It did happen in the first round and wasn't game breaking. I could continue after, but it was spooky. I was going through the tutorial, and it occurred right after the survival phase and before the propagation phase. I had selected the Amorphs as my player race. It being a day ago I don't remember if there was anything specific that caused it.
Good to hear that it wasn't game breaking! Thank you for the additional info. I will look into the code a bit further and at least change the logic such that you don't get an error if the game manages to recover from the problem (as it was in your case). The error should only pop up if the game crashes fully (which should really never happen).