Player/Companion leveling needs a serious overhaul. It shouldn't take so long to go from 0 to 100 in any skill. Obviously some skills are more irritating than others.
After 100, and especially after 200, okay, you can say that like 5 focus points and high base attribute are required to go that far. But seriously, leveling some stuff is just torture.
Zilego said something about a Grand Tourney. That would be awesome, I wouldn't say this should come in 1.1, it should be part of maybe a bigger diplomacy related content drop though. Make it serious. Like when a kingdom is at peace for a while, it can hold a Grand Tourney that has Top tier rewards, and all the lords of the realm, and other realms at peace show up to compete.
I agree the tournaments in EA were too easy and exploity ways to grind ultimate gear. I'm okay with kind of basic peasant tournaments awarding only minor rewards (They're good sources of Fine Steel if you don't have the Steelmaker II perk)
Boosted XP in Live Battle, or XP overhaul for troops. XP and troop level gains should be in parity with Auto resolve, though auto-resolve (Especially against looters) is obviously going to be more time efficient since you don't have to command an actual battle. You should reward players for playing your game, not punish them... Just a thought.