Literally the exact same thing happening here. Nearly the exact same pattern...mouse is still smooth on-screen after freeze, though.
Took caravan escort quest. Caravan disappeared from map after third battle. I continued to city (Mazea (sp?), if I remember correctly) thinking it might be there, but it was not. Decided to move on and "abandon" the quest.
Traveled around, picked up a quest from Rhagea (sp?), went to do that and froze. Reloaded and froze. Safe mode and froze. Tested things and found reproduceable freeze.
For me, any time I enter forested terrain on the campaign map the game freezes.
I show lower percentage on memory usage -- I have 16 gb, and it stays about the same. CPU about 25%. GPU I did not check.
How to Reproduce:
Travel into forest terrain.
Have you used cheats and if so which:
None
Scene Name (if related): NA
Media (Screenshots & Video): will try to get
Computer Specs:
OS: Windows 10 fully updated
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1060 6gb
GPU Driver Version: 511.23
CPU: INTEL(R) CORE(TM) i5-7500 @ 3.40GHz, 4 Core(s)
RAM: 16GB
Motherboard: Gigabyte h10m
Storage Device (HDD/SSD): HDD