A wall of text worth reading :)
Thank you for this excellent summation
o.O if you perused it all, you're my favorite person today mister!

After reading the governors "compaint", I instantly thought about Metsuke. I think they are the closest thing to "governors" in the game, even if the name does not really mean that.
Still, I don't miss governors for each province just for the sake of having them. They should add something important without making the game require too much micromanagement to be justified.
Ey, I see your point, yet I think I envisaged a lot more through my suggestion.
Basically, Governors would be Vassals.
Features:
- you could replace them.
- check their loyalty; if your own personal fief would be larger than 20% of your entire domain after you take control of 5 provinces, their loyalty would decrease.
- give or take teritorry from their hands.
- upon going to war, they would be mobilized and bring contingents of troops from their respective provinces, a mix of units.
- the proportion of each type of unit you could influence by assigning the respective governor priorities like archers, yari-wielding units, cavalry etc. this would of course determine the building order of structures within their castle.
- also, the structures independent from the castle, such as farms and roads would still fall in your purview.

I really don't see this happening in the games I play in. A strong economy means more troops, but not better troops. The dojo's needed for the basic samurai troops are low tier techs that you can grab fast. Sword and Yari dojos are quite easy to build.
During each game a player will research at least the low tier techs from both bushido and chi, which means that the real "decision" is more like choosing between early game land consolidation and going for a legendary dojo fast.
If you go for a strong economy, I think you will anyway have yari/naginata/katana troops available since skipping those techs would be just poor strategy.
Simultaneous research is a bit like researching one chi tech and then one bushido tech and repeating that. The eventual game effect is pretty much the same even if the "mechanic" for it is like it is.
Mmm, I understand your point of view, and I was acknowledging it from the beginning. It is quite solid in its reasoning really. What I thought was that it would open up the game a lot more for both the player and the AI. The latter always seems to go for Bushido tech, and so is impeded economically -- or must be really, though the size and quality of its armies could argue against that sometimes.
What I experienced in my Uesugi campaign was that, despite a large revenue and a huge research speed advantage (I had Confucian Academies in Kozuke and Suruga by 1561, numerous Temples, eight generals with Poet maxed and five monks with all the Chi research speed increasing talents maxed or at least what was available until level five for two of them) I still obtained Epic Architecture only around 1568 in a short campaign (limit: 1575), while going only for Heaven and Earth in the Bushido tree. I simply thought that obtaining legendary units early on would make the most compelling part of the game a lot more fun, especially if the AI would be able to obtain them fast aswell.
I love the fact that you are not able to have everything and you'd never be able to tech up fully, yet I'd like for one to be able to reach at least one of the "pinnacle" techs before one finds itself entrenched in the pre-RD build up period, when the battles for survival are gone.
Nevertheless, thank you for giving me your thoughts.