I have been playing for a bit (restored from an earlier save), and had been moving heroes around, building shards, accessing diplomacy screen in early game. My race is Gilden, and I’m using a custom sovereign.

There was a monster near my hero Elisabetta, so I quick-saved and went to attack it. The monster promptly killed me, so I reloaded. Upon reloading, I found that although the cloth map loaded fine, and so did Elisabetta, nothing else loaded – I had no faction, no lairs or units were present on the map etc.

Dropbox file details attached: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/65172492/FE_Bug_02_03_2012.zip