in the unlikely event that Druzhina does start to lose then its big friends will bail it out.
This is really true. In a previous strat - FCC (NA faction), Fallen, and HRE were knocking the socks off druzhina (despite them abusing every possible nighttime setting glitch known to man) and all 4 of their NA vassal factions so Grey Order marched 20,000 troops over to bail them out and only withdrew them on condition HRE withdraw from the fight since poor druzhina was getting beat up too badly and big brother didn't like it. Even after that Druzhina got hammered even worse until the end of that strat happpened really suddenly when a bunch of different clans tried to abuse a bug.
You should pay attention to your next Druzhina or grey order fight - all of the Druzhina except for grellenort and nebun and 1 other guy are all at the bottom of the roster for kills and score. You really don't want to fight kapikulu or grey order or any faction of even remotely your comparable size. Druzhina is the meat fodder, the strat troop grinders, etc. part of the alliance that is made up of 2/3rds of the active strat players left. Skill will always shows most readily when fighting clans of equal resources, its can't be masked by better gear anymore then.
