>Starting with the first item (upgrade tradeoffs) let’s take slavs. If I give you the choice between 2hs + druzhina or champ + blast furnace which one would you take? What about halb + blast furnace vs pike + druzhina? How is it context dependent? Slavs have been out for like 10 years and everyone loves ripping on the civ so you’d think this would be common knowledge that pops up every time the civ gets discussed. Certainly in preparation for what seems to be an infantry buff I’d imagine people want to talk about it.
druzhina adds 5 damage, champ adds 1 and bf adds 5, and you get +10 hp. The 2hs easily.
halb over pike, even with druzhina. If you need to deal with enemy pikes which is when the druzhina does the most work well mix in some 2hs or something.