I was being more intricate with the "unannounced family ties", for example even though Pheno/ML/Xmorti/SES/PoC/VP/DJ etc are all on the same side, the close ties are for example Xmortis with SES. Other alliances are goal tied, so if you actually look at the breakdown there are several different groups. The rest is politics, which is what this game is about. on the other side, the only true tie is AoA and UAE, the rest of the alliances involved on their sides are political involvement (from early on when AoA and UAE were far bigger than the other side and other alliances (stupidly as we have seen) jumped on their wagon for safety) There are other bench sitter alliances that tried to make pacts with both, most of those have had their backs broken by now.