If you have issues managing peasant unrest (spoilers)

[Reiss]

One of the more challenging part when you discover this game is managing peasant unrest. Nobles are very easy to manage if you expand reasonably but peasants can be quite a hassle, especially when the dreaded drought and swarm of locusts strike at several of your cities.

Believe it or not, with the right technologies it is actually quite easy to keep the peasant in check and you will very soon discover that this game is ridiculously easy once the peasants are a non-issue. My description below will assume you can build your economy engine properly.

What is very important to understand is that this game has one critical technology that you should try to get as soon as possible, it's the Bamboo Strips in the Craft tree. This technology allow you to pass the Central Bureaucracy edict. This edit cost 500 gold per turn which is a lot but reduces the peasant unrest by 10% and increase your authority by 2. But what is critical is that it unlocks the use of Private Land Ownership edict. This edict cost 300 extra gold per turn and raise noble unrest by 20% (for 20turns), but reduce peasant unrest by another 10% and raise your total food production by 20%. More food means higher population which will quickly offset the cost associated whith maintaining those two edicts.
Central Bureaucracy also unlocks the Land Redistribution edict which is quite costly, but reduce peasant unrest by another 10% for 80 turns at the cost of 20% noble unrest for 20 turns.

If you researched Coinage (Power tree), Central Bureaucracy also unlocks the Salt Tax edict which is essentially an upgrade to the Well Field System, but be aware that it increases peasant and noble unrest.

You probably guessed by now that the Central Bureaucracy edict is extremely overpowered.

The though tree contains several technologies useful to decrease peasant unrest.
The Five Punishments is very useful because it allows you to build the Court which decrease Peasant unrest by 10%. Can be upgraded to a prison which adds an additional 10%.
Then you have the Confucianism, Daoism and Mohism (you will be able to build only on of them in each city). All of them decrease peasant unrest, allow you to score culture points and have some other beneficial effects but all of them also have negative effects like increasing noble unrest and slowing down technology.

One other interesting aspect are the shrines that can be built in moutainous regions. The first level of shrine only reduce local peasant unrest which is not so great but starting the second level they can attract pilgrims if you have a bazaar/market in the city. Pilgrims are a really great source of revenue if your city has enough trade route and a level 3 Legendary Shrine will keep both your peasants happy and generate tons of money.

Now, what should you do if peasant unrest become too high in one of your city. Do not panick and no matter what, do not raise any peasant levies. When the people are angry at you, the last thing you want to do is to give them spears. Noble recruits however are very useful and usually I've seen that a noble recruit reduce unrest by 4%. Of course if the nobles are also angry you are pretty much screwed unless you have a barrack whcih allows to recruit professional soldiers (although I admit I never used them yet so I don't know what their exact effect is, but I guess they are only loyal to you since you're the only one that is paying them).

If the unrest is caused by a drought or a locust swarm and that the peasants are dying of hunger, you have one last resort that can save you: recruit a colonist. You will see that it will slightly reduce the population of the city, which should be enough to reduce the starvation malus to a more manageable level. To give you an example, I had a city at 85% peasant unrest due to high starvation, I recreated the colonist and unrest went down straight to less than 40% unrest.

I hope this can help people having trouble managing the peasants, and at the same time I personally think that the developer might want to have a look at Central Bureaucracy, because I find it a little too mandatory for my taste. Granted it cost some money but money is a much easier resource to get than happiness...