Strategy

How to extend your reigns
A big endeavor in the game is trying to reign for as long as possible.

The following are tips to surviving the longest you possibly can.

CONTAINS SPOILERS

1. Eat the orange mushroom
Rex (Your dog) will occasionally want to play with you, during this time you should make him lead you to the forest where there will be an orange mushroom you can eat.

Once you have eaten it you will have the "clarity" effect, which gives you almost complete knowledge of the exact values of your 4 metrics and what each card will effect it by.

If you know each card interaction well then this is not necessary but even then it greatly assists your reign.

2. Give the frozen blood to the vase
A problem with most playthroughs is that even if everything goes well, you will die from old age at around 80-85 years of age no matter what you do, but there is a way to prevent this.

Throughout your adventures you will have met the doctor and he will introduce you to a vase known as the homunculus.

The homunculus will only talk to you if you aquire frozen blood. Which can be aquired by doing a quest for the witch which involves surviving 15 years of old age.

With the vase "activated", it will help you when you reach old age, erasing it from you and meaning you can reign over the age of 80-85.

[unsure about above information, require someone to check] [confirmed that you get frozen blood from witch after 15 years of old age]

3. Get the metric-affecting status effects
There are 4 metrics you have to worry about, and usually its the requirement to balance all of these that stumbles the player, but the following status effects are very usefull in preventing this:

Providence - Also known as a barn, the status effect lasts for an indefinite number of times, and will stay until it randomly burns and the player doesn't send anything to stop it. It prevents the people metric from reaching 0.

High walls - Same characteristics as above, only prevents army from reaching 0.

Cathedral - Same characteristics as above, only prevents faith from reaching 0 and the people from reaching 100.

The combination of these three status effects allows for the player to mainly focus on the treasury and greatly increases survivability.

[Unsure about the lifetime and infinite usability of these status effects, require someone to check]

4. Don't get involved with any "events"
Avoid anything that has things go up or down over time, or events that prevent you from having a choice this often leads to poor and/or hurried choices due to irregular metrics. Such as:

Crusader: Makes treasury go up but people go down over time.

Silk road: Makes treasury go up over time.

Slaver: Makes treasury go up over time.

Colonies: Makes treasury and army go up over time.

Pungeon: Makes everything go down.

Lover: Makes the church go down and you can't say no to your lover, but the people metric always stays balanced.

Theocracy: Can't say no to the church, but the money metric always stays balanced.

5. Avoid things that mainly rely on RNG (randomness)
Some results of interactions can differ each time, in the long run they are not reliable and should be avoided.

Dice game: The game you play with Loosetongue is complete chance, don't gamble your money and risk your reign unless you have the loaded dice effect active or it is in a life or death scenario (Loosetongue will sometimes offer to help you escape from your fate if you win a dice game).

Plague in port: A character will ask you to quarantine the entire port becuase plague was spotted, and it results in a gambit that could lead to the black death and basically end your reign if you say no.

Hunting with army or wolves: You have a chance to get a great hunt and feed everyone, or it can injure you and does the complete opposite effect. It's just not worth it.

[(My account name is Erolious even though i'm writing this anonymously) I do not know all interactions, and require some help]

6. Who to marry?
When you are told to marry a foreign princess to prevent war, do it, almost all interactions with this queen are positive.