as to the start of the round where the initial attempt to curb DRZ/UIF power failed... for those who are unaware of what happened and judge people as having not done enough... well here is more info so that you can make a better educated decision.
Fallen and many EU clans were working together with the hopes of preventing DRZ from taking all of their lands unopposed, though they also knew that they could not interfere with many of DRZ's allies like Grey order and Union. That alliance was betrayed by the Wolves who then put together an alliance that was designed to wipe out Fallen and the other EU clans that wished to get in the UIFs way, I can only assume that the motivation for these clans to side with UIF instead of against UIF was that they wanted to be allowed either entry into the UIF or at least be allowed to peacefully exist after having protected UIF interests. At any rate, Fallen was hoping for an easy time setting up in the steppes where they would have some security against UIF aggression due to the ping wall. Hospitallers and Occitan needed a place to set up and get some land of their own and after being approached by the wolves and probably other clans related to DRZ/UIF they decided to fight against the Fallen in the steppes (though this decision was also helped by the large amount of animosity between Fallen and Hosp/Occ). when Hosp/Occ were on the ropes, wolves also took a big hit fighting against the nords and agreed to join the Fallen's cause, only to betray them a week or so later when the UIF counter attack was ready to go, led by the Bashibazouks who defeated the kapikulus after the wolves betrayed their alliance and attacked them instead of supporting them; meanwhile hosp/occ managed their big comeback with extremely well funded and large armies (funds and armies which likely came from EU allies) and the help of some divine intervention in the form of magic carpet riders, conquered the steppes while Bashis and others came north and attacked HRE.
Also worth noting during this time... FCC initially hoped to stay out of the war in the steppes and to avoid pushing a NA vs EU style conflict, we were somewhat selfishly hoping to ignore the EU side of the map and do our own thing even though we expected the UIF to come knocking eventually, we figured we would focus on our own fun in the meantime; this position did not hold though as I made a judgement call that it was absolutely essential to assist Fallen in the steppes as our relations with hosp/occ had been quite poor and the alliance between hosp/occ and the UIF seemed very obvious to me; as a result the FCC joined in that war on the Fallens side but was ultimately unable to defeat hosp/occ. At that time I also tried to encourage CHAOS and LLJK to commit support to the Fallen as I felt that if the steppes fell to hosp/occ that we may as well consider that land to be UIF controlled and for all intents and purposes lost to the rest of NA and hostile to most NA clans. CHAOS and LLJK had neutral relations with hosp/occ and at least one of those clans had serious animosity with Fallen and ultimately, both groups decided to sit out that conflict. After the steppes fell the Mercs were targetted and mostly wiped out by DRZ and Grey order for being against the UIF and participating in the coalition that attempted to curb UIF power, then the FCC was attacked by a brave kamikaze bandit who really made the few active FCC members aware of just how disinterested we were in strat by this point, as we ended up having something like 4 people show up to defend a fief at 6am est on a work day and so despite having more than enough troops, gear and money, we ended up having some huge defeats agaisnt leiknir and then when we did counter attack against his army which had many devs fighting for it, we suffered a massive bug which led to us losing 2000 armed troops and the last few FCC holdouts gave up on strat. As for what happened after that... I didnt pay much attention to strat but from my understanding... a whole lot of nothing happened in the NA area until eventually lljk and chaos got so bored that they started the green thing and tried to fight hosp/occ and unsurprisngly, UIF launched a full scale invasion against CHAOS once their hosp/occ allies were being threatened.
moral of the story: the only hope of curbing UIF power was for every single non-UIF clan in the game to work together to fight against them from the second strat went live, and to destroy any clan that was sympathetic to the UIF cause. in other words, to become an even bigger and more douchebaggy alliance than the UIF was the only chance to beat the UIF, and most people did not consider that to be their idea of a good time and many smaller clans were too intimidated by the prospect of going against the UIF and instead supported them; while other clans just tried to stay out of it.
hope that all makes sense... i tried to be fairly objective but im sure a few people will yell at me and say im biased and qqing and all that. I think every clan made the decisions they felt were best for them and i actually completely understand why a lot of clans made the decisions they made, and ultimately I think that is how strat should be, i think having the big issue of "should we all try to gang up on the UIF?" is really counter-productive in terms of having fun in strat... turning strat into mega alliance 1 vs mega alliance 2 is really boring, and the smaller conflicts were a lot more fun, but it ultimately seemed to be a whole lot of proxy wars in the bigger picture of UIF vs those who are against it.
p.s. i offer no constructive ideas on how to fix the issue as it seems related to mentalities and i dont see any way to change that. splitting NA and EU would be great for NA but would suck not only for the non-UIF EU clans who would get buttraped every strat and never have any real fun, but it would also suck for UIF as they would have less victims and that would make them sad.
