1) Make it possible to TO cities with which you don't share a border, possibly automatically creating a new duchy for them, as a new version of the old CTOs
-- Actually any region should be possible to TO. With the distance penalty, if you try to TO a region too far away, they will revolt anyway.
2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.
--Why? I'd rather see redistribution of gold through region rebalancing. Less gold for cities and more gold for rural regions. We won't see any additional resources being added back to the game so might as well rebalance regions so they don't need to ask for gold all the time.
3) Bring back wealth tax
--Not sure.
4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000
--I think just lowering it to 2.5k should do it. If people can't buy regions, there is no point on keeping it so high. Or if you want to keep it to 5k, I'd suggest making it so you can't put any gold in as long as your family gold is over 1k.
5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold
--Actually wouldn't mind seeing people using their family gold to recruit units. Maybe make it twice as expensive or even three.
6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.
--Not a bad idea.
7) Make religious takeovers factor in realm sympathy and a bunch of new factors to make it almost impossible to pull off, at least when done on human-held lands. Enable it anew in rogue lands.
--No. Just get rid of religion. The game has too few people for religions and priests.
Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.
--Agreed
9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.
--Instead, I'd just make it impossible for people to loot a place to the ground. Let's say once a region is left with 25% or lower production, you can no longer loot in that region or something.
10) Convert 15% of all militia units to local population every week. Reduce this decay by 2% per fortification level.
11) Add a looting option that specifically targets loyalty and control.
--I think this is what the current unfinished TO will do eventually.
12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.
--I thought it hasn't changed? I'd agree with making it larger especially on Dwilight.
13) Add a "Demesne" alternative to lordships, where a region goes lordless without penalties other than a tax penalty or 100% of it going to the communal pot. Referendums don't run for it in democracies. The game has too many regions like Wasteland and the Desert of Silhouettes that don't deserve putting any nobles to them, but which in some cases must be taken for a number of other reasons.
In short, make wars about the knights again, and not about the gimmicks.
