[X] Plan Spread the Force and Don't Cause a Famine
-[x] Authority: Shift Deployment: The Mass Levy is large and unwieldy. Changing circumstances require a shift in deployment patterns. (80%, 1 year, Deployment shifted, malus to war rolls if failed)
--[x] Take 100,000 troops out of the Thunder Plateau campaign
---[x] Reinforce Western Wall campaign with 60,000 troops
---[x] Reinforce Highlander campaign with 40,000 troops
-[x] Authority: Diplomatic Contact, Highlanders: What have the Highlanders gotten up to in these last thousand years? Do you even care so long as they stay in their hills? (???% 1 Year. Possible -Influence)
-[x] Influence: Seek Loan: You are strapped for cash. Other states have money that you could use. Ask them if they would be willing to float a loan. (85%, +1 Treasury Status, -.1 Income, -1 Prestige)
--[x]Berba
-[x] Influence: Establish Contact, Black Sheep Rebels: Establish formal diplomatic ties with the rebels in the Thunder Plateau. If you can absorb them diplomatically back into the kingdom, it would greatly speed the reunification timeline. (Narrative%. 1 Year. !)
-[x] Influence: Fund Faction: Fund a faction in a foreign polity that has been identified.
--[x] Black Sheep Rebels
-[x] Shift Banner Companies between fronts: Banner Companies may be shifted between active fronts and reserves as a free action while the Mass Levy is active.
--[x] Iron Flowers to Thunder Plateau
-[x] Personal: Work Overtime (+1 temp Influence, +Stress)
So I'm reducing the troop numbers in TP
This isn't too bad... yet.
My bolding. Paying for what we take staves off hostility but it doesn't magically create food so, reducing the load.
To mitigate any slowdown from this I'm sending them the Iron Flowers - 1/10 the footprint, significantly more than 1/10 the punch - and funding the Rebels. WW will miss the elite infantry but 60,000 men has a quality of it's own - they'll actually outnumber the traitors for once.
40,000 men go to face the Highlanders taking that front up to 70,000. This not only makes sure they're contained (and can be crushed if needed) but provides a sufficient show of force that the notoriously ornery and isolationist gits take our diplomats seriously. Dealing from an appropriate position of strength will hopefully make talking at all with people held in contempt for millennia more palatable to our own people. This is still the make contact action likely to get pushback from the civil service so it gets the second Authority die.
Funding the rebels should make them more useful in the war and improve the odds of successful diplomacy with them.
Taking a loan from Berba pays for the funding and lowers our prestige.
Balthazar is overworking but it's not like we've been mashing that button recently and there's a lot to do.