I startet a new game and set the Kingmaker mode difficulty to easy. I found the idea to control the direction of your rulership, build towns and so on quite interesting without having too much hassle.

Anyway, I ended up disabling this mode completely...

First, the loading screens are insane. Capital City -> Throne room -> Map -> City -> back to Map -> back to throne room.... omg...

And second I do not like all the random encounters and time limits.
Sometimes you get more events than you have advisors to assign, sometimes they fail without any chance to influence the outcome.
Certain projects (like level up one of your city stats) fast forward 14days resulting in sometimes failed events or missed opportunities (and you can't stop it).
In the end you have to return to the city each month at least once or you will miss to many events, so clock is always ticking while venturing out.

The basic idea is good, but sadly I hate it how it has been implemented.

I am interested how are you managing your country. What are your thoughts?

my thoughts is you are doing it wrong, developing too slow and have problems once you fall farther and farther behind the expected curve. you do have enough time time to develop everything to the max, do all quests and then some. I would prefer the events times cut by about 15-20% and baron-involved base timer cut to 10 days, to add some slack, but the addition of portals does pretty much the same, so I'm ok with it.

this post about sums up how I'm doing it.

there is a project later that cuts baron-involved timer by half, so I usually explore more in the beginning and rely on bulletin boards to keep me on the curve. also before you unlock sub-advisors it's hard to find an opening to actually level.

Call me a cheat but i got a mod to cut event time by 50 % and with that u really have to cut the cost also to 50 % ( or else no point of cutting the time ) . i could of cut it way more , but seemed unsportsmen like.

Kingdom management alot more satisfying and less stressful now , plus hopefully i wont miss anymore quests on timers , like i did with Valerie's first quest and thus totally ruined her as a companion :(

I agree with InEffect that the overall time requirements should be cut down a bit, and I'd also like the base travel speed improved slightly. These would make the balancing act of kingdom management a little more engaging.

The teleportation circles are nice, but don't scratch the same itch as treks into the unknown.

So much of the kingdom building is shoehorned into the late game, and that balance could be better made, I think.

thing is, if you lower the time there is no tension at all. that makes the mini-game a mindless clicker.

oh. no doubt about that. a lot of things in this game could be much better designed, kingdom management included. first of all I would move it much more into decision making, than it is now. atm they can't really do much to make it better as strategy and priority assessment are dominating there.

what I would personally like done there:
-cutting times a tiny bit, as mentioned above. nowhere near 50% is needed, but a few days on tasks won't hurt. especially long ones an baron-involved.
-re-balancing cost/effect on projects and buildings. 50% of the former are a trap to waste your BP, 50% of the latter are too costly for what they do. especially 4-tile ones.
-making master artisans to tell you what stats they need to improve.
-decent tool-tips, including what stats actually do, a button to see all buildings and their prerequisites
-some mini-game where you would actually use your troops on the global map. that would be immersive an probably won't break a budget to make. Maybe a part of DLC?
-a simple system to get mid-ranged weapons of your choice. leave stuff like purity to masters. just let us to guarantee an item with an elemental enchant from kingdom development. roughly +1 A2, +2 A3, +3 A4, +4 A5, +5 A6.
-more visitors and more meaningful choices that would affect you in the long run.

upd. oh. also masters telling us what will they make before you order would be nice.