Regions did not become damaged by looting for this long a time when I started playing in 2005. Therefore, even in the midst of war, it was still worth it to TO regions, rather than just loot them rogue. You did not need to maintain them much, other than if you had a higher taxrate than the peasants liked.
That's a function of the new oaths and taxes. Back then, nobles got taxes from the realm-wide tax pool, not directly from the region. So the 20 gold the region produced got dumped into the realm-wide tax pool. And on tax day, 20 of your nobles got one extra coin. Lose a 400 gold region? Oh well, each of your 150 knights gets 48 gold this week instead of 50, and the council income will drop from 400 to 340. Oh, we lost a 150 gold region? I wonder if anyone will notice...
The new tax system is great at handling steady-state stuff. If your realm neither gains nor loses regions, it works just fine. But it simply cannot adapt fast enough to handle acquiring and losing regions.
The population does not seem to be growing any either. Maybe the pop growth is put on stop when it is rogue?
It's food. Rogue regions have little to no production, so there is little to no food. Therefore pop doesn't grow.
