Here’s the thing: unlike PVP servers, PVE(-C) servers are missing the typical incentives to form a clan. The biggest benefit of being in a clan is that you have someone to refresh your buildings when you’re on vacation (or otherwise unable to play). The second biggest benefit is that you can get purges more easily, although that’s not an issue on the Isle of Siptah anymore. The rest of the benefits are minor: you have the clan chat, you can trade with your clanmats even when they’re offline, etc.
All in all, finding clanmates is harder on PVE(-C) servers because most people want to live in their own bases and do their own thing and being in a clan brings very few tangible benefits.
That’s why my suggestion on @Sir.Henry.Vale’s PVE-C thread was the polar opposite of what you asked for: instead of N+0, I’m proposing 0+M. That would eliminate the problem of people not wanting to form a clan (or merge clans) because of the follower cap.
Of course, I would be perfectly content with your N+0 suggestion – or any suggestion – if Funcom added the feature that lets you pick up your followers.
Unfortunately, they are most likely not going to do that. It would require a substantial (or even massive) amount of work on the follower system and it would have a really, really bad impact on the game database. I could go into details about why, but I’m not going to do that unless people are really curious.
So given that we’re probably never going to be able to pick up our followers, I respectfully disagree with the N+0 suggestion. It’s hard enough to find clanmates as it is.