If you search deeply or spent many hours reading or watching game lore you may conclude many things but mine is like this:

In my theory, in Kenshi the first empire was a terran one and there happenned a social upheaval and the ruling class that may or may not be originated from other planets used robots to supress the social disorders. They most probably succeeded in doing this with lots of loss and damage to their society.

After the most possible human civil war the ruling elite got afraid of their own invention of robots and ordered them to self destruction mode. If you visit Obedience we may conclude that many did but not all. So robots became rulers later enslavers and maybe even victims of experiments of them. I do not think robots were the first ones to try to form new bioengineered strong super soldiers but most likely Sheks bioengineered by the 1st or 2nd empire were used as police force to control humans. So with the hatred of humans being ruled by robots, Holy Nation originated. That movement caused stricker control and of course madness of Cat-Lon and these developments doomed the second empire. Human collabrators of the ruling robots later formed United Cities.

I like the portrail of Kenshi factions. They are neither perfect nor complete villian, they are all grey.

To put an end to these madnesses you must wipe out every single one of them that will also cause lots of loss and damage to the current kenshi population. The game will not allow us to form a new social order / state / empire -that is why I prefer bannerlord on Kenshi - but our actions will be remembered as necessary evil to bury the old corpse of Kenshi.

One by one to achieve these I follow these routes and I hope it helps others to try something similiar.

- The game has 16 Greenlander and 9 Scorchlander unique recruits. On vanilla you may have 5 more maximum squad members 1 is of course will be your main hero.

- If you want to play with minmaxing I do not advise recruiting any animals and if you like roleplaying like me I prefer to start as 4 GL and 1 SL nobodies start or with slave start with 2.5 squad size multiplier - then reduce it 1 to stay loyal to normal gameplay. Freedoms seeker start has 6 so I avoid them. I find rockbottom easy mode and to play as humanely as possible I avoid it.

-I mostly call my clan Free Legion you may choose any way you like.
-No matter what start you choose you will end up in the hub mining copper in early days to buy food and amno and crossbow if you prefer to hunt leviathans for pearls.
-I buy one of the biggest houses in hub avoid thieves as my legion members never steal or assassinate.
-After researching enough tech to feed and defend my legion we have 2 options to settle down in Shun or Iron Trail that has no raids - shun may have bands of bones sometimes and iron trails has acid rain - to consolidate my legion and prepare for war.
-I do not buy armours or weapons other than xbows if I choose pearl hunting for early income to sustain my people till they get self sufficient and of course to buy ancient sciencebooks and blueprints.

-Mid game is the most boring part of my campaigns to bear it I just send hunting duos for money / food or looting ruins to pass time till my homebase will produce at least 30 full specialist armours and homemade edge type weapons, though meta is falling star I prefer homemade planks that edge type 2 version of it needs 72 STR that is perfect for non-peeling route without losing their limbs.

-At late game I mostly have 4-5 bowmen rest with full heavy armours. I stockpile 10 days of food for 30 or 20 if I leave my farmers and crossbowmen behind then I finally go on rampage.

This is my main path to play the game as humanely as possible. So how are yours?