Obedience and Morale in details. One of the biggest problems of the fiefdom management aspect was the handling of Morale and Obedience. In the early versions both dropped constantly with no easy means to restore them, causing loss of productivity (Morale), rebellions (Obedience) and general frustration to the players.
TL;DR: Obedience failure effects are weaker now and you have more ways to increase Obedience in your fiefdoms.
Quick recap on how Morale and Obedience work.
Each fiefdom has two base Yield stats (collectively known as Yield): Troops and Gold, typically 0-3 in each. Morale stat will be roughly between 5 and 20. Every turn each fiefdom rolls between 1-100. If the result is lower than the Morale stat, the fiefdom will yield its troops and/or gold. Morale goes up every turn but drops significantly when you attack a fiefdom.
Example: your starting fiefdom, Gaunteinguk, has gold Yield of 2, troops yield of 4 and morale 20. Every turn, there’s a 20/100 chance you’ll receive additional 2 gold and 4 troops from that fiefdom.
Obedience works differently. Until version 0.3, every turn the game would roll 1-100 and compare it to the number of fiefdoms you control. If the roll was below that number, Obedience would drop by 5 points. Every turn the game would roll an additional 1-100 roll against the fiefdom’s <Obedience+Garrisoned troops> and if the result would be above that score, the fiefdom would rebel: all buildings destroyed and the fiefdom becomes natural. As noted earlier, Obedience would drop continuously but you had only two ways of increasing it: conquering a fiefdom and defeating a raid.
However, this proved very frustrating to the players for two reasons:
1. Conquering a fiefdom was a rare incident, as there were exactly 2 fiefdoms to conquer, and defending against a raid was a toss of a coin, as such raids are random.
2. Losing an Obedience roll was devastating: you lost a fiefdom and a lot of gold’s worth in destroyed buildings.
So until version 0.3, Obedience was hard to control and had a devastating effect when you lost a roll.
What’s going to change in version 0.3?
1. Obedience tiers. Starting in this version, when you fail an Obedience check, the results may not be an automatic rebellion. If Obedience in the fiefdom drops between 75 - 95, 1-5 troops garrisoned in the fiefdom will defect (i.e. gone). Between 50 and 75 Obedience: a non-garrison, random building will be arsoned (and lost) and below 51 the territory will rebel as it does now. All in all: you have more time to react and manage your Obedience.
2. Troops in the garrison can now increase Obedience. If you have 20 or troops, Obedience will stop dropping. If you have 30 or more it has a chance to increase every turn.
. However, in version 0.2.x (which you are playing) they will not appear in the palace even if the text hints otherwise. 
