I think gaining a fief should be a much more signifikant event in a BL playthrough, and the game should communicate that better.
Right now it is an uneventful event, if thats possible. It's just not that significant.
The fief upgrades should be meaningful and offer significant effects (improvements , maybe disadvantages depending of balance). They should make the player care for the fief and what happens to it. If some AI lord comes and raids the fief, that should make a good intrinsic reason to search them and make them pay. Maybe put even an extrinsic reason to it - autogenerate a quest every time a player fief is raided: Lord A has raided your fief, get revenge!
It could work to other way, too - if the player raids an enemy fief, they will paint a target on their back fo the enemy lord.
This would lead nicely into the larger political landscape, when the player owns more fiefs, has a few parties in their clan. Make the fiefs the base of the players income - via nurturing them or oppressing them - make them their economic lifeline. And then make them have issues to resolve, with consequences, some based on the upgrades you built. And then let the player deal with them, or send someone else to do it (make them feel they are powerful, they are in control, take can make others to solve those problems). This could be made mostly via menus - even though I would like visual development in scenes, that train seems to have left and gone.
There are already foundations for something like this implemented - there are quests issued by notables in fiefs, there is a messaging system in place, there is a system to choose policies which have consequences.
What is missing is
- make owning a fief important game-wise (important source of revenue, raise the social status of the player if the fief is managed well)
- Make it feel important, present it to the player attractively, make them feel the positive and negative consequences
- tie it togehter with the other campaign systems, the clan system, the ploitical system, the social- and relations system.
I will quote a response from another thread, as I feel it fits the questions discussed in this thread here very well. Please excuse me if this against the forum's etiquette.
I will try to make a proper design something like increasing number of projects especially new projects effecting bounded villages (fe. saving them to be raided consequently) - it should be easy to implement to get approved - for making things better for villages / castles and go with that suggestion. We can discuss it in forum too. Then we will see what will be happened.