Gameplay Tweaks Mod 1.03 file

Main changes include:

Slight trait overhaul. No more purely negative personality traits (as, for example, shy/craven/slothful were before). They made those personality events a little too obvious. Specifically:
Gluttonous: No stewardship penalty. +5 vassal opinion (from your amazing feasts)
Charitable: -5% global tax modifier
Slothful: No stewardship penalty. +1 to learning (laze about reading a lot) and intrigue (accustomed to getting others to do things for you)
Diligent: Removed intrigue bonus
Patient: -10 to AI ambition
Craven: +1 to intrigue and diplomacy (accustomed to weaseling your way out of things)
Shy: +1 to stewardship and learning (less time with people is more time with the books)
Arbitrary: +1 to martial and intrigue (unrestrained by honor)
Just: -1 to martial and intrigue (restrained by honor)

Education traits revised:
No fertility effects
Midas Touched gets -25% build cost
Brilliant Strategist gets +.25 morale, 30% faster levy reinforcement
Elusive Shadow gets half-price assassinations
Grey Eminence gets +10 opinion from all vassals
Mastermind Theologian gets +20 church opinion and +1 piety/month

Opinions alterations. Mostly limiting the extent of certain huge opinion penalties that seemed unreasonable. Specifically:
-10 instead of -50 for pretender vs. liege. (Brothers won't automatically launch an attack for the throne if you give them land - only if there's a succession crisis or they hate you for some other reason)
-5 instead of -10 per demesne over limit (making it a somewhat gentler curve)
-5 instead of -10 for female ruler (come on now)
-5 instead of -10 for female heir (seriously?)
-20 instead of -30 for wrong government type (-30 is as bad as absolute crown authority, but for bishoprics and cities. Seems a little overkill)
Positive relationship with mentor lasts 40 years instead of 20 (presumably, you still care a bit about your mentor even past age 26)
Positive opinion from granted titles scales up in duration as well as magnitude:
10 years for barony, as before
20 years for county
30 years for duchy
100 years for kingdom (a lifetime)
100 years for empire (ditto)

Casus Belli - wars of independence are easier, somewhat making up for the changes above. Specifically, a white peace in a war of independence will still win independence for the vassal, but give the former liege a claim on the vassal's title. Total victory will win independence without any claim being given. Surrender gets the vassal imprisoned, as before. I figure that if the liege can't actually beat the vassal that's trying to break away, they can't enforce fealty.

Technology: Most technologies made somewhat stronger. Specifically:
Going from level 0 to 5 in a weapon/armor tech doubles the offense/defense of the associated troops.
Each level of siege technology reduces siege time to roughly 2/3rds of what it was before...
Countered by fortification tech, which exactly opposes it.
Tactics doubles land morale by level 5, and also increases organization so the morale recovers faster.

(Tax and building techs were left unchanged, except for trade practices, which gives +1 to town opinion per level)

Construction tech reduces build costs by 5% per level
'Opinion' techs (noble customs, popular customs, religious customs) raised slightly to a steady +3 per level - +15 by level 5.
Majesty gives an additional +1 per level to feudal vassal opinion.
Spiritual art gives an additional +1 per level to church vassal opinion.

Flexibility techs and legalism unchanged.

Succession laws - Feudal elective succession only gives +10 instead of +20 opinion to vassals, as elective HRE and Byzantine Empire are a little too sturdy. However, it will also give that +10 to vassals of your bloodline, instead of sticking them with a -5. Still gives -5 to bloodline vassals; dynasty_opinion seems like it always takes precedence over vassal_opinion, annoyingly.

Requirement to enact True Cognatic succession has also been changed - instead of requiring basque culture, it requires a female ruler with one of a set of positive epithets (i.e., the great, the wise, the holy, etc etc)

Council - Probably the biggest change. I've added in new demesne 'council laws,' governing whether or not women can serve on the council. By default, they cannot - but it's not too difficult to enact 'female administrators,' allowing women to serve as steward, spymaster, or chancellor. Much more difficult is female marshals (requiring a Joan of Arc-esque event to have triggered and you to have chosen to replace your marshal with the woman in the event), and female chaplains, (requiring true cognatic succession and a heretic female ruler in a heretic capital, as well as a very skilled female theologian of the appropriate heretic faith). If the appropriate laws are in place, women can also have the ambition to become a council member.

Buildings: Culture-specific buildings now require the province culture to be appropriate to the building type. However, they will no longer immediately vanish if the ruler culture doesn't match the building - instead, they stick around until the province is militarily conquered by a different culture group or the province culture itself changes to an inappropriate type.

Other mechanical changes - in defines.lua, I upped the max demesne size from rank by 50% and dropped the effect of stewardship by 1/3rd, to make demesne size more reliable. I also reduced the -75% (really?) wrong settlement type penalty to -33%.
Base reinforcement rate dropped by 80% while at war