I've been hoping for something in the gap between Mount & Blade and Crusader Kings, where you're in charge of a small settlement and its militia, not a country and its combined armies, or a major city. Basically, M&B ends about where I'd like to see it begin in terms of population and army sizes, and CK begins a bit past where I see it ending.
My recent replay of CK1 reminded me of how important the courtiers can be at the start, yet how generic and meaningless they can become in a generation or two, when you've got 30-40 of them to choose from, and 3-4 with the same level of skill at a particular post. The names scroll past in the message box, and after a while, they're meaningless. Harry finishes training (I don't recall him starting), George marries Amalia (George who? there's 6 of them), and someone on the far end of the map gains a trait....who cares? When you've got 6 courtiers and 50-100 troops, one more or less can matter; with 5x as many of them, it doesn't. After a while, it's just message spam, I can't maintain interest, and it just turns into another pointless map painter with lots of speed bumps.
There have been studies about most humans being able to relate to around 100-300 people before they can't really relate.
