I troubleshot the issue and it appears to do that when "Auto Research" is in your mod list. I spent hours figuring this out...and finally all I had left was the two. The error doesn't hit the early load gateway, but the one later. It was arguing about 64x64 sprites demanding 32x32s.

I really wanted to try your mod out as Auto-Research isn't quite cutting it for me. I did not test deleting AR in favor of yours as I was simply frustrated and just wanted to get the game back to running order.

Hope this helps.
Regards,
~B

EDIT: It could be totally unrelated and a different error altogether.