Thanks! Glad to help. It's what I do. LOL
As for the different domains -- you got that working in 3, iirc.
THAT may be a function of WP 4. It seems to me that it handles the MU differently than 3 did. Now I'm saying that more from a "feel" than knowledge.
Part of my initial mess was that I had created a series of domains in a WP 3 MU install just as you are describing. I thought I could do that with this.
I could not. It seemed to require a "parent". For me, this required sitting down and thinking over my own structure and if there was a parent corporation. There was, it just didn't have a website.
Now it does. It's lame, but it's there. And once I set it up that way, everything started working. It seemed to be an almost philosophical approach change for me.
Shrug.
And it has given me all sorts of ideas for that new site. LOL!