The timeline isn't as clearcut as you'd like to make it (IMO); bronzed / we were seeing & hearing enough to seriously suggest there was something going on between Ex & [Fu] way before the 'merge' (nice spin on what I'd call recruiting some food and leaving some behind btw), it was denied at every turn by Ex though, and turned out we were right.
There's a lot of hearsay around this though and we'll likely never agree on it at this stage.
Let's agree for a second, just for the sake of argument, that you declared war because of one TRE player and the fact that you don't think we dealt with him properly; if your solution to not liking how we discipline a player is to declare war that's your call, but it's one I disagree with.
You chose to break up what I believe was the only remaining (decent) western alliance over the transgression of one of our players because we wouldn't dismiss him; I refuse to bow down to any other tribe when they demand the dismissal of a member of my tribe as the only solution to a problem.
You were given assurances about it but you chose not to accept them, again your call, but the path you then chose instead was to recruit from a tribe that had backstabbed us and was attacking us, including ex-TRE players that had already shown a propensity to tribe-hop and attack the players that previously supported them.
That led to us dropping the alliance, a few hours later you declared .. my theory is that you thought one of two things would happen - either we'd roll over and say 'ah yeah it's okay we'll get over it it because of the "bigger picture"' OR Ex/[Fu] would wipe us out.
Guess what .. neither happened - all you did was screw the alliance with us and recruit some food ..
I've also asked myself what I'd do if the roles were totally reversed - and I come up with the same answer every time. Pull the shared forum, instruct my members not to engage with him, seek assurances from my ally etc.,
I would have trusted my ally if they said it's been dealt with and won't happen again and I probably would have wanted recompense for the villes as well.
I wouldn't trust or like the loudmouth aggressive player, and I might keep a mental note to come back to it and deal with him, but I wouldn't have tried to bully my ally in to kicking him .. nor would I have merged with my ally's enemy then declared war; there were & are bigger issues to address other than trying to have my ally kick a member and face another clean-up operation in their own backyard.
At this stage the cause of the war is moot and is coming down to 'he said, she said' sort of BS - I think it was Ex's fault and I've no doubt that Ex think it was ours .. we are where we are though and we'll carry on against the tribe that declared on us if that's what we have to do
Edit
Cross-post with bronzed believe it or not :icon_redface:
We weren't happy - but we were still going to be loyal to the member of our tribe, with conditions relating to future conduct obviously.
There was enough evidence for us to be concerned at the [Fu]/Ex situation and enough loyalty that we wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt. As already mentioned it
really didn't sit well that an ally would make demands on us to dismiss a member of our tribe, especially when all evidence pointed to the fact that we were in the process of being backstabbed by another ally, as bronzed had said already.
We'd offered two villes to compensate for the 2 that were nobled by the way (even though they'd been nobled from a temp account, not from an account Ex were keeping going forward) .. the location of the villes we offered was an issue.
Between 7th April and the night of the 'merge' the alliance remained - when we saw the members moving from [Fu] to Ex (including members that had been attacking us, and members that bailed on us previously and were being attacked by us) we ended the alliance.
It was AFTER that the Ex declared war .. either way you cut it Ex caused this war (either by declaring because we wouldn't kick one of our players, or by recruiting from [Fu] knowing full well what and who they were recruiting).