I was also frustrated with medicine. Download Kaoses tweak and crank up *100 lvl gain on medicine to get last perk. It was not fun, it is the same as lower difficulty game (your unit have more HP is the same as damage reduction) . The more I think about it, 250 athletics and 250 medicine is just bad/lazy design. I did the same with engineer and wanna test metallurgy 225 engineer which I do not think it works. I still get all negative modifiers stuff
Bandit problems can also be solved with Kaoses tweak just lower their map movespeed. Lords will start hunting them when they are faster than bandit parties. I gave -0.7 move speed to all bandits and -1.2 to steppe bandits.
Agreed, culture perks suck. Only battania seems to do something.
I find dealing with khuzait HA is super easy with your own khuzait noble HA(Does not need to be khan guard just torguud is already ok). AI loves to hold on to bow while you can tell your HA to hold fire and swing glaive/long glaive oneshot instagib them. Loose formation, follow and run to their incoming HA. Turn back before you and melee HA crash with infantry line.