I'm of the opinion that the game would be much funnier if the average playthrough was scaled around a player going through less than a hundred quests, getting into about twelve to fifteen massive field battles, perhaps two or three times as many smaller-but-still-significant ones and maybe ten or twenty sieges, having less than a half-dozen conversation minigames (outside of quests, at least), and needing to make only two or three in-game friends. We're talking progression from nobody to the ruler of Calradia.
A lot of poor play experience of BL can be chalked up to making players go through stuff that is fun for the first five hours for fifty hours. Fighting battles just as much as anything; battles are fun as **** before pattern recognition starts kicking in really hardcore and the wild, swirly, mega-fun melee action becomes you doing the exact same tactics because you've been fighting battles for like 350 hours and nothing is capable of surprising you any longer.
These are some really good points, and I agree with them to some extent (the numbers may need tweaking), the number of large battles (as well as noble respawning and army rebuilding) should be lower to make them feel more important. I think that you're generally right in your assessments. The downside to the game would be that such a change increases the factions' snowball. Now, snowballing is not necessarily bad itself, but too much of it makes the player feel like they have to rush to save a faction. Another way that the devs should (but 99% won't) enhance the game to make it feel less grindy is through adding new ways to play, be it through back alley management & more criminal quests, "grand" tournaments every 5 in-game years, option to serve as a soldier, making smithing more influential in raising relations with lords by gifting weapons to them, etc.
One change that I proposed was making the day/night cycle 2x or 3x faster while changing the payments due (as well as influence, construction, food consumption, loyalty, security, prosperity, days until an election, etc.) from ticking once a day to once every 2 or 3 days respectively. This wouldn't necessarily fix snowballing, but it would dampen it a tiny bit by making everyone more mortal (and would also give you the opportunity of playing as your heir).
A possible fix to snowballing that they should've already implemented is making lords stay in newly conquered settlements for a bit (like maybe 5 days, I haven't planned it out much) to provide defences, put some garrisoning units and help stabilise with increasing the auto recruited garrisons & militia (+security & loyalty via perks). This wouldn't even be a synthetic way of slowing down conquests, because right now, lords don't stay nor leave any garrisoning troops so a random schmuck with 50 troops starts besieging the newly captured settlement and takes it back half of the time.
A late-game invasion is also a possible avenue, but I honestly dislike it because in general such mechanics are likely to be either too overdone/grindy or too pointless. I think potentially the late game issue can be made "better" through adding a retirement option to the sandbox that gives you a score like it did in warband and writes an epilogue for your character/clan based on what you accomplished (e.g., the amount of large battles won, the amount of successful sieges, your social status, your clan tier, your clan wealth, your traits, your marital status & number of kids etc.). The game's goal isn't necessarily to paint the map with your colours but rather leaving your mark on Calradia by making your own story. Most people don't play EU4 or CK3 for world conquest for example since the map is too large and the amount of years you can play are limited.
