...I think that the density figures posted at the top of this thread support that because, they show that we have about 50% more lords than knights. Your plan reduces the number of lords by reducing the number of regions, but it remains to be seen whether the former lords will still have an interest after the dust settles and they've been demoted to lowly knights, and whether new knights will stay in the game given that there will be fewer opportunities for them to get "promoted".
...Whatever was happening back then (apparently it awesome) has really no bearing on the present situation.
My perspective on that is that it does have bearing. When it wasn't easy to become a lord or council member, let alone ruler, battlemaster was more fun - the process of moving upward in political jockeying. That's because there was a healthy density of competent competitive players both internally and externally. Becoming a lord used to be a big deal and duke an even bigger deal. Now one can barely find lord for regions anymore. And on the other hand - its too easy, to the point of boring, to gain power in a realm these days. It comes back to the old idea that anything that is easily gained is not valued highly while that which required struggle to gain is all the more previous, especially when it may be lost again.
It's certainly true that it is more difficult for new characters to gain prestige. I think for the levels of warfare islands face today it doesn't provide the same h/p gains as the much higher warfare rates of before, making it take longer for new characters to gain necessary stats for positions. I've certainly experienced this myself with a character going for months without gaining 10 prestige (he acquired some unique items to make up for it). Hell, he went months without getting to 3 prestige without unique items. With more dense nobles in a tighter space, it should encourage ambition within a realm to take that region over there for whatever food needing, old claim, religious effort, strategic aim etc. reason. Also, less space to march.
I've wondered if new characters (or new accounts) shouldn't only be exposed to the top few communicative and/or war-active realms in Tim's new ratios. That would certainly bring players to realms more likely to expose them to a good battlemaster experience as well as encourage realms to be more involved and/or fight more wars.
Of course, I still think three nobles for new families is a better idea than our current two nobles.
