Okay, a note on long term strategy.
Things unlikely to change in the near future:
Week 8, we get an offer to do the printing press. This is a check versus production and trade (I believe, just going by my previous post here).
Week 9 is when we get approached about the foreign Ixionite incursion. We have a foreign affairs check there, and maybe more we don't know about.
We know there is a foreign affairs check on the Ixion occupation of Imbrium, in Maree, and we'll be approached by Duke Banion about the issue. This is what we knew last time after failing our foreign affairs check.
There was another check, a military one, that we passed, but we can't be sure what it did exactly. Either way, we were then presented with an option:
War or Negotiate
I presume this time we'll be attempting to negotiate, so we'll be wanting relevant skills for that.
Composure, Presence, Flattery, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Intelligence, and Internal Affairs all seem like they could possible come in useful during negotiations. (Internal Affairs mostly to minimize any internal impact our decisions might have)
Now, sometimes I feel I'm the only one who actually bothers to read what we learn in our weekly lessons, but I'm guessing we might want to try for foreign affairs until we learn something useful about this area of our country, and then switch to one or more of the other options.
We get a bonus to History so long as we stay yielding, and a bonus to our regal queen-like skills. So we'll obviously want to make use of those. We'd need to get willful for intrigue, so that... probably isn't happening right now, unless we specifically intend on switching to it soon and prepare appropriately.
But getting lonely for the boost to Flattery is doable.
So I'm thinking this week we do Foreign Affairs/Presence again. See if we seem to get any info relevant to our coming foreign affairs check. If we don't, we repeat the week after with Foreign Affairs and Composure, and then we switch moods to whatever other skill we agree on and double slam it before the event.
Sound good?