Ok, I'm at my wit's end. I've been messing with CK2 for years now and am currently working on a new map project and am running into problems with default.map (or one of the files referenced in it). I originally used ck2generator and a custom heightmap to create a working randomized mod. From there, I deleted all the randomized province/title/character information and have begun inputting my own provinces using my trusty copy of Photoshop CS2 and the mapfiller tool. When I first used this tool years ago on a different problem I kept running into CTD problems and somehow figured out that by deleting default.map I could get around them and load the game successfully. While this works well enough during the mapping process, I need a solution to diagnose what is wrong with my default.map. The default.map generated by the map filler leads to a CTD while still loading the game. I rightly guessed that this had to do with the ocean region info inside, so I deleted that and tried again. This time, the game booted fine and allowed me to select my character, but crashed with the loading bar full, just before it was about to zoom in. the various text files associated with default.map are emptied out (island_region.txt, geographical_region.txt, continent.txt, climate.txt) or taken from vanilla (seasons.txt and terrain.txt), except for positions.txt, which I have been modding successfully with nudge.
If anyone has any idea what might be going on here, I'd love some help. I can share files if that would be helpful.