Yea, Vitality I hope there are lots of little objectives that players can control. I'd like a mix between conquerable hardpoints between territories and player erected resource generators. Like maybe there is a mill attached to the bridge that crosses the river between my land and your land. The mill allows refining of base resources or just generates gold as an abstract for its owner. And on my side of the river I've got farms and foresters and the such that I've set up. You can try to own the mill, and I'd like it if you can even take over my farms and foresters as well without having to outright conquer my castle, but that's a bit lofty. Generally territory isn't coded that gradiently.
There should be space for neutrals to exist within empires and between empires too. Like highwaymen setting up in the forest. In EVE all these unaffliated scum are actually very close to the noob zone and rarely have any impact on player empires. They should be a thing, and they should be more of a problem for big organizations than anything else. It would give empires something to do besides fight each other, and put some real fire in the purpose of being said scum. You could have some kind of buccaneer's den type places around the world in inconvenient places (for the empires) that are auto-kos to land-holding organizations but are friendly to landless ones.
