Fair enough, though slot usage success doesn't necessarily connect to war success, especially since it's easier for sellers to fill slots than buyers. Hence why DT has been heralded multiple times to have fought very well in the past war, and yet their slot usage isn't ridiculously high. Ability in war =/= high slot usage. Even though the common thread is activity (ability in war <-- activity --> slot usage), it gets diluted and changed by multiple factors along the way for significant differences.
My original point was that the tradeoff between quantity and quality is inherent. You cannot have both more quantity and more quality without exceptional outside work. Their definition of "competence" very clearly favors their style of alliance in that the primary factor is activity per member, rather than aggregate impact. Recruiting alliances naturally accept the tradeoff of less activity per member (since they're going out and getting their members rather than having their members come to them) for increased overall impact.
Of course, as you said that increased impact also couldn't be used since there was an excess on one side and a shortage on the other, which also reduces the raw numbers advantage that propagandists keep emphasizing. That is a larger factor than the idea I was arguing, I just brought my point up because it was a bit of a pet peeve to keep seeing the same thing repeated :P. It obviously wasn't the best war, but as usual there's a lot of propaganda chucked at the wall to see what sticks to make everything seem more polarized.