One something I must mention is that decreasing regions will increase number of knights (and decrease number of lords) whilst one of the points made here is that playing as a knight is not the most entertaining thing to do.
But that's just the thing: being a knight used to be fun if you were in a fun realm because it had a much larger social aspect. Your region lord needed you, both for estate reasons and for politics, and the realm was larger, so there were more factions and more fights to be had. That's the stuff that any game like this needs which you can only facilitate rather than code outright: the human interactions.
Right now I have characters in super-busy realms that 'have a lot to do' from the game standpoint but it just ain't what it used to be: not that the players aren't as good because there are quite a number who are great - it's just that wars with realms that each have 20 people in them are kind of meh while wars with realms that have 50-60 (each) are much more exciting because you have a lot more avenues for intrigue and allegiances.
