OK H&H is not a game, it's a society simulator.
We got realms, powerfull villages and hermits lives there lifes in diferents ways.
If you devs want to make it more realiste, you there are two points that you should look IMO :
1 - soil quality in large zones and soil quality that matters :
Factions in this game are like empires, civilisations, look at aztecs, egyptians, sumerians, etc
Those civilisations were born in some places for a reason : quality of soil.
By soil I mean the soil is fertil, the climat is right, plants grow well, then animals, etc, look at Nile valley, tigre and euphrate etc ...
Powerfull people build there palace in the center of fertility, and the more you go away, the less fertil is the soil and the people are more and more poor.
And that's OK, an hermite could live in a not-so-good land, if this land is safe cause it doesn't interest the powerfull and rich people.
Society is building with this shem and it works.
In H&H, soil quality dont matter at all.
Quality is just randomly put all over the map.
That's not realistic, that's not what we see in real world, so how could this game be a simulation ?
My argument is not about all type of quality, its ok if cactus are of a better quality in desert, and so on.
But IMO there must be some lage zones of soil quality, and that soil quality may be relevant.
Look at the planete from the space, the fertil lands are in zones like the oceants, the deserts, the montains are.
So you can have bigs factions in central fertil zones, and each player can find a place according to his gameplay :
- want to have peace and leave a casual life : go to the border
- want to fight a bit for power : go to the suburb
- want to join civilisation, go to town and join a faction
2 - less rivers :
Now we have oceans to seperates peoples, what is the point of having all thoses "rivers" with no bridges ?
When you go outside, its just a boat game, why ?
Now we have the sea, there could be rivers near the sea if you like that stuff, but what is the point of making rivers the main travel chanel, IRL people build roads to travel in most part of the world.