Turning down the spawn rates would be a start. Turning down the need to micromanage your realm to find that perfect balance between size and density would help too. Turning down micromanagement in general would help. The more you force realms to focus on their own problems, the less opportunity you give them to make problems for others.
IMHO, the game started going downhill when region maintenance became a numbers game. When I started playing, the main reason to choose a particular lord was the lord themselves. As a lord looking for knights to draw to his cause, my main concern was looking appealing to them; i.e. have a personality and ambitions that spoke to them. Now, knights are mainly just employees. I need them for tax efficiency, they need me to have an income. The game as a whole was more RP-driven 10 years ago because players didn't have to focus most of their playing time on managing their own realms.
You want suggestions? Get rid of estates as anything more than an RP flavor text, and bring back the old 'communist' tax systems. Simplify, man.
