You seem to forget that we don't play in the BattleMaster of 2006. To expand, we need nobles. We didn't have enough nobles to go back eastwards. And should you have not noticed, Port Nebel must be conquered first before any expansion into the eastern rurals can be made.
East would seem to be a poor way to expand, expanding west should give much more scope for actual food production.
We are always knocking on everyone's door for food. But the war against Caerwyn screwed us on an important supplier. And other realms are also seeing their cities grow and therefore their surpluses shrink
Exactly the insistence of D'Hara in maintaining both a main land and a island presence has resulted in an untenable food import situation. When your realm insists on being composed of 2 cities (sometimes 3) 3 townslands and only 1-2 rurals, well its time to reconsider what regions are worth holding and what options are available for more lands.
If the Lurians had the ability to feed Port Nebel, then if he cares about his religion so much he can sell D'Hara that very same food he'd give them. D'Hara isn't holding any food back from it's stupid peasants, and we can't do anything to stop immigration either. D'Hara is the land of retarded peasants that join en masse places they know they won't be able to find food in, and who complain against the government's taxes all the time therefore cutting the government's power to buy that very food they require. And if we expand to acquire more farmlands for them, well then they'll just burn it all down because there won't be enough nobles to watch over them. D'Haran peasants *want* to die. They worship the god of starvation, and pray every day for their warehouses to run out on the next day.
It is feasible the Lurians could feed the city, but then its unlikely that a realm notorious for infighting is going to do so just to keep Koli happy. If the City was part of the empire though, that would have been very different. I guess we could have done it for gold, but there rarely seems to be a lack of gold in the realm, I know several times I've offered several hundred gold for knights to improve their units and had no takers.
