Hey everyone,
While large, well-organized empires like the Kin of Sheredyn or the Last Lords are the major powers on Saiadha, they are by far not its only inhabitants. Numerous native minor factions are scattered across the world, living in their small, isolated villages. Many of them will fiercely defend their land when you first encounter them, but you can integrate them into your empire and reap both economic and military benefits.
So, how can you go about pacifying the people in and around your borders? You’ve got three basic options:
You can spend a bunch of Dust to bribe the village. This will immediately pacify it, and one of their units will join your army.
You can accept a quest from the village. While this will take extra effort to satisfy them, the quest may yield valuable rewards, and it will pacify all villages of that territory at once.
Or you can just fight them and ruthlessly burn down their village. Quick and very dirty, it will immediately stop them spawning more roaming armies, but you’ll have to help them rebuild before you can add them to your empire and reap the benefits.
If a pacified village is located within the borders of one of your cities, you can assimilate that faction into your empire as a Protectorate by spending some Influence. This will have several benefits for you:
Every pacified village of that faction within your city borders will immediately provide a point of population to your city. Each minor faction has their own economic bonuses (and sometimes drawbacks) for their population, with additional bonuses as their numbers in your empire grow. With enough of a minor faction living in your empire, you will even gain access to a unique city Improvement.
Assimilating a minor faction will also grant you an empire-wide bonus that will scale with the number of assimilated villages in your realm. You can also freely recruit the units of any faction integrated into your empire. While they only have a single upgrade path, making them less flexible than major faction units, many of these units offer unique abilities and can be used to shore up weaknesses in your own unit lineup.
Between these factors, which minor faction to assimilate in one of your limited Protectorate slots is an important but sometimes tricky choice. Do you need an economic boost or military strength? Do you focus on further amplifying your strengths, or do you compensate for a weakness?
Now that we’ve talked about how you interact with minor factions, let’s round this out with a little sneak peek at some of the peoples you might encounter.
