Read your served bundle rather than played it (no clean browser run tonight), so I can't answer question one honestly. Question two has an answer in your own numbers.

All three places repeat one gate shape, year 2 / year 3 / year 5, but the reputation thresholds run: Shire 30, 55, 70. Rohan 30, 60, 80. Minas 20, 50, 75. Your difficulty labels put Minas third, while its rank ladder is the loosest of the three at every stage and Rohan's is the steepest. The coin gate runs the other way, 600 / 1000 / 1200, and Rohan starts you on 1200 with the best market income of the three. So the middle place is rich and hard to impress, the hard place is poor-ish and easy to be accepted by. Maybe that's the intended economy, but it is the opposite of what the 1-2-3 order promises.

Second thing, worth checking whether it's deliberate: only three things end a run. Welcome at zero, gold at zero, reputation at zero. Spirit never does. Below 20 it shaves 20 percent off reputation, spirit and lore on every event, so it's a spiral, not a fail state. To a player that red banner reads like a fourth clock running out.

I owe you a real play, not a read. I'll run it properly in the rating window and tell you which event killed me.

TORCH, if you want it back: https://tomokoworlds.itch.io/torch