One thing that Frogboy has really stressed is that the game environment will appear alive or, in other words, that a lot of interesting things will be going on in your empire that isn't necessarily directed by your sovereign.  One of the most notable examples was adventurers stirring up trouble in nearby dungeons. 

My big question though is where are these adventurers coming from.  What's more, when a hero shoes up at your doorstep, where are they coming from, too?

From what I've seen and heard so far, it seems like you've got an essentially Totalitarian grip on your society.  No one owns a weapon unless you hand it to them and every ingot of iron and log of lumber go where you outline that it should go.  Presumably, the other sovereign empires work in the same fashion and, as the devs have suggested, there is essentially no appreciable civilization out there other than a few desperate people scrapping away in the wastes. 

So where are the heroes and independant adventurers coming from?  Having them just spawn based on certain values doesn't really produce the feeling of a living, breathing world.  Or is the sovereign not actually in complete control of his civilization?  How would this be represented?  In Master of Magic, there were tons of neutral cities dotting the landscape, so we could assume that recruitable heroes and independant mercenaries were coming from "out there."

I proposed a fairly simple system in another thread in which the sovereign is a monarch amongst nobles rather than a Totalitarian Dictator.  https://forums.elementalgame.com/368037

In this system, a lot happens beneath the surface that the sovereign influences, but doesn't completely control.  Citizens have independently owned wealth and weapons that they can use for their own purposes, which are represented by wealth and equipment scores in the city inferface.  Many of the people who live in your cities are adventurers, independant heroes, and citizen soldiers, some of which more or less do their own thing and join you in war along your professional soldiers if your cause is right or your influence over them is powerful enough. 

Can we expect some kind of similar system to exist  that would make room for this kind of living world?