Joining a faction is next to useless, anyway. I joined up with the Poles, retook warsaw for them (on my own because of a bug with army patents where NO ONE will follow me for more than one game day) and the king said I was Warlord of Warsaw. So I thought "yaay a reward for all my hard work!", but after about 2 months of in-game waiting and still no flag over Warsaw, I think it's time to give up thinking I'm gonna get it. Epic fail of a game imo. Could have been so, so good, too.