I posted this in the fief owner rewards thread but it got a bit lost so I figured I'd post it again here.
Basically, I've tried to come up with a way to limit the effectiveness of the larger clans that have comparitively more grinders than their smaller counterparts. The only answer I could come up with was to remove the grainders altogether from the Strat Map, leaving just the people that are actually active and want to play strat itself instead of just fightint the Strat Battles. So, here's exactly what I've come up with so far.
1) Split the cRPG community in 3.
Peasants, Traders/Raiders and LordsPeasants - are people that have no interest in Strat beyond fighting the organised Strat Battles. As such they would have no actual character on the Strat Map would would still be able to fight in the Battles. This will be the majority of the cRPG community
Traders/Raiders - are people that want the chance to actively use Strat to make some extra cash for their cRPG characters and are therefore playing Strat for personal gain. Alternatively, they are people looking to make money for their lords by actively playing strat.
Lords - are people that want to own fiefs, fight wars and play at diplomacy. These are the majority of the current faction leaders plus a few others.
2) Making sure Lords/Traders really are Lords/Traders and not just inactive peasants helping out their friends.
This bit is based on chadz recent fief rewards idea. However it works backwards and instead makes Lords and Traders/Raiders pay in cRPG experience for their places in Strat. The simplest way of doing this is for all Lords and Traders to pay a set XP fee per day which they can then make back (or even improve upon) through their strat actions. Below is a list of my suggested XP fees and rewards
Strat Fee for Traders and Lords - 500,000 XP per day
XP bonus from selling goods to a fief - 1000 XP per 1 gold made
XP bonus from owning a Village - 100,000 per day
XP bonus from owning a Castle - 500,000 per day
XP bonus from owning a Town - 1,000,000 per day
+ 1000 XP per visiting fee and trade tax income
So - a trader that crafts 24 goods for 10 gold each, moves for 1 day to sell them for 50 gold will make an overall profit of 1800 Strat Gold (which they can either spend in Strat or convert to cRPG), and a profit of 200,000 cRPG XP.
Raiders can just steal those goods and sell them which gives the same potential XP gains but even greater gold gains
Lords meanwhile break even if they get a castle, make masses if they manage to capture one of the Towns but still need to find goods to sell if they want to recoup their playing fee.
Overall this will massively depopulate Strat whilst leaving just the active and interested Strat players. Clans meanwhile will remain intact as they will still be needed for rosters and better battle organisation.
Finally - there will need to be a mechanism for fief owners to temporarily revert to being a peasant for when they are on holiday etc. Something that sends their fief back to being neutral whilst freezing their built up assets would be good here.