I know you have your own vision on how this should look like, but I have a suggestion that in my humble opinion would make the game very immersive.
So there is the Calradian Empire with its ruling elites. How about making it politically divided into "main families" and "minor families"? I will not try to hide it, my inspiration comes from Game of Thrones.
The idea of major houses falling due to political struggles, minor houses ascending and replacing them sounds great in my head. It would be great to be able to influence such shifts in power of groups of people.
It was one of the biggest things that Warband lacked for me: Influence. Yes, you could help your favorite kingdom conquer towns and castles, but it all felt very shallow. What I would love to see is a kind of responsiveness from the world. The world should change as the player shapes it with his actions.
Most things that happened in the Warband world were rather uninteresting and boring. Lord X became the marshall? Whatever. Swadian Kingdom and Vaegir Kingdom signed peace? Nevermind. It all seemed so meaningless.
I really hope, that Bannerlord will change this, and when I will get a message like "Lady X of house A married Lord Y of house B" I will have to consider how it will influence my standing in the kingdom and if I should take some kind of action because of it.
I would also like to use this occasion to mention another thing: Depth. This game really needs depth.
Warband was a pure sandbox, with all it's pros and cons. One of the cons was the question: "What now?"
The game gave you the ability to trade, to be politically involved, and of course to fight. But everything aside from fighting was very shallow. Trading was kinda boring, aside from figuring out trading routes that would give you the biggest profit, all you could really do was start enterprises, but that was boring too, as you were essentially investing money so that it "grows" by itself. Politics were boring too, as you didn't really have much influence over what happens in the kingdom you're part of. You could influence who becomes the marshall, but it didn't really matter much.
Bannerlord should add more depth to these elements of gameplay. Introduce other traders, who you could support or have rivalry with, make your choices in diplomacy matter, like mentioned before dynamic families and houses. It would add a lot of replayability to the game and make the experience MUCH better.
I'm sorry for the length of this rant, but I really hope that Bannerlord will fill out the blanks that Warband left.
