Are you playing on a Mac now? I can't remember. The Mac version of the game has a much smaller ram limit compared to Windows. How long had the game been running before crashing?
Sometimes, the game will crash on me around the 5+ hour mark if I have it running that long. That's just the game hitting its ram limit. I reduced the amount of CC/mods I had installed and that helped in my experience. Note: I had 5GB of third-party content installed before reducing it down to just below 1GB. Rarely will it crash soon after launch on me... but if you pop in and out of CAS a lot like me, that alone will eat up ram usage.
Saving often is a good habit to make of course but it's not going to clear ram usage. The best method for clearing ram is to simply quit and then launch again. Annoying maybe but if you're going to play for a few hours, it might prevent some crashing. If you're crashing often, there might be a reason why. Otherwise, this game is not perfect and will crash every now and then but constantly crashing is not normal.
If you're using the Origin version of the game on Windows, there is a Crash Log Analyzer but it's not going to always be able to analyze things. There are two versions, patch 1.67 and blew + patch 1.69. These can be found on MTS but will only work for the Origin version of the game on Windows I believe.