I don't want to brush off your opinion, but I think your experience as a player is too unique to represent the "average player" for whom we should aim to balance the game difficulty for (which we aren't already; the early game has always been close to a "die and retry" purposefully).
It's obvious to me that just going to the tutorial of a naturally complex game in your non-natural language will mindfuck you. Especially if you come from a version which was apparently made easier on purpose and from which you inherited old habits.
Also, counterintuitively, the more complex a simulation is, arguably the easier it gets. As the number of tools and solutions increase, as well as how more intuitive the game becomes as it more closely mimics an infinitely more complex reality. For example, in the Sims, drinking milk might take 30 minutes because it's an easier read than 20.7 seconds, but in return you then have to calculate everything to translate a normal time schedule into a Sims schedule. Same here, people are literally begging for a simulation of a real time night and day cycle rather than the 5 energy point system... So, if anything, we're aiming to more accurately model real life psychology than simplify or game-ify it.
Besides, you seem to be saying two things at once. One, that you have trouble with the difficulty because you feel like in a minefield with every possible actions you need to take (in other words, that any action you take as a player has unforseeable consequences). Two, that the mood system works in absurd ways that don't mimic real-life psychology enough (and you don't understand why a depressed slave would get happy from being allowed to go to the public baths).
I don't think the example you found for point two is possible to begin with, and what rather happens is that a depressed slave will get simply less depressed if she's offered a reward according to her merit which is basically rest, entertainment and self-care (makes sense to me). If we want it to be *less absurd*, we model that "it's not possible that she gets less depressed from a trip to the sauna as she's already fallen into a spiral of depression to the point of suicidal thoughts" thus adding new variables, thus making the game more complex. So there is a contradiction between what you want in one hand and what you desire in the second hand. That or I didn't exactly understood you and you'll need to be more precise with "what is now" vs. "what should be".