you need to be able to lose it all, or its all meaningless. part of the appeal of this game is the high stakes involved in every major decision. you could lose your realm or a significant portion of it, you can lose your titles, your character can be executed.
i have been saying for a long time that the main problem with the game is that conservative players rise to the top again and again, because they are able to make connections and a reputation over time without screwing up. these conservative players are great at making friends and terrible at making enemies. they then get elected ruler and want to make friends with all the other rulers. this results in a boring game.
you need to put your realm in situations where it can be destroyed (ideally preventing that from happening through your brilliant leadership), or there is no driving conflict in the game. it becomes pointless and boring and people leave.
a great case study is recent events on the far east, right before it was sunk. you have a realm in cathay that was surrounded by enemies and refused to surrender, willingly accepting potential annihilation to hold on to its principles and keep fighting. good leadership won them the war against all odds, the same people that other realms were calling idiots for their decision to not surrender. you have a realm in myern that made some ballsy choices in the beginning, which attracted massive numbers of nobles, then went conservative after a few losses because their leader was scared to lose his little realm. they lost all their players in no time.
going balls to the walls is always better for the health of the realm IF you can back it up... most cant, or are too scared of losing power to even try, so they resort to the next best thing which is building ridiculous invincible power blocs.
