Two very good ideas!(i promise)

[MaxWilson]

Capital-only troop production is actually limited by the fact that your special site is only at your capital. For instance, Boar Lords for Marverni can only be produced at a province with Carnutes, which happens to be your capital. Allowing your Pretender, for 20 points, to mutate Helheim's Helhalla into another Carnutes when you capture it strikes me as... weird. I don't see how to make this feature work thematically.

Pretender design is just that, pretender design. We don't actually get to do any nation design. Allowing the pretender to pay points to affect its nation mingles the two orthogonal dimensions. Perhaps you could do something more thematic, like paying 100 points at design-time to include 1 Mechanical Man per point of dominion in Province Defense, sort of like the Mechanical Militia and Fata Morgana spells.

-Max Wilson