Try using the loyalty/morale factor along with the cost
and time involved to keep loyalty up.
Loyalty should DECREASE if nothing is done each month.
It should decrease faster for large factions, because each
man is farther removed from the leader. It should decrease
slower for smaller faction because there would be a more
personal relation with the "PC".
This way the large faction would find it difficult to keep
all the men happy, and would improve slower because of the time/money
necessary to keep up morale. And the deserting men/units.
(I prefer a unit to have MEN desert ... 1 man desert... rather than
the whole unit turn neutral. This means that the UNIT would disappear
rather than become independent... but that's another story.)
Still I think morale could be PART of the solution.
-Scott Cate. The Darc Man.