I will certainly agree that the loss of those hours of play hurts. That's an investment that I lost myself several times, to the tune of 50-60 hours, maybe more.
I was 100% ready to quit. I did quit. Didn't touch it for a few days.
However, I'm forced to disagree with your assessment that the game is unplayable, as I now have THREE campaigns where I have established my own kingdom and conquered roughly 80% of Calradia.
The workaround of occasionally pausing and using a manual "Save as" 100% works.
Is it aggravating? Sometimes.
Does it suck to have this looming fear of a crash? Definitely.
Do I lose SOME progress with every crash? Sure. But the progress I'm losing now is typically 5-15 minutes or so.
The most typical crash I have experienced appears to be related to conversations, specifically after battles, so I make a point to manually save before I ACTUALLY start the battle, just in case this is the one that makes me crash.
It is not ideal to have to circumvent an intentional game mechanic (intended to help you, by automatically saving), BUT... it works.