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
2) Bring back (the option of) communal taxes.
3) Bring back wealth tax
4) Lower the family wealth cap to 5000
5) Make any action that uses family gold for military purposes instead use personal gold
6) Make buying regions only possible in your own realm or in realms you are allied with.
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.
Remove peasant militias completely: only player actions should stop player actions.
9) When too much looting is done, instead of peasant militias, locals should run away to nearby regions.
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.
12) Return the distance from capital radius to what it used to be, if not larger.
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.
