I have that patch installed and the problem still exists, but instead of crashing, the game simply does not advance into Era 3 and Palpatine does not spawn.
In my game, no factions have yet been knocked out (except maybe Duskhan League, I'm usually in Era 3 before I break out of the starting PA space). I can track down and attach my save if you'd like to see it
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Specs (in case it helps):
OS: Windows 10 64-bit
CPU: Intel i7-4710HQ
GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 970m (3GB VRam)
RAM: 16GB DDR3