So far I haven't had a single crash. I'm currently 15 hours in, no freezes, no stuttering (except when going into inventory for some reason) the forever loading screen only happens to me at a bandit hideout in north east of the map. Not sure what cities you're talking about though. The dates I haven't noticed but I haven't paid much attention to that. No save game corruptions yet.
My girlfriend however is in crash city whenever she plays. Her computer isn't as good as mine but it isn't terrible either. So I have no idea why some people are experiencing crashes and others are playing through just fine. The game without kingdom control is damn near pointless though. I can capture cities, but I can't get vassals other than the shit clan option.
Overall I love the game, but I'm still disappointed that after 8 years this is all they've mustered, Early access or not the game is half baked.
My main gripe is the blacksmithing, you unlock things like new blade styles at complete random while smelting. But you can only smelt 5 weapons each few (ingame) hours, and apparently burning wood takes a lot out of your character as well. I've smelt probably 150 weapons and so far unlocked about 5 sword blades and about 7 pommels....