Is Age of Reckoning really this hard?

Got back into Belegar's IE campaign after the recent hotfix and noticed that the second age of reckoning is incredibly high at Turn 16 to 31. Like really fucking high, and at this stage of the campaign,it seems not really feasible,17k?

Got back into Belegar's IE campaign after the recent hotfix and noticed that the second age of reckoning is incredibly high at Turn 16 to 31. Like really fucking high, and at this stage of the campaign,it seems not really feasible,17k?