Confederations

I think it is up to the people who devise the treaty/agreement. It should be whatever they want it to be, nothing more, nothing less.

I have a pretty thorough definition of what I consider appropriate requirements upon a confederate--if you really cared about the specifics you could review them at http://arcanum-illyria.com/wiki/Elgea:Harmless/Treaties.  There's no grounds for declaring any clear standard.  The word itself simply means forming a league, standing together.  It's not even defined by the word itself whether that stand be in all things or only in context of a singular common issue, or how that mutual support be demonstrated.

That said, however, I believe the standard Harmless uses (as linked above) is a good example of what confederates typically and reasonably want from each other.  Its sort of a scale...the more one party wants from the other, the better the first party's justification needs to be for demanding it.  But the theoretical limit on what one party would ask of the other is limited only by how dire or extreme the causal circumstances can be.  The greater the need and/or the greater the innocence, the greater the confederate obligations.

If you really wanted to boil it down to a simple caption though, "unconditional defense plus conditional attack" serves well.

Aurordan wrote: you just have to vote twice.

you cant pick more than 1?