maybe you are right, but there might be other reasons as well. the system you described was finely developed in many realms on east continent. i tried to reestablish it more than once, in current times.
what i feel is that too few people bother at all. some wars are too boring, in some realms indolence completely prevailed. what i see is that almost everyone is aware of the fact that sending orders carries large responsibility. why making effort when nothing will be gained?...
there are too few attractive rewards which could be hoped for by long-term effort conducted by eager war council member.
in times when that was real fun, being promoted to war council member meant much. being promoted to vice-marshal marked martial career... being appointed as general meant reaching real heights, which could be brought to its peak by successfully leading army in long-time campaigns.
now very few feel some pleasure in having general or marshal's position. too much responsibility, too little authority. and when some army discipline should be reinforced, than it's 9 out of 10 probability that judge would fear of titans to issue even simplest fine against disobeying warrior... how to accomplish anything, how to strive for anything, how to feel some pleasure of achievement? balance was seemingly lost somewhere...
if general has more options, i would use it to delegate more, instead of micromanaging more.
for instance, if general has option to read orders and standing orders to all armies, he could check now and than whether his strategy is implemented. some generals issue too many direct order only because they don't know how to check whether their directions for marshals are implemented. asking it via letters is very tedious.
he could, for instance, have option to impose standing orders, but that should be noted by steward (via note in standing orders), so everybody would know that he is doing so, and each noble could think whether the reason is incompetent marshals, tyrannical general or there are some special circumstances why general would superimpose orders.
moreover, militia assignment could be relieved a little more.
marshals could, for instance, be able to dismiss (while assignment would stay at lords) incompetent or disobedient warriors from their army besides judge's actions which are more related to general noble conduct.
such things do not make revolution, but could give some more weight to position, and potential for more power clashes.
there are so few clashes now as there are simply too few powerful positions.
Instead of requesting new features, cause lets face it the turn around on new features being implemented is not always the best, how about we identify the changes that have resulted in the current problem. Then perhaps we can see about returning the system to something similar to the "golden age". The advantage here also is that we "know" that worked. The game is being bogged down with more and more features and intricate system to correct problems that supposedly we never used to have.
