One thing I think it's fair - if still frustrating - to keep in mind is that lord AI is painfully painfully badly stupid. TW devs are so bad at this that it's understandable that they'd get tummyaches thinking about telling them to code like a third or fourth thing.
When playing a soldier in the sultan's army using Bloc's freelancer mod, I got a pretty good idea of what lords do - which is basically **** nothing.
The sultan:
- Patrols ineffectually around his fief - too slow to catch anything except for bands of like 200+ looters
- Calls a big army to patrol even more ineffectually - because he's slower - around his fief
- He sometimes chills at his fief for like 2 or 3 days, sometimes recruiting a couple dudes
- When he's at war, he goes REALLY SLOWLY to defend sieged fiefs
- Or he goes REALLY REALLY SLOWLY to besiege fiefs
- Then he RUNS OUT OF FOOD and NEEDS TO GO HOME
10/10 AI GENIUS GOTY
In case it isn't obvious: there is no reason for lords to be patrolling all the time with massive parties, because they're too slow to catch anything. If they were fast enough to catch things, then endgame bandit spam wouldn't be as much as a problem.
Feasts should totally be a thing, but it conflicts with the "vision" of always being at war to no effect for no reason forever.