So it looks like, since trading the items required to do SCNMs raises each of the 8 main statistics of a given country, and the longest respawn of any given NM seems to be 4-6 hours, these could be done 4 times a day by every country. It also looks like there are exactly enough freelancers for each country to have 6, meaning if a full party of 6 people were to work on influencing those NPCs, each would need to 'nurse' 3. furthermore the focus on OPS and battles could shift to only those not immediately covered by trading the 8 items.

that would be:
search and seizure
vanguard-X
steel resolve
slaughterhouse
brave dawn
cut and cauterize
crimson domino

because these raise specific things the items don't (I assume? has anyone tested or messed around with what the items exactly raise the bars by?) and also these ops specifically hurt the enemy. I believe in this method even a group of 6 (total, not per nation) could each devote 2 people and start to make gains as early as next week. If I'm right. Also, has anyone pinned down the exact numerical difference between stars of the ops or the country-statistics? as in, if you do an OP, about how many OPs of a given star does it take to raise the country up over-all? I suppose if the devs aren't going to change it, we'll just have to play by their rules. When I have a little bit of time, I'll take a look at all the units of each of the countries and beastmen and try to figure out a ratio of which NPCs tend to go where (besides the ones restricted to zones) and also which 6 Freelances each country would be best off getting, and also which zones shouldn't need too much defending. Since the beastmen forces each has 2 units that can go to the northlands, the only way to get something like that for fiat lux would be a bottom-up approach.

hope I'm contributing to the conversation still!
P.S.: it would be awesome if we could translate this for the JP forum!