Im afraid them being considered minor races makes no sense to me and here is why.  Irrespective of if they have an ogre camp i can use or whatever, when i conquer the town, i conquer the town and it becomes one of my settlements.  There is no holdover bonus from it having been a neutral npc's settlment beyond a couple of extra items for sale at the merchant just from that one town. 

The settlement still lists available tiles, still earns income and food and research based on what I build there, still has what troops i train and station there etc..etec.. there is absolutely no justification or reasoning for preventing the settlements from growing normally.  Having to raze it and then build on the spot again to have it be able to grow is an act of absolute pointlessness.

Hence why I believe it is a bug and not an intended aspect.

All I am saying is its not a bug.. they were designed  only as a conduit for the special unit in ironeer's case an ogre which is a much stronger unit then the average unit...

now me personally I love the idea of minor races.. (think barbarian) however I think level 1 is to small.. I feel they should have a limited ability to grow in population (say level 3) on their own.. once we concur them then the city should be able to improve.. but that's the way i think it should be.. so we agree on it should not be limited (at the very least not to level 1) 

And the cap being in place when they are under thier control is FINE, but once conquered they are no longer under thier control and as such the cap should then be removed.

I think your missing my point mate, I don't object to minor races in the least.. i don't even necessarily object to not being able to use all the ogre camps that turn up with these minor races.

I even applaud the idea that thier growth is capped while under the minor races control..

BUT once I've conquered it the growth cap should be removed because I as the player am not a minor race and there is no longer any real justification or necessity to limit the growth anymore.

Also for the record ogres arent specific to the Ironeers, they almost all come with the ogre camp most of the time irrespective of which minor race it is.  The only actual uniqueness they have per se is that each neutral settlment will have a couple of additional items for sale that are above and beyond what your equipment tech would normally put in the settlements shop.

Another thing worth mentioning (as earlier you implied you razed them to get rid of them) is even after you Raze a neutral minor race settlment and rebuild one using a pioneer of your own next too but not on the same spot the ogee camps from the neutral settlment still remain..  So all that messing around and the camps still remain, all you lose are the 2 unique items they had in the shop.

which again just reinforces the argument that even if it isnt a bug (and frankly im not convinced because as it is makes NO sense) it remains fairly pointless to have to raze them and rebuild on the location ot get a settlement that can grow AFTEr youve already conquered the one that was there.  lol

Ive kept all three of the ones i had influence over so far if only to prevent the enemy empires from using them, seemed like the senisble thing to do.  Bit annoying both sidez cant use them though seeing as they are from a neutral source.  We need some neutral towns that have kingdom camp of some sort..Treemen Grove or some such lol.

The way the minor faction hubs are implemented implies that they are just small mining camps, outposts, universities, or trading hubs. They aren't intended to grow. However, the main reason they don't grow is because there is nothing for them to grow into. If the mining camp were to expand it would lose it's special features or graphics. Each minor hub has a specific bonus to it including iron or crystal (that the city generates) in addition to an adjacent bonus resource. If you really hate this then you can make all the minor factions use the default city hubs like all the main factions but, again, they'll lose their special resource.

Minor factions do not build, they don't expand, and they don't go after resources. They are quite unambitious. This is by design and not a bug.

This is agreat game but there are indeed a lot of intended options which make no sense. (another is a map made of squares instead than hexex, just because the developer is allergic to... bees... or whatever reason. But that's different thread I guess)