I really thought that our attack would not get an Eastern Alliance respone and we would finally break the 2 faction divide. Surely Apostates and Coalition can resume the war against what is left of UIF and leave the Crusader Alliance to fend for itself. This would have been as good a time as any to finally break up the ridiculous alliance. They can't expect us to wait until they are done with wiping Grey Order and Druzhina, seeing as they have taken 3 months and are not even halfway.
Yet Coalition joins the war and the Eastern Alliance has become what it claims to be fighting, a dominating enormous alliance which roflstomps any faction that does not have a similar alliance. The Eastern Alliance is UIF.
1) If you wanted "fun" why did you attack empty Templar Fiefs and give up as soon as they managed to reinforce?
2) If you wanted a war against somebody not in a major power block why did you attack someone in a major power block?
3) If you don't like alliances and all the boring politics of strat why did you ally with the closest faction to you instead of just attacking them in a "fun" war?
4) If they were too small to attack then why did you choose to attack a faction that was undefended at the time of the attack and was essentially smaller with less resources than you in that war?
5) If you don't like expansionist factions why does Shu Han have so many fiefs per player (more than the Coalition - 4 players per fief compare to 5 players per fief) and why are you trying to expand further? According to your "Templars have too much land and deserve some of it being taken from then" mantra then you yourselves have too much land and should be attacked.
6) If you want "interesting" why didn't you attack a neutral faction instead or help speed up the demise of the UIF instead of attacking the Anti-UIF and breaking up our assault on the UIF?
7) If we were no different than the UIF why did we let you roster where you wanted, let you trade with our enemies and give you villages with just one string attached (don't get in between us and the UIF)? Non of these were allowed by the UIF in the past.
The fact is that you chose to attack some undefended fiefs whilst their owners were in the middle of a combined assault on the UIF.
You could have attacked any number of factions (Ni, Risen, Rebels, Imperiale, Ottomans, Greys, DRZ, Barabe, Ecorcheur, Blackfist, Wataga, Angevin, Brotherhood or DKG) and been left alone by the Anti-UIF but I guess those factions have troops in their fiefs so weren't such a nice target.
You could have waited until the assault on Grey succeeded or ground to a halt and then attacked Templars in the west. At that point the Coalition and Mercs would probably have stayed out since those lands aren't actually useful to us - it is only the Templar troops that have now been diverted that we needed. But then I guess Templars would be back in their lands defending those fiefs so you would have had a proper war instead of a land grab.
Instead you went for the easy option of ganking some undefended fiefs (a move the UIF would be proud of) and are butt hurt because because a set of highly predictable and 100% known consequences have come to pass.
As for being "a dominating enormous alliance which roflstomps any faction that does not have a similar alliance." There are over 250 players in 15 factions owning ~20% of the EU map that we have never invaded or attacked (except to protect S&D). If we were the UIF we would have roflstomped these smaller neutral factions before going up against the UIF. The fact that there are so many landed factions in EU right now is a testament to the fact that we are NOT "roflstomping" small independent factions.
Strat 3: only 15 or so factions ever owned land in EU and by the end it was only 6.
Strat 4: 26 different factions hold land now and another 5 or so held land in the past.
I'll let people work out for themselves who is better towards small neutral clans.