You can get civil wars within civil wars??? I've never seen that but I bet that must be pretty exciting. In a situation like that the different shields idea would have to go out the window. Perhaps they could've just had a few 'generic' shields that could be used for civil warring factions and then maybe reused later after the war had been over for a while.

Imagine how great it would be if the Holy Roman Empire had a 3 or 4 way civil war in a campaign with all the factions making allies and attacking each other. It'd leave an enourmous power-vacuum after it was finished with all the destruction that'd take place.