Admittedly, I've very little experience with strat and junk but from what I've seen, this current form of gameplay is boring as hell to experience, and even more boring to watch. The developers took a step in the right direction by introducing trading and the ability to attack such trading caravans, but in regards to geopolitics, shit stagnates pretty fast. There is little no reason for anyone to go to war other than shits and giggles.
That said, strategus needs to seriously start looking at things that occur in native single player and implement those features here. For example, every so often you'll get a notification that Villager from X village stole a horse from another village located an enemy kingdom. Based on random events such as these, the faction leading AIs would determine who they should go to war with.
However seeing how the faction leaders in strat aren't fucktarded AIs (and its a bit unreasonable to ask people to Roleplay), developers will somehow artificially force leaders into fighting one another. This brings me to my next suggestion: Fief relations.
Aside from holding onto your fiefs (which is pretty damn easy to do in a massive alliance), fief owners have it pretty easy. I propose that if random event occurs in your fief, you start losing relation with said fief. In order to placate your fief you must either A) enact martial law- lowers fief production and taxes earned for a month real time, B) Raze the offending fief -Severely lowers production of targeted fief if successful, C) Bribe your fief with resources(more on this later). If players fail to choose any of these options within a fair amount of time, the townspeople rebel and they lose the fief and all gold, troops and equipment inside of it.
Which brings me to my next suggestion: Natural Resources. Strategeus needs something far more substantial than land to fight over. That said, each area should have different resources associated with it. For example, only lands in the khergits have spices...rhodock lands have large deposits of gold and silver etc etc... As I've said before, these resources would be used to placate pissed off fiefs and become another commodity for trade.
These features would force conflict and punish/discourage passive play, which seems to be the desire of everyone.
Anyways, questions?