Feels kind of wrong, though, that the elite swordsmen will be those that will have spent their lives at the academy, doing little of anything else, and (more recently) ex-advies (though even then, my own ex-advies who had done nothing else than hunting for years did not end up with the high skills ex-advies are often reputed to have).
Maybe it makes sense realism-wise (debatable)... but gameplay-wise, it doesn't. The academy should be for peacetime when there's nothing better to do, it shouldn't be the most efficient way of achieving anything.
Characters who end up being badasses with swords should be made so only by playing as badasses with swords. And that means by taking risks. Either by allowing "prudence" settings for battles that allow nobles to lead their units' charges for high chances of increased swordfighting skill and wounding, dramatically increasing swordfighting gains by heroes, or attributing swordfighting gains and risks with other activities, such as looting (a warlord who plunders a village is likely to get his own hands dirty as well).
Academies should be the slowest and least efficient paths to high skill levels. As they work now, too many are content to have long periods of peace, or indeed work towards quelling all attempts to liven things up, because they want to sit on large revenues just to train their infiltrators or the like. This egoistical behavior does not create fun for others.
Think it through. If mere battles was all that it took to make master sword men, then the common foot solider would fast become a master. I'm not against some sort of tweak to to the battle/academy system, but I'm not in favour of the proposed system of making academies much slower, since they will soon become irrelevant and might as well be removed from the game.
I'm not convinced there is some sort of epidemic of people doing nothing but training, and I am certainly not convinced that the few that do this are actively attempting to maintain peace. Even if they were GREAT, that gives you someone within your realm to rail against. If you can't motivate a realm to override the desire of peace by one or two characters, then game mechanics to "fix" it is not the solution.
Game mechanic restrictions have their place, but we seriously need to get away from trying to dream up mechanics to fix every perceived "undesirable" activity.
