I dunno, I think it would be more fun to let the user pick which town he wants to go to and then have things change accordingly.
The story could be that the radio with HQ is down and the troops only have equipment to communicate within the area they are in and you are the highest ranking officer. You need to deploy your squad somewhere and all three towns need backup, you have to determine which one to go to and then whatever you pick affects what happens not only there, but in the other three towns as well. That way there are some consequences based on what town you pick that will be your fault, or at least feel like your fault... maybe you chose to go to a town that said they were doing "ok" but just needed a little bit more help so you get a radio message telling you that one of the other towns that sounded like they needed even more help just got taken over or whatever and now the troops that attacked that town are heading to your town so it's not going to be as easy as you thought. And opposite to that, maybe the town that you picked to go to was the one who really needed help, so you fight them off and then learn that the other towns are doing the same and the entire operation is a success. And of course there needs to be middle ground as well. You make it to a town who really needs help and fight the attack off, but you still learn that some other towns are losing their battles. Or maybe you get over run in the town you picked, etc. Lots of things can happen that should be random, but the player should have some say in what goes on instead of just following orders. Otherwise he won't feel that the things going on in the other towns affect him at all and it'd be kind of pointless to even have other stuff going on other than for just atmospheric affect because if some town across the map gets taken over the player will go "oh well, nothing I could do, they told me to come help this town." as opposed to thinking "damnit! I knew I should have gone to that other town! Now they are being overrun because I decided to come here instead!"