Now, this is a big time bullshit. If you were asked to judge Strat by the posts in this thread you would come to equally smart conclusions as the alien asked to say what the airplanes are for by watching TV - carrying celebrities and crashing. Everyone is playing Strat for fun, not to win, obviously except for Druzhina, Union, Grey Order, Bashi and Nords... That's pathetic.
Any game's purpose is to entertain, and any player's purpose is to win, or at least to try to win - otherwise it is not a game at all. I said that before and I am ready to repeat that any time - the beauty of Strategus is based on personal relations. Call it a ... team-play, is that a good word?. Just try to build something yourself - create the clan, convince people to trust you, follow you as a leader. Try to find a trustworthy ally. It is a difficult, time consuming, yet rewarding task. Entertaining job. Not for you? Aaaaah, so you prefer crying that the "game is bad"? Because some play to win? Pity. If you spend enough time and effort building an alternative to what you call "carebear alliances", you would find that is is not impossible. But that would mean that you want to win too, right? Oh, sorry, no - you would do it for fun. LOL.
Strat 4.0 has a great potential to accommodate large number of clans including medium and small ones. The great wars will come in time. And this game is about the wars, isn't it?