Change to expanding realms with Thingwalls instead of Cairns was great, but in my opinion far from perfect.
Long time that flags needs to be protected from doesn't actually lead to pvp, barely anyone is willing to sit next to war flag for 3h to protect it, that is why in most cases it's place a flag and hope for the best.
Time windows in the middle of the night doesn't help with that at all. And being able to place up to 3 flags within time window makes it even worse, 9h instead of 3 of doing basically nothing and even if fight starts your chances of protecting the flag seem very thin.
There are also other issues with the realms, such as dummy realm without bonuses covering world, deriving ppl of bonuses.
So basically:
-Expanding the realm is tedious
-There is no realm pvp
-Most player have no impact at all on what realm they live in.
My suggestion is to create kingdom influence system.
After placing a coronation stone, kingdom influence in the area (thingwall) will start to be generated, and each village within that area will be able to chose a kingdom they wish to support by generating additional influence for that area.(Given kingdom needs to have some influence over an area for villages to be able to support it.)
Each week kingdom with highest influence over an area gains control of it. When kingdom gains control over an area, villages in it(that chose to support it) will start generating small amount of influence in the neighboring areas, allowing villages in those areas to start supporting the kingdom.
Amount of influence generated by a village would be based on number of flags and statues (with some diminishing returns), so bigger villages would have more significance.
Influence points are stored for 4 weeks, to make it impossible for sudden changes just because someone put a dummy villages within area, but limit it so old kingdoms wouldn't have stored enough influence over area to never be challenged.
It won't fix the pvp aspect, but I'm starting to think it's a lost cause anyways. ( I mean you might get a reason for a siege )
It'll hopefully encourage creating relations with other villages and maybe keeping noob villages alive.
It'll change tedious building of flags at specific times to diplomatic ways of expanding realm.
All players will be able to impact kingdoms.