Perfect example of how "fixing" one problem can lead to another completely separate problem.
Upon release a couple weeks ago, the first obvious big issue was the infamous snowball/steamroll. A big contributor to this was frequent lord defections, jumping from weaker factions to stronger ones, accelerating the snowball effect. So one of the first "anti-snowball" hotfixes was greatly lessening the chances of lord defections. Which DID work...I don't know if they've completely gotten faction-v-faction warfare quite where they want or where it should be, but the rapid snowballing has certainly diminished. But now that's led to THIS situation, lol.