Other games like Utopia use binding NAP agreements enforced by game mechanics, and the result has almost universally been stagnation and a boring game where people delay aggressive actions fay beyond what is reasonable.
In utopia there are no binding agreements by the game's programming, but among the top breaking them is basically a death sentence due to mutual agreement. Rest of the server has to expect being waved at pretty much any time, and if they're lucky they don't get double-hostiled.

I think a major issue is that many kingdoms artificially stunt their growth early on, when the optimal strategy for all kingdoms early on is growth - even those that can't hold on to their acres against skds. Yet this age, I wound up in a top 25 kingdom during the first week of the age simply by virtue of having 25 provinces, even though most of my kingdom deliberately avoided growing. That says a lot about the mentality that's plaguing the game, when most of the players go against their own interest just to stay out of the range of the top.

Dice is powerful, but it doesn't matter - top kingdoms are always going to have more to lose going to war than they have to gain, and will almost always make cf terms to delay any possibility of disruption for as long as possible.