Thanks for the shout out!! I'll toss my two cents in - the only gripe I have with fiefs and management in general is the slow rate of XP gain for companions. They have adjusted XP gain for a lot of skills recently which made it much easier, but take melee skills for example - It's not hard for a player to farm XP since we can out-fight the AI very easily. However, a companion in combat even at the higher skill levels still make stupid choices and get destroyed. For example: fighting 1 vs 1 a companion with late game armor and 300+ skills makes them formidable. However, insert them into a 5 vs 1 and it's pretty much gg even against low tier enemies like looters. Swap a player into the equation with 0 combat skills and the worst weapons can still effectively win the 5 vs 1 because we don't just charge in to trade blows. We back up, flank, position, etc. but the AI doesn't do this, which usually means they get 1 - 5 kills and then get dunked on lol. This is just one example of how annoying it is to farm XP for companions, I have a whole list like tactics, leadership, etc. for companions.
I understand where others are concerned about with managing fiefs, but with a little bit of planning ahead of time it shouldn't be an issue to manage and maintain fiefs, even without a governor. Passing good policies pretty much eliminates loyalty issues and putting a good governor in place is just an extra bonus.