"The best choice out of all is unifying the Gretan region but as Conrad said, most of the great powers will intervene against us. The Kildarians will probably form a coalition, the thing that they are best at. We have to expand so the heatens to our east are the best choice." I said.

The Kildarians want continental balance and want all the great powers to restrain each other. They had achieved this using the continental system. We were the ones to break it so the Kildarians will probably not like us. The best ally for us right now are the Lombardians and the Rostok empire. Rostok empire and the Kildarians were fighting for world hegemony and we have the common intrests of destroying the heathen country of Karaman. The Lombardians are also expanding and will be boycotted more fiercely than us as they had tried to conquer most of the countries recently. This made all the countries more fearful of the Lombardians than us. They will help share some of the pressure.

"Send an alliance offer to the Rostok empire, we want to expand into Karaman and so do they." I told to Franz.

"Yes, should we do a secret treaty as to not provoke the Kildarians or should we reveal it to protect ourselves." asked Franz.

"We should make the alliance public and we should sign a series of trade preferntial treaties. While dividing the sphere of influence, make sure that they are the main fighting force. This will result us in getting less land but we don't need to pay as much causualties. We will provide logistics to them."

The problem with paying so many causalties is not the amount of people dead but the amount of pension you need ot pay. This is why countries don't go to war and even if they do, they will rather spend money on advanced technology than putting more people on the field. The Rostok empire has a population of 8 million people while my kingdom has a population of 2.3 million people. So the Rostok can afford to use more soldiers and you don't need to pay much pension. This is why a lot of countries were afraid of the Rostok empire, they can just pile you up with bodies. They can place two soldiers for every soldier we put in the field. The government type of the Rostok empire is also intresting as it resembles that of a theocracy. The king of the Rostok empire is the head of their religion and there are three apostles who control around 45% of the forces of the Rostok empire. The apostles follow the religion, not the king so there is always a power struggle between the king and the Apostles. Usually the king wins, but the Apostles have won before.