“The skilful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-waggons loaded more than twice.”
Competence shows in not needing repeated rescues; design the support so you do not return hat in hand.
Chapter 2’s supply section ends with a standard of competence: the skilful soldier does not raise a second levy, nor load his wagons more than twice. The measure is not brilliance but self-sufficiency — the campaign was sized, from the start, to finish on what it began with. A general who needs repeated rescue is announcing that his original plan was a wish.
A studio pitches a game with a two-year budget and ships in four, after two emergency rounds — each framed as "finishing the vision." A rival studio sizes the same ambition into a core game plus expansions: version one finishes on its original budget, and the expansions fund themselves from its sales. Neither studio lacked talent. One designed its supply line; the other raised levies and called it passion.
This is not a ban on raising more capital — Sun Tzu’s own statesman sends reinforcements when the campaign deserves them. The verse condemns the structural rescue: plans that only ever worked if nothing went wrong, where the second levy is not a response to events but the missing first half of the real plan.