That's a fair assessment.
Still, my point is that a new clan isn't supposed to be "in charge". Earn your right to lead the realm, then lead the realm, not the other way around.
The player still has the ability to summon armies (with or without CoC nerf), so the question boils down to how often the player can do that. The player should have the ability to solve any problem, of course, but if it doesn't cost the player anything and he can spam it anytime they want, one has to wonder what a "problem" actually is. The necessity to spend 300i out of your 10k reserve to get a 3k dude steamroller that can take any fief? Would having a 5k influence reserve instead make it a problem?
The cut to CoC is massive, because CoC itself was much more powerful than any other policy in the game. It is now brought in line. You can still get mountains of influence to sit on, but that requires more time (not ten times more time, more in the range of 2-2.5 times because there are more ways to earn influence than CoC).
Adjusting required time with sliders sounds interesting, but it should affect all lords, not just the player. And so far having a ton of influence in the hands of AI lords allows realms to field 2-3 armies at any point in time, making them a common occurence. Not sure if that's the intention, but that's what we get.
Please don't picture me hating someone for not wasting as much time as I am, I'm not advocating time sinks as a concept xD. I just think there's a fine line between the player obeying the sandbox rules and the player being the sandbox god, and I'm not sure we want to see it crossed, generally speaking.