If copying all your assets into the cd folder (and correct subfolders if you split it up that way) does not work,
you have some deeper problem lying behind that.

Either you load stuff from a wrong path, or
missed some important assets or dll.

See: the "publish" does two things:
It compiles your code into the executables (and
possibly script files)
and second, it copies your assets into the cd folder.

The second step you could do manually in any case
with the same results.

If that does not work, there is some systematic problem.