Another Update:
a friend had issues similar to this. He tried to delete mod files as well, but he still go the crash.
He ended up having to launch on an official server, have the game restart & dump the mods, click on my server with mods, have the game restart & re-grab the mods & enter the game.
it seems that Exiles is not correctly cleaning out old mod files & downloading updated mod files. It doesn’t seem to validate them consistently.