POV

The prime minister of the Kildarian empire.

The war is indeed sapping our finances. We are funding the Lombardians and the Karamanites. At the same time, we need to pay our soldiers more as it is wartime. We can't speak about patriotism to them as they are not fighting for in their country.

At the same time, we have to provide weapons to hundreds of thousands of troops. We don't personally fund them but give benefits to the banks providing loans to our coalition allies.

We also need to take loans to pay our soldiers and the navy. The interest is around 10%, and that is relatively low for international loans. However, some interest rates for poor or unreliable customers can go up to 50%.

"We are winning the battle of Bulgaria currently, but the Lombardians are pitting us. They are sometimes not sending troops to reinforce us and are generally making us take more casualties." said the minister of war.

The minister of finance looked at him in a meaningful way. What he said was just bullsh*t. The Kildarians are masters at pitting allies. Even though we do that, our allies somehow manage to win wars, but our army can't do that.

"Our troops are not enough as we only have around 15,000 soldiers and the Lombardians have approximately 30,000 troops. The Karamanite soldiers are all trash and can't be of any help to us. We can only use them to soften up the Rostok frontline before attacking, but the Rostok empire quickly replenishes their troops. The Rostok empire is easily getting its supplies from Mainz. We need more troops. We also have some good news, we have gained a foothold in the south, but many of our soldiers are dying due to disease and lack of supplies. The quartermasters are acting again."

The media is spraying us to death as many of our soldiers die from disease in the south. This is primarily because of the quartermasters and their damn factions.

They always undersupply the troops to benefit their faction. Yet, we can't act on them because they do everything in a completely legal way. For example, a quartermaster sent some food back to Kildare because some obscure documents weren't signed properly. After coming back to the front, the food inside was all rotten. The law doesn't blame the public, does it?

Even if we want to change the laws, they have massive forces backing them, and we can't afford to provoke them. If we provoke them, I won't have a good political life after my term is over.

"We can mobilize 5000 more troops and send it to the front, start coordinating with our allies to start an attack, and drive the Rostok empire back where they came from. Hold your ground on the southern front for now and retreat after we win the battle of Bulgaria. If we lose the battle, we will hole up in Miklagrad and make the Rostok empire siege it. The walls of Miklagrad are thick enough, anyway." I said to the cabinet.

If we hole up in Miklagrad and let the Rostok empire siege us, the city will take heavy losses, but that doesn't matter to me. They are not my people or country anyway. Rebuilding the city is the problem of the Karamanite empire, and I won't be losing any money by destroying the city.