Fighting for whoever offers you the most coin makes you a mercenary (aka sellsword) it's not the actions of a soldier affiliated with a faction.
If your faction has no official relations to the side you're fighting for or against then you are in the fight for purely mercenary reasons, with very few exceptions.
Letting your faction members sign up for whoever they want, also makes you highly unorganized, and seems counter-productive. Either you are working towards a goal of bettering your faction, or you're not.
This is assuming the outcome of the battle has a direct impact on the faction of every single merc fighting in it. Well, in the long run we've seen some instances where, yes, mercenaries signing for someone have influenced diplomatic relations, but in almost every circumstance it's due to a reaction based entirely on presumption of intent or some construed insult to sensibility, not the actual outcome itself.
If a faction is neutral and has expressed interest in staying neutral then is it really reasonable to flip out on them for signing en masse against you? That, too, is counter-productive, because that will just guarantee them continuing to sign against you and quite possibly bringing their own resources to bear against you.
At some point personal gain has to be considered, and it's completely unreasonable to expect people not to sign up for any strat battles unless it's against an enemy, especially now that the AI faction is gone. Assigning factions to sign up for on a case-by-case basis is not neutrality by definition, even for the factions that
do care about every person who is mercing against them.
Would be interesting how YOUR faction leader sees this...
Tell us more about how you disobey your leader please.
We once had a fight over your putting words in my mouth. Well, I still don't like it.
You are missing the point. Mercing for one faction against another IS a major act that adversely affects relations - if the signing up on one side is because it has been left open to the members or planned does not matter. A faction leader that cares about diplomacy will need to control that.
This depends entirely on the other factions involved. "Need" therefore is a strong word to use. It won't
always have an adverse effect on relations. Also, a faction leader that cares about his members getting to fight battles would need to realize that in many situations playing into the diplomacy of roster-checks potentially removes a lot of the interest they'll have in the game, and denies them personal rewards as well.
If I don't like the person he wants me to sign for I decline to fight period. Simple as that.
This, realistically, is the extent of what someone could reasonably ask for when trying to accommodate the feelings of a memberbase who develops their own opinions independent of clan dictation. You can't
make someone play the game when they don't want to.
The nature of Strategus sometimes requires a player to fight their friends, but they may still choose not to do so. It may not be the ideal situation for the faction they belong to, but for a faction, particularly an
unassociated faction to ask a player to kill their friend can be cruel. If a clan asks someone to swap to the other side of a roster, there's more to consider than just diplomacy. Trying to keep people from playing the game is also bad form, it's better to use incentive - which is just what LLJK is doing.
The end of it is that there are some factions who truly care who is on their enemy's merc roster, and there are some that do not see the fault in having to fight members of whichever faction, and by that token allow their members to sign up as they see fit (and usually only to a certain point). It is very obvious how these two methodologies would clash and cause issues, but that doesn't make one a
universal law. To force your beliefs on another in this way is the equivalent of trying to start a holy war. It inevitably will result in conflict either way, I guess.
Calradian religions? There's an idea.
Recklessness - members have freedom to sign where they will during times of neutrality and aren't forced to sign onto rosters against their will. Individuals are given personal responsibility for their signups.
and
Formalism - a more rigid system of beliefs where the utmost reverence is paid to the results of a roster sheet. To place yourself onto one side is a declaration of intent that speaks beyond the individual.
There are merits and roleplay potentials for both...!
