Some questions and suggestions regarding perks.
Will there be more than 6 perks for each category? They feel like such a great way of characterising your mercenaries, but from looking at vids it feels like most mercenaries will end up samey perk-wise. More perks would make for more builds and opportunities to really characterise a mercenary.
In case you have concerns regarding balancing, you could do something similar to how you can now only select one of the ultimate perks of each tree. Just as an example: 1 ultimate offene, 4 second tier offense, 6 third tier offense. Or you keep the current number of perks, but you randomise which ones are available to each mercenary. That way you could limit the perks available, while also making each mercenary more unique.
Another balancing measure could be to reduce the number of perks each mercenary gets on level up. Like getting a perk at level up for the first eight levels and then getting a perk only after levelling up twice from that point onwards. Or you could make certain perks unique and related to events, so that you could only get them that way.
Also, do the other factions get perks unique to them? So not just traits related to their class (like warlord), but actual (orcish) perks? That would them more feel more alien and make different groups you encounter feel less identical.
Another suggestion I have is related to the idea mentioned here about gaining traits over time, though in this case related to the kind of situations that these mercenaries get into. You could do something similar to the Darkest Dungeon where your characters can get positive or negative traits in response to certain events. The odds of which one you get could be influenced by others traits the character has and on their stats.
So, if you were to say, be the only survivor of a slaughter orchestrated by orcs, then you would have a chance of getting a perk related to that. It could be something like:
Never again! – Mercenary never drops below wavering when facing [ORCS]
Déjà vu – Mercenary’s resolve can never go higher than ‘steady‘ when fighting [ORCS]
A high resolve mercenary could then have better odds of getting the first, while a character that has a trait that makes them start out with their morale at ‘wavering’ could have a better chance of getting the latter. The same principles could also be applied to opponents, like Orcen raiders gaining traits after succesfully raiding the area around a city several times. For example:
Bold – Orc starts at ‘Confident’ when fighting [HUMANS]
Overconfident – Melee defense of Orc is reduced by 10 when fighting [HUMANS]
.