1) There are still plenty of wars in most realms.
2) You can't compare now with then. Back then, taxes were collected realm-wide, making region loss not that dramatic for anyone. The new allegiance system with its free-for-all mentality hadn't been pushed onto anyone. There was no such thing as estate efficiency or lack of control due to estates, realms could expand as far as their military allowed it and the returns were far from as diminishing as they are now. Realms were like ant colonies, where the general controlled the whole forces and not following his orders would usually put you in serious trouble.
3) Looting isn't overpowered. All of the damage achieved by it can be more effectively achieved by TOs, if you have the nobles for it. If you see more looting being done than 5 years ago, it's because tying tax efficiency (and previously control) over the number of nobles a realm has makes expansion for a lot of realms nonviable, not because looting somehow became overpowered.
1. Sure, but they're far more destructive than they used to be. Just look at the regions near Coria that have seen the most battle and you'll see regions that have lost 6000 peasants out of an 8000 total. That's just the effects of normal, prolonged war these days and recovery of those regions will take months.
2. Yes, the game was more a game back then and less the cumbersome social simulator it has become. Many of the things you listed there are things the realism craze has brought on and made the game less fun, less dynamic, slower and all around a worse experience.
3. Perhaps so, but when the prevailing tactic in the game boils down to killing the enemy regions for months to come, there's something extremely wrong with the way the game works. Waiting for the peasants to return to a region is like watching paint dry. It's not fun in any way and should not be an element of the game that lasts months at a time.
