Half the battle SoA had Surcoat over Mail and better headgear, not that it matters
Russian time feeling is awesome^^. SoA had 200 Surcoat over mail and 200 Zitta Bascinet, which were transfered to the Village by one of our trade caravans passing by. Since SoA lost far more than 400 tickets it wasnt 50% of the time we spent in heavy equipment. You basicly attacked a lighty armed/armed village with shiny armed troops, not that big of an achievement I'd say.
As you said SoA had too many low lvl items in their village, not only that we couldnt use siege equipment which is annoying but not essencial, we also had no access to any kind of ammonition for our range for the first ~30 minutes, which was a real pain in the ass.
Also, why eastern block does nothing? Are they waiting for UIF to come to their homes? They will, there's no doubt.
As i said, we transfered 200 heavy armed tickets into the Village, if we would have known about the exact situation in the Village we would have been able to transfer an addition of 800 heavy armor sets & weapons from our caravan to the Village, unfortunately we couldnt get any further informations within the reinforcement time.
With this 1000 Heavy armed troops it would have been quite easy to hold the village against the first attack and give us time to move more resources down.
Too bad that all the ranged equipment was blocked by stuff like clubs and spiked maces.