SP - Player, NPCs & Troops Ideas for Improving Minor Clans and Niche Troop Trees

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Something really cool about Bannerlord is the introduction on clans. It's honestly a great feature for a M&B game. One of the consequences of this system is the introduction of so-called Minor Clans. These clans, as far as I know, are supposed to serve two primary purposes:

1. They act as mercenaries that can be hired by kingdoms
2. They act as a more reasonable tier of enemies for a newer player to fight before jumping into kingdom warfare

I think they kind of fail on both fronts to be honest, and a lot could be done to make them better. Here are my ideas:

The first issue is that most of the minor clans are incredibly weak to the point of being trivial. There should be a distinction made between minor clans that the player is intended to interact with in the early to mid game vs legitimate mercenary clans. Mercenary clans would be a subset of minor clans with pretty intense troop trees. At a minimum, their troop trees should be competitive with primary-culture T5 units. Personally, I like the more historical approach: mercenaries are historically incredibly effective due to their experience but are also disproportionately expensive. I think mercenary clans should operate this way.

The second issue is that minor clans have no implementation in the game aside from their status as clans with roaming parties. There should be UI in the Kingdom tab for hiring mercenaries. Minor clans could be related to hideouts and/or minor fiefs (distinct from villages, castles, and towns), and the player should be able to meaningfully interact with these systems. There should also be minor clans that take on the form of fallen noble clans that you can permanently invite to your kingdom, hence restoring their status. The general theme here is that the minor clan system comes with ample opportunity to flesh out the game, especially in the early and mid game, and right now that opportunity is unused in any meaningful way.
 
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