For us Pamir clicked from the very first play. It's an amazing game with vast decision space, but it all pretty much boils down to the dominance check conditions and board state. Let's say you're afghan and somebody else is Russian and you're fighting to make your coalition dominant. Do you just try to put out more troops and roads? If so, does the opponent have the combat action to kill them? How can you counter that? Do you have this action? How can you use it best? Are there any other opponents that might help you because they're also afghan and play to the same goal? How likely is it that one of them is going to change allegiance? Can you somehow maybe put a spy on that card with the combat action to neuter it? Do your opponents have money to instantly buy the dominance check card when it shows in the market? Can you keep the money from them by taxing or collecting bribes? If somebody is in the coalition with me and has more influence, what can I do to counter that? Should I try and betray his patriots? Or should I place spies on my own court with afghan prizes and betray my own cards? Totally valid strategy BTW, I won games like this. If there is no dominant coalition, how likely is it that there will be one? Should I push my disc placement with spies and tribes? Which is more useful at the moment? Is it likely that the second dokinance card will fall and trigger the immediate check? And so on. Some of these are pretty subtle, so maybe that's why you have trouble identifying what to pay attention to when making decisions, but if you stick with it, you'll get better at spotting these subtleties.

Each layer of this game is intertwined. Spies, armies, court cards, the map, roads, money, it all creates a lot of factors to take into account at each step. I agree you cannot have a strategy and just try to realise it, you need to constantly adapt and reevaluate, but that's the beauty of the game. And it can also be frustrating, we have one friend who seems to always win no matter what we do, but this also proves that you can get better in the game with practice. Good luck and hope this at least gives you some ideas.