Plague got swamped, had internal issues where dom leaders were leaving, and Plague is no longer seen as a dom powerhouse because of that.

I'm not convinced that a flight could exalt enough to beat Earth from inflight exalts alone. Earth IS a dom flight and their exalts are pretty high for their number. I could be wrong.

If I'm not wrong though, then its a tricky situation. A flight needs OoF to beat Earth but cannot let Earth take in more dragons than them from OoF.