For my victorious run today (I had 3 losses prior to this one):
- Stayed put and studied Etiquette until completed student leven.
- Travelled to the planet with the most Electors and studied Empathy.
- Assessed who liked me and who didn't.
- Recruited skilled people as Chancellor and two other positions, reducing the pool of home candidates for any potential rivals.
- Recruited a good scientist for the Science role as soon as I stumbled upon them.
- Spent quite a lot of time in the bottom-right corner of the map and thus met lots of people.
- Tried to find out what people wanted and do my best to give it to them.
- Investigated people before deciding to negotiate, quest, marry or blackmail (once).
- In the third quarter of the game, got selective about whose quests to train for.
- Remember I have a rollback button in case of misclicks (sometimes I get overexcited if I think I see the perfect option, and then click on something that was on the way to that option).
- Worked on Etiquette and Empathy when I had nothing better to do.
- Took advice seriously.
- Denounced one person who already had a bunch of enemies.
- Realised I'd neglected a whole sector late on and got a marriage candidate from the area I'd neglected.
Things I did late on that would have helped me more had I done them earlier:
- Be more selective about Cabinet members not known to be near my rival.
- Made better use of denouncements and blackmail.
- Move on when I'd got nothing to do that was actually worth doing on a planet.
- Got some independent intrigue skill (I think a member of my Cabinet was trying to kill me at one point, and it limited my options).
- Got cannier about mood management.
Things that actively hampered me:
- Making promises without knowing how to keep them.
- Attempting to impress someone who was obviously always going to be disgusted with me given the configuration of my Cabinet at the time.