I see you are playing the vanilla version of the mod. Any chance you are running G+K with that? That would explain the crashes around the same date: the included new civs don't have names for spies, so when a player hits the renaissance the game crashes. Other issues with G+K would likely not be visible unless playing the new civs.
If this is the case: you can try the G+K version which is linked in the first post.
If you are playing vanilla: this mod has been out of maintenance for a long time now and even though I'd think it should still work, I can no longer reliably verify as I have G+K now, which will cause some database issues even if I disable it, sorry.