Second win! this time I decided to challenge myself by avoiding as much as possible Interaction/Emotion. I ended up with 50 rhetoric for the turn 22 neutral space event, but that's that - all the other Interaction/Emotion where at 0.
This time I went for the Tharkkan group, picked Ozara, Rejt, Lorkas, and got my friends on board because any stat is better than no stat. Also got Sola's vote. I had to abandon Zolot, Milan and Ixil to Lukomir because I was snagging Mirelle and had the good fortune of meeting and persuading Yakau for the first time. I liked him! Then midgame I successfully did the turn 22 neutral space event, went to Mau for the easy friendly vote, got Vahter and Krovos on board (Vahter hit me with a personal quest for the first time), pushed to Draug, then I tried the Pontifex' personal quest for the first time (with only mixed results due to very middling Sports). Final push I went to the Heru group and stole a truly outrageous number of votes, including Grojdana by naming her Lord Chancellor. I did a try where on turn 20 (the same turn Lukomir got the votes of Branekka and Radomil) Zorana got engaged to Eve's son (fascinating! I'm very glad I went for it.), went to the end, then reloaded and tried to do the same without Eve's vote (turned out better because Zorana could get Rippling Thunder's deal), and easily got enough votes.
It feels like naming the correct ministers + being a generalist in stats pays off, I didn't specialize much (I think I had only the Spaceship group around Graduate level) and most of the quests where pretty doable. I regretted not having picked up enough Stealth for the Heru III quest, and sometimes I had to reload to study a non-optimal skill so I could do the day's quest, but on the whole it didn't feel difficult.
It did absolutely require the Science bonus, I don't know how I could have done without it.