I think the deciding factor in terms of casualties was Acre's...odd...choice in armour.
I agree. But at the time we thought that ALL villages would be very lightly armored and that we would work much better together. We didn't account for the fact that we had maaany outside forces sign up (and sadly we were forced to use outside forces) and fight for us.
Note to self: Never buy padded armor for an army ever again!
We also didn't think of the siege shields we bought until later (Doi).
As far as I know, there was another faction or two that did badly like us, so It's more a noobie mistake. Should've done better, but live and learn.