So I was trying to get back to this, but the game refuses to start, it just instantly CTDs with no error. Event log shows a crash but with no clear cause. Nothing seems to help. After looking around for potential solutions, the only thing that seems even vaguely relevant is that the game apparently doesn't like if your CPU has more than 8 cores? Mine has 12, so that seemed possible. I just don't know how to spoof having less.
Core affinity won't change how many cores are reported, changing the environment variable for number of cores to something else doesn't affect it (there are alternative ways to get number of cores programmatically anyway).
I'm a bit at a loss how to make this work, or if the core issue is even relevant.