My experience with cabal alliances and how the players in general handle them tends to be somewhat different than yours. You point to the Warlock/Sylvan war as an example, yet while it's good for players to have an impact on things, and to have some freedom to make wars and alliances, everything I've seen tells me that the vast majority only ever act in their own personal interest, and not in that of what their character or cabal ought to think.

I've lost track of how many times I (or the Sylvan Imms) have had to step in to stop Warlock and Sylvan from declaring peace so they can go back to beating on Scion, and now Empire. This was true even when there were less than ten members in the whole Scion cabal. The war goes on because the Imms realize that the whole situation would be even worse than it is now if we hadn't stepped in to prevent such a peace.

The playerbase does not default to wanting an even, fair, fun fight. It defaults to wanting absurd odds in your own favor, and not really caring if that detracts from the overall fun of the game, *until* they're on the receiving end. This is why everyone bitches about ganging, yet everyone still does it.

I really would love to just let the cabal leaders all run with things, and fight wars and make alliances as they saw fit, because having that could make for some really cool scenes and stories. Unfortunately, from all I've seen, it would just lead to ganging on a cabal scale level.

These are all just my opinions, though, not necessarily those of anyone else.