Campaign Issues

I am trying to get an accurate picture of Elemental, but seem to find so many problems in the campaign I am concerned that I am missing something major.  After 10+ hours the game seems to offer much potential, but seems very buggy in campaign mode.

Current status:

• win-7/dual nvidia
• only played the campaign == no experience with MP or scenarios
• 800 moves (past finding the tome -- sailing the ship and exploring NW)
• starting city level 4 (4 other cities L2-3)
• 10-12 hours of play
• 1.05.016

Apparent bugs:

• frequent CTD -- even after patch 1.05.016
• could not pass the first barrier (restarted and fine on pass 2)
• many events trigger when entering an area but with nothing in FoW
• Map is rotated 45 degrees CW when zoom out
• Portraits disappear
• Locations missing -- example the "burning town" with the tome never appeared on any map.  I found it by chance. 
• King's messenger has a rollover message, but no icon on map.
• Occasionally hot buttons fail to work and have to use all mouseclicks
• If you restart a new game, some of your old settings from prior game (ex: available of veteran troops) are nowenabled for the new game
• Alt-tab out usually leads to crash (DX Error:  Invalid call)
• Ship is blocked from moving in open sea areas (Q says W then N .. cannot enter major sea areas)
• Cursor hotspot off in selecting attribute upgrades after battle
• occasionally can move right on top of enemy mobs, and can only attach if move off then back on

Major questionmarks:

• No research available -- says need scholars, and "scholars" does not appear in manual (perhaps city level "x"needed)
• No achievements for hero (some splashscreens indicate they exist)
• No inns found yet -- so no quests
• Personal comment:  FoW revealed area seems very small - even with scout cloak

Bottom line -- campaign appears very buggy unless I am missing something totally in setup.  I am going to try the other non-campaign modes a bit in hope they fare better