I can at least help with the 'promotions thing'.
Somehow the game has issues with the cache that affect how mods are handled.
Did you by chance happen to start one game, even a vanilla game, and then quit to the main menu and start another?
I logged an issue about this type of behaviour and it appears it is beyond the control of modders to fix.
The upshot is, don't re-start games without first quitting to the desktop. You may experience this bug.
Its a pain I know, but one we will have to put up with.
Although I haven't seen the techtree error myself, it is quite likely the two are related, even different symptoms of the same thing.