Hi, Ive tried everything and the cheat console wont open. The normal keys wont work and I'm at my wits end. I tried patching the game but get an error message about my copy being a manipulated version of the game and then the installation stops.... Please help :)

Have you tried left ctrl + ] for the console ?
And AFAIK GOG has the latest version - trying to apply a patch will give you the illegal\manipulated error

If your on windows7 or vista are you running the game as administrator?

Yep- tried it..
Also patch wouldnt install so noworries there
Yep, Windows 7, Ive tried everything... the game wont run unless I run it as administrator, even then the console wont open though..
Thank you both for your help :)

This may be a few weeks late, but I found that ctrl + \ (the one next to the backspace key) opened the console for me.

I have a French (well actually, multilingual) keyboard and for those interested, use Ctrl and ç, (called the cédille in French) it's the key immediately left of the Enter key (where the crouched arrow is , below the Backspace), which shows also as Ctrl + ] . I hope this is useful.
(Sorry, I couldn't find a corresponding image of the keyboard to show)
I'd like to point out also (in case some don't actually know) that each time you start a new mission in a campaign, the cheats are deactivated, so you have to enable them again before you do anything.
Hope it helps.
Good day!
Geene

Dear laughy,

I fell your pain but I have come to save your day as well as all other SpellForce users. The anwser is yes you can use cheats in the Spellforce that GOG has posted just hold down the three keys Ctrl + ] that should get you the console. As for cheats please note there all case senstive:

Build your buildings faster Application:SetBuildingFastBuildMode(x)
God mode, health decreases to 0 but you never die Application:SetGodMode(x)
Much faster hero casting Application:FastHeroCast(x)
Now you have all buildings Application:SetBuildingTechTreeMode(x)
Now you have all units Application:SetFigureTechTreeMode(x)
Spells wont cost mana anymore Application:SetNoManaUsage(x)
Whole map is visible. UnExplored:Enable(0)
You get y units of each material Application:GiveMeGoods(y)

Now you can type in 1 or 0 (where 1 = ON and 0 = OFF).
Now you can type in any number nothing bigger then 9999 will work (where y = whatever).

For any other questions or thanks feel free to buzz me anytime.