Yes, but making policy now is like saying it was okay to do it before
but not now. That is also an uneven subjective treatment of the subject.
I believe that some transfers of nobles may have already taken place,
will any modification to the policy redress those old transfers?
Obviously not. Therefor any change to the rules is (to a small degree)
unbalancing.
What we are really discussing is "are there any valid reasons to transfer
nobles / NP between factions". In any game of limited resources which
in this case is essentially only noble points, as anything else can
be obtained. Then the only hard currency can be that resource. If you
take away the ability to trade in that resource, then the player
interaction will suffer.
Let's take an example. It is turn 120, and I have a large armed stack
wandering about provinia, attacking unallied or new nobles. What can
they offer either me to not attack them, or an already established
alliance to let them join? Money - probably have sufficinet for their
needs; wood, stone, goods - they can be got on their own - their
only coin is their nobles who can do things - one has to either trust
that they will do things for the alliance (at a measurable cost to
support another group) or one can ideally get another noble with the
guarantee that even if something goes wrong there will be a lasting
benefit.
In the playtest I was doing just that, wandering about the start area
attacking people because they were there (and the fact that the game
was ending). There was nothing that they could have given me to convince
me not to keep attacking (but I was always short nobles).
I believe that if you get rid of Swearing it will be a) detrimental
to the game in the long run, and to a lesser degree b) unbalanced for
any faction that has been the been the receipient of a swear.
-Dan