Or me! I love the the first game and its two excellent expansions. Pity last time I played, about a year ago I, I tried to run around as a mage and the mage I made in the Shadow of the Phoenix sucked so I stopped playing.

I've a habit of playing hyper defense in these games until I've everything upgraded, towers all over the map and 80 units + Titan then I attack. That usually takes at least 4 or 5 hours then I attack and win in less than 20 minutes.

As for the OPs problem, that seems really weird. I did have some crashes but it always worked with GOG's version.

If you use the Steam version then you could try in offline mode or if you know how close steam and use a fixed .exe and see if there's a difference. Change graphics options as well.

If nothing helps, you could ask on the official forum. I posted there a few times and they were very helpful.

Okay, so from what I can make out you're at Stormblade mountain (if im wrong - try and tell me what level you're on / provide a screenshot of the monsters from a distance).

I can't find the youtube vid I once used to guide myself through the fix, but I'll keep searching. Meantime, eheres a general fix thread from the official forums.
http://forum.spellforce.com/showthread.php?t=1333

I have a feeling it might be a case of repairing your installation and restarting the level, but as I remember its not the easiest level either.

I have just tried to do the steam file verification and steam said there's nothing wrong with it any other way I could do a repair? apart from uninstalling and re installing I would have to wait till next month for that due to internet limit

Is it the right level then?

I think you should probably try one of two things before that extremity:

1) - send a large force to deal with the monsters and keep your hero away and keep the camera over a different point on the map

2) - restart the level

I'll still see if I can find the solution I used

Yes that is the map, I do send a large force to deal with the monsters without my hero hmm I should try looking at a different point of the map and restarting the level, restarting shouldn't be an issue as i have already cleared all the other monsters.
So you had the same issue as me?

Yes, though mine was a retail disc. It's really bugging me what the bug was now, but like i said the solution was simple.

I have literally spent hours looking through the internet to find anyone with even a similar problem but without avail everyone just had problems where their game crashes after 5 minutes of playing regardless of map they are on

Right, couple of quick fixes that may or may not help (and you may or may not have done already):
Create a desktop shortcut DIRECTLY from the .exe in your steamapps directory. Make sure you set it to "run as administrator" and run in compatability mode for XP. Make sure Steam is closed when when you launch the game from this shortcut rather than from steam. and of course update graphics / video drivers etc - I'm damned sure the crash had something to do with the latter in some way.
Also have you checked what version you're running?
- Steam seems to leave out some updates at times. I know its done that with Deus Ex HR for me (and as a result my savegames corrupt constantly making it a broken game). In your case you might have to install the expansions if you already havent to get the patched version like you would with a retail disc.
- I don't know if theres a way / SAFE way to do that manually with steam.

Version is 1.54.75000 I have tried updating drives and running as administrator in XP mode but yea same problem persists

Right - well at least we know that's NOT the problem! Heheh. Well, I'll continue to search - in the meantime, try the massed force or level restart idea

I figured something else out there's actually a way out of the freeze without having to hard reset you set your screen saver to pop up after 1 minute and set the pc sleep mode also to 1 minute after the screen saver has launched and after it goes to sleep mode and you awaken it you come back to a bunch of errors saying that spellforce has stopped working,

Massed force while looking at another point in the map let me kill 4 rock monster groups but still crashed I will try to reset level soon.
all right resetting also a negative