I bet this has been suggested before, but how about this:

Add new spells or a standard race which can do buffs, like to cast no fear on a fam member.
You could do several different buffs:
add X% attack bonus for X ticks to a fam member
add X% ammount of income or ressource bonus for X ticks to a fam member
and so on.. and so on.

to ballance the whole thing a little you could add one op that stacks up to 3, or whatever else times, and the more stacks you got, the mightier the buff gets.

example:

you do an income buff on a fam member

you do without the "stack op", you add 5% income
you do with 1 "stack op", you add 10% income
you do with 2 "stack op", you add 15% income