I don't work with sd files so can't give you an answer on that. There is a thread in the modding forum (research wiki i think) on that though.

Having played around with recruitment, build times and money scripts myself, I can safely say that I hadn't had any problems so far, as long as you do it in moderation.
Without this being any hard limit, up to 5 recruitment slots and 1 turn build times works perfectly. I imagine 9 should also be alright.
What I do think might have been your problem is the vast amount of florins. The game can't handle too large a number on those possibly (you had several tens of billions) so I would recommend staying afloat at a rate of approx 5-10k florins in total per turn. If that is too little, you can always mod the build costs to compensate or just use add_money when you need cash (which takes a few seconds of your life at best)