For #6. Small factions are already forced into alliances to fill their rosters. This won't change that. Increasing upkeep won't make a difference either though. In fact that will hurt small factions more as a larger faction has more fiefs/players to spread troops around, whilst a small faction only has limited places to keep their troops. Finally silver to a large faction is easy to find whilst for a small faction it is more difficult making your suggestion even worse for small factions. You could double troop upkeep and the Coalition would still be rolling in cash.
I mean alliance like coalition where two clans have joined into the same faction. Currently smaller factions befriend larger factions for roster support and to not get wiped, but there is no guarantees in this and they remain separate factions which can switch sides at any time.
As for the Silver, that's why I said DRASTICALLY over 1800, this means even small clans will still be able to have multiple 1800 man armies at the same price they do now. Whilst those stacking troops in one location will have huge upkeep (I know Coalition etc have endless money now, but we are talking about changes for the next strat. So it won't have much effect now where everyone has 1000's of troops all shiny armed but will hopefully cause people to spread their troops next strat, giving more places to attack.)
I don't like your ticks = troop cap idea because I am frequently running out of ticks. I mainly play strat battles and don't spend much time on 'normal' servers. So, when I run out of ticks I make more of an effort to join EU2 to earn some ticks. Even then it's never guaranteed that I will make any ticks. I don't see why I should loose troops because I don't have ticks yet have enough silver for upkeep.
What's the point of me making more ticks if they are going to run out and i'm going to loose all the troops I just made?
Again I feel this will just be something else which will push people in to forming larger mega clans/factions. HRE can come on EU2 in numbers and roll X5 all day and night. I (a solo player) get a multi every now and again will have my reward removed when I can't keep the multi. Might as well join HRE (or any other big clan that can roll the multi) get shit loads of ticks and exp whilst making HRE even more powerful on the strat map.