Well I think they said in a interview that thier goal was less micromanaging and more focus on overall decisions and battles. Which would lead you to imply you would spend less time going through every single city throughout all of England, but rather just focus on the major ones, and make Empire decisions.

In practice I'm pretty sure this will work like MTW2, where you are not controlling every minor village throughout Spain but rather major provinces, this time it's probably controlling central economic hubs.

Just my theory anyhoo, they are going for the less is more thing, to attract new players with less micromanaging.