[Nat_Crelk]

Dr.Q => That's right and if I remember well there's a thread somewhere else in the forum concerning the "point of conquerring any town".

Lucadena => After playing many and so many games and hours through BE5 and now BFX / Blue Sun Mod since Beta 5 or 7 (can't remember), my opinion is that it's a waste of time and money to conquer the whole country. You simply cannot be everywhere everytime. I prefer owning three or four places to have some incoming money without loosing too much.
But that could be a goal for you if you wanna rule the whole country.
Your experience through the game will surely teach you what you want to do.
But that's not the purpose here.

I think R@S had developped that part because he surely found it interesting for him and for other BSM players. He had developped a complete "city management" part where you can set taxes rates and income and manage cities defence system wich now works nearly perfectly ("nearly" stands for the actual and sometimes boring CTD experienced after many hours of playing for example).

But I assume you speaks about "militia you can keep with you" no ?
In that case, BSM nor Vanilla let you take your militia men in your squad. On the other hand, you can order them to go and attack some place. Nothing stops you to come and fight with them.
But afterall, I don't really know if that cannot be implemented to the game. R@S will see.

If I'm not right, go further in the game to experiment that "cities management program".
Your expects will be fulfilled.

Ah and last but not least, as Dr.Q says, you can still do the old Government and Rebels storylines but you can also manage to take your "own" path in the country. That's not the white nor the dark path, it's something like the "greyish one", the one I prefer.
After all of that you can conquer the whole country for yourself too.

Good luck

Nat