In terms of action effect, I see it as follows:
Artefact recovery focus means we put our people on salvage first, denying the Indigos access to the spoils almost entirely and leaving them to deal with the fallout of the attack. Fortunately, if The Treaty is still in effect, it doesn't apply to reaver salvage that we don't acquire, and anything the Indigos acquire isn't on our backs to give to Anna (go loopholes!). Even if we don't take this, Anna won't know we didn't acquire everything (and thus won't be mad with us if we don't take the option).
Butchering somewhat solidifies positive opinion from the Indigo Amish, and has basically no associated risk.
Herding can go poorly, and we could lose them some of their few remaining animals if we do it poorly (and won't that piss them off?). At the same time, it does more than solidify opinion and generates a lot more goodwill.
The levels of strictness are merely a measure of how much personal bounty we earn, compared against military morale. More personal bounty, less morale. Strictness gives us the highest personal reward, of course, while trading away troop morale.
[] Dead animal butchery (improves nomad economic situation)
[] Strict (maximum recovery of items and minimal leakage to the black market, potentially irritate soldiers)
This combo is basically near-optimal personal influence gain (from the reaver salvage bounty), with the best opinion security (small trade of military opinion, secure (no gain; no loss) opinion from Liege and Indigo Amish). I like this combo because we really need to have our mech repaired, and that'll probably cost us management-scale influence to do, but I don't want to toss all the risk we just took to ingratiate the Amish to us for few extra personal resources.
