you sound like earlier changes got you into mess - and this method of finding problem isn't helping a whole lot! Would tend to recommend going back to previous working version and trying the moving provinces and characters around in smaller steps. If you switched characters from one faction to another (and they still had old factions character names) you would have probably got a CTD without error message - was that what you meant when you said it broke?

you may have had multiple problems - the error system will fall over the first problem it meets in descr_strat - so altering order of things can make the KTM producing error occur before the CTD producing error.

the stickied guide says
Symptom: KTM's with message on exit: 'Script error in .../descr_strat.txt, at line xxx, column x. could not create settlement at script line xxx

* Mis-match between colour on map_regions.tga and colour listed in descr_regions.txt for affected settlement.
* Using identical colour for two different regions.
if the line it gives isn't bottom of file. Was your moving of regions on the map files (which could have caused that sort of problem) or just between factions in strat?