Expedition: general discussions.

making characters more relatable

I don't quite understand how this will be achieved, except perhaps by addressing the min-maxing issue.

removing skills within specializations altogether, as players generally choose a more or less uniform set of skills, leaving the least useful ones behind.

I wouldn't say it's that bad. Of course, there are skills that are excessively strong or weak, but there is still some variety in builds. If national, racial, and religious skills are combined into one, and considering the removal of character attributes, the characters will become indistinguishable from each other.
The idea of removing attributes is good, as is the idea of reducing speed.

Combat training

Skill

And what skill is this?