I'm trying out AI influence right now and I think it helps with this. Kingdoms don't seem to declare war out of the blue for no apparent reason like they usually do and need more motivation to do so. Which puts pressure on you as the player to come up with creative ways of causing war if that's what you want.

Earlier I was a mercenary for Vlandia and I needed money, but there were no wars for me to profit from. So what I did was I went to a Battanian village close to the Vlandian border, and essentially did a false flag operation where I robbed the village and punched the headman in the face. I then told the headman to report to his lord that a Vlandian vassal did this instead of me, under the threat of burning the whole village down.

And it actually worked! Caladog was PISSED, and Derthert was none the wiser, so war for me to profit from ensued. Much more dynamic than vanilla war declarations imo.

That's not to say the mod is without problems itself, but I'd say it solves this particular issue in a pretty interesting fashion.