On to the changes:
Encouraging War: The following changes will encourage war which most people feel is the most exciting part of the game.
The basic tenets of war: All kingdoms should be able to declare war on any other kingdom in the world that is within 50% of their NW, not just on the kingdoms on their islands. Once war is declared it cannot be changed for 24 hours. Each regent should have the option to declare the war a draw, a victory, or a surrender. If the other side puts in the corresponding setting (example: victory for kingdom A and surrender for kingdom B) then one side will get credit for a victory and the other will get a defeat. Kingdoms will have world rankings based on their war records.
The war bonus: War is so costly now that a single brutal war can cripple a even the winning kingdom for the rest of the round. That has to be changed. When at war, traditional marches on kingdoms you are at war with should bring more land. 10% for attacks on those less than 25% of your NW and 15% for attacks on those with more than 25% of your NW, and a staggering 20% for attacks on those with 50% of your NW. All provinces in a kingdom at war should receive a 10% bonus to food production, income, and runes as well as a 25% reduction in the cost of homes. As a side note, all retaliation attacks within 24 hours on any province that has attacked your kingdom whether you are at war or not should give you at least 10% of your opponents land. All of these new War bonus's should make war very attractive for most kingdoms.
Making a Quicker Game: Utopia just plain old takes too long. It is a necessity that the game take less time to play every day. Here are are some ways to do that:
Search engine: People are making these already so why not just bite the bullet and go ahead and set one up for everyone? The search engine should at least be able to search NW and land and a combination thereof. This would allow people who are doing land grabs to get them done much quicker saving valuable time.
Drop rob banks: There are a lot of people cheating by making cash farms. Also, even after you take some land for the day you still have to find a target for rob banks which takes even more time. So drop it. Some suggestions to replace the income are: Raise income from an employed peasant, mines, banks and Trees of Gold. Also reducing building costs would help as well.
Limit training troops: Only allow players to train troops twice per day maximum. This will keep people from logging on every hour on the hour to train troops.
Cut the game down to a month long: A lot of people just can't commit to a two month long game or feel trapped because they have to commit for that long. Cut the game down to a month and you'll have a lot less inactive players at the end of the game.
Other Changes:
Allow people to select their own kingdoms: This would be a blast for most players and it would also encourage a Utopia Community to spring up. More players would meet, talk, chat, and recruit. You would have to limit send aid to make sure that this wasn't abused by multis, but it would help the game.
Have a page of Utopia related links: Once again this would help build a Utopian community and it would also be nice for the web page owners so they don't have to post their URL's on the forums constantly.
Two race changes: Add Undead and change Avians. The Undead would be more of a magic and thievery based race. Change the Avians as follows: make their Elites 9/0 and their defensive specialists 275 GC each. They'd still have a 10% minus to thievery and magic, require no boats, and have their attack time bonus. However you could also add 10% to attack bonus. So they would basically be siege engines with monstrous offense and limited defense, thieves, and mages. Would the top 100 be full of them? No, but they'd be a blast to play because they could truely rip through some large defenses.
The thieving base: Raise the base number of acres to 750 for thieving operations. This would mean that the system would consider you to have at least 750 acres of land for your thieving ratio. For example, a province with 250 acres and 750 thieves would have a 1 to 1 ratio instead of a 3 to 1 ratio. This would stop a lot of people creating little multi thief accounts to harass people with because they'd have to do some real work to get it up to 750 acres as opposed to just sitting there and building thieves. On the other hand, thief specialists who were legit could still specialize, they'd just have to be at least 750 acres to be truly effective.
If just the changes I've suggested above were implemented, Utopia would become a much, much better game. It would be faster, more exciting, more interaction with other people, would have less cheating, and would give people more of an opportunity to play with their friends.