My game doesn’t work anymore either. Crashes after you press start button
I’ve learnt that you can uninstall all your mods online Mods Subscribed - Age of Empires - World's Edge Studio
I think the original method I suggested only deleted the files locally but the mods were still assigned to my player online.
So my suggestion now is to use the above link to uninstall all your mods THEN delete the files locally as I originally posted above.
After doing this and restarting the game multiple times to test - I can confirm I have no more crashes. Even after re-adding official mods like Small Trees, its working.
I haven’t tried the custom mods yet, but there must have been a really old one that broke the update path.
Thanks.
Gracias por la información. Lo intenté pero lastimosamente tampoco anduvo para mí. Sigo sin poder lanzar el juego 
I got it working again.
Steps i took:
Reformat SDD, hard (destructive) windows 11 reinstall, steam reinstall, aoe2DE reinstall.
Things that were immediately different when playing again:
Skipintro removed (did not break when reenabled)
Mods removed (and no longer available): range view mod, monk pointer, a boar label, and others. I reenabled ONLY a “large visible relic” mod. Small trees was there but that and the range thing are a setting now. No mod needed.
Graphics changed to higher quality (i have them set low and it looks classic)
Enhanced graphics pack off (it may have been off already)
Idk what the cause was. . But it loads and plays now!