option menu and system tool I could find but I've never had to do it before and I could not remember the a close-enough term to produce useful google search results when looking it up.

Now I'm not saying the lawyers yelling at the forum staff (or their bosses yelling at them) would be reasonable if they said anything approving of your fixed exe file, I just like how their smartly avoiding getting hassled while not squashing your helpful post.  I understand what you're saying too, but that's not what would bother the lawyers.  They would argue any or all of the following:

1.) You are redistributing their IP without license.

   -Yes this is silly since you can distribute all the mods you want and are licensed to do so by the EULA you accept with installation.  That EULA purposely does not cover redistributing content that is not generated by the mod tools so that people can't argue a cracked EXE or whole copy of the game is allowed to be redistributed because of the EULA.  You're not doing that, but it may technically be a violation of the letter of the EULA if not the spirit.  Still officially sanctioning redistribution of a core game component could be used as a defense by someone redistributing much more so any good attorney would reccomend at that they at least not give this the thumbs up.  An over zealous attorney would send you a cease and desist and charge them fees for doing so.

2.) They can't control how someone reads or misreads your instructions.

- It's unlikely that anyone with just the right balance of functional illiteracy and minimal computer knowledge to be dangerous will read this, do something terrible, and end up having to (or thinking they have to) reformat and reinstall their OS.  I doubt someone could even make a reasonable connection between your instructions and any coincidental computer implosion they might experience.  Still, officially sanctioning this fix and your instructions might incur liability in the eyes of many attorneys.  It would at the very least incur the risk of being considered liable, even if the that would be a false conclusion.

3.)  They can't control how exactly you may have modified the exe file.

- Sure, they could compare the files and show that the only difference was a modified property contained in the wrapper and that none of the compiled code was actually altered.  Still, a good attorney or even a good support staff supervisor would argue that it's best not to officially approve downloading it.  While they could be sure that there was nothing harmful (maliciously or accidentally so) they would be better off avoiding the dozen angry customers who assumed that virus they got about the same time they downloaded it was from your link rather than the flying-spaghetti-monster porn puzzle game they downloaded.  In terms of protecting yourself from legal and more mundane hassle, it is always best to completely avoid even the hint of liability whenever practical.

Anyways that was a long ranting explanation of what I meant.  Like I said, I wasn't trying to imply you were doing anything morally or legally wrong, just that them saying "Hey thanks, go ahead and give that a try" would probably give a few overfed corporate attorneys or their overworked paralegals heart attacks.  At the same time I was glad they were being reasonable in not deleting your post since it looked like a promising stop-gap for me.  It turns out it was, so thanks again.

To make this easier on people instead of having the prepatched .exe  I replaced it with the tools needed to patch the game yourself.
This way when new versions of the game come out you can quickly update your version if needed. 

http://ai-machater.googlecode.com/files/ElementalRAMPatchzip.zip 

actully I do not get this issue any more I dont get this crash now after 1.06 but it now drops me to the desk top as a crash with no explation any more it is as if they removed the error box siad its out of memory ha !

I really love how every night i come home and i can look forward to a new patch I mean really i do i am not being sarcastic I just know one day ill come home and it will work prefectly !

just wish every night was that day thats all ha..

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Hopefully it won't be long before we don't need to go above 2gb. As of right now I'd rather risk the directx issue than for sure run into the out of memory issue. I'm honestly not even familiar with the directx flag needed, feel free to enlighten me if you would like =D

If this fix DOES cause issues with directx, they are not fatal errors as I have not had any CTDs since applying this temporary fix.  I have had one or two odd graphical glitches with animated world objects, and they do not occur when I switch back to my backed up executable.  They also only occur after a couple hundred turns so I assume they do have something to do with large memory allocation.  Again, they don't crash the game so they are (at least for a temp fix like this) greatly preferable to the out of memory error.

I too just got the "out of memory" dialog box and the game crashed. 

I am using: Win7 Pro with 4GB Ram (32bit OS)

no, it wont speed anything up. the game is programmed to only use a max of 2gb, the problem is there are leaks which can cause the game to exceed the 2gb and crash. This just gives it some breathing room so it won't crash.

if you are running a 64bit OS you do not need to set the "increaseuserva" stuff in your command line, that only involved 32bit OS. And for 32bit OS 3072 is the max I would ever consider using. 32bit OS are given 4gb of addressable memory space, 2gb for applications and 2gb for OS(in simple terms), by using the "increaseuserva" we are taking 1gb away from the OS and giving it to applications. 

Also keep in mind that when i say memory, i do NOT mean RAM specifically. If you are running 32bit OS with 2gb of RAM, you still have 4gb of addressable memory space normally.

If you are not experiencing out of memory crashes then DO NOT use this fix, it will cause more harm than good.

if you are running 64bit win 7 and did this fix properly you shouldn't get any out of memory crashes. You probably either did the fix wrong or some other serious issue causing problems. Do you have your swap file disabled or something? With 64bit OS and this fix your game has double(4gb) the intended amount of memory available, I really doubt it could ever leak that badly!