From Karl Franz Biography
"In Total War: WARHAMMER, Lords lead your armies into battle; without them an army cannot exist. They are your generals, and are split into two categories: Lords and Legendary Lords."
What I get from this statement; Army limits are back, you are getting them whether you like em or not, we didn't listen to them we know better.
Now, you could argue that this doesn't limit army size. I argue it does, otherwise I will just have 20 or more lords and combine them into an army (or CA will artificially force me to have only 1 in an army). This is dumb on so many levels.
I predict the features we've lost from this single blow so far are;
Being able to reinforce armies from a settlements garrison, no you need to waste a lord to do that.
Being able to begin to recruit an army while your lords are currently elsewhere, no you need to wait for a lord to return and you can only recruit in one region (might be a province, but that's only like 1-3 units per turn at most)
Being able to send a small elite army to hold a chokepoint (like a bridge or idk, a carrack in this game?)
Skirmish definition; an episode of irregular or unpremeditated fighting, especially between small or outlying parts of armies or fleets.
Skirmishes removed, again.
And if you're talking about Warhammer authenticity here, I doubt every battle ever fought in warhammer lore was between an elector count and a equally prestigious officer, there had to be border skirmishes and skirmishes in general (Brettonia and the Empire?)
And what offends me most is that the penalty of not having a lord would be enough to compell players to use lords in battle. Assuming empire lords are other elector counts, having a general ontop of a griffin throwing lightning bolts or some crazy thing (I think Elector counts can use magic, and griffins can transport mages and agents!), a single super powered unit like that is something most people would want to take with them on the offensive. A army without a hero is vulnerable, because now if they fight a pitched battle they really have no counter to the enemy lord who could be very powerful and wreck havoc... No CA thinks you're either stupid, or is imposing this stupid rule on you and the AI so the AI isn't as bad as it otherwise would be spamming small armies like all other warscape games...
/Rant.