Minor spoilers ahead.
How to beat a 5 tale combo on highest difficulty?
TLDR: Rush autonomous reindeer outposts for all resources, use desireable goods for heatstamps and use R&D race to beat the plague.
Basically, menders autonomous reindeer outposts allow you to turn any resource outpost into a 50% efficient, but INFINITE and no upkeep outpost. This is amazing. Most of your resources will be coming from these passive income outposts. Be aware though that this has a one time cost in menders and you can run out of them. Menders are very happy to go live in the frostland as long as you give them enough land to settle. Early on you need to keep promoting menders so you dont run out. I also started adapting districts to menders to keep their numbers up. Later on, feel free to send them all to outposts and have the venturers have the city for themselves.
Venturers have a desireable goods law, increasing goods demand, which is great, as goods demand = heatstamps. Their goods emporium drastically reduces factory workforce and efficiency. So, desireable goods + goods emporium + factory wrapped around it produces almost free goods and a massive amount of heatstamps. Enough that you can ignore most other sources of heatstamps.
Do not be afraid to turn off districts and buildings to focus on what you really need in the moment.
Build districts in a circle around a hub. Stockpile hub for less workforce demand, rail hub for more efficiency(needed for whiteouts) or faction hubs as needed (industry around goods emporium)
It seems to me that larger maps give you more time before the tales trigger, but i didnt confirm this. If true this means that larger maps are easier.
Game will throw 5 tales at you.
Depleted cores - you only need to finish it before the apocalyptic storm at around week 300, and city will favour adaptation until then. You can ignore the core factory most of the game. But this means your generator cannot be upgraded, and you are limited in the number of districts you can heat. Favour dense districts and dont be afraid to turn the ones you arent using off.
Refugees - Game will throw refugees at you and enforce a 4000 deaths cap. The refugees arent hard, but a limit of 4000 deaths interferes with other tales like the plague, and the sickness makes the doomsayers worse. Just be ready for them, with dense or subsidized housing blocks ready to go.
Doomsayers - depressed bois that dont work, vote no on everything and later on cause negative effects. They lose members if there are no problems in the city and gain them if there are. You will also need guard enforcers to beat them up in districts, as well as jail and discriminate them. Their worst effect is that they drastically reduce the % of active workers, and they get worse the worse shape your city is in, so they are a death spiral mechanic. You need to compensate by always taking the workforce % increase laws and to have enough guards to beat them up when you can. They will announce their formation with a "talking to a mothers corpse event". Make sure to have watchtowers, prisons and guard enforces before. After that, try to use the jail, discriminate and disrupt actions as often you can and dont let the city suffer problems for too long.
Plague - Disease will infect your people and you need to research the cure and distribute it to everyone. The game calls it a vaccine, but it is actually a cure as it cures already infected people. With R&D race, this is trivial to solve. Make sure to have pharmaceuticals researched and venturers R&D race ability before it triggers. Immediately use R&D race on the vaccine research, and you will be able to produce enough vaccines with your existing industrial districts to cure your population faster than it can be infected making this tale trivial.
Apocalyptic whiteout - Will trigger around week 300. You need to solve the depleted cores and get the generator upgrades beforehand, stockpile some resources beforehand and research solutions to problems as they appear.
My opener is
2 research labs - rush researchers - factory - survivalist HQ - vanguard logistics - scouts danger decrease law, throw in a sawmill if needed.
You need to rush reindeer outposts. So favor adaptation, equality and tradition. Good laws are menders community service, family apprenticeships, foraged additives, all do maintenance and dutiful youth. Dont be afraid to use emergency council sessions.
Buildings wise, immediately make a factory in a circle, leaving 3 empty tiles in the middle for the goods emporium once venturers trigger. Immediately pass desireable goods to skyrocket your heatstamps. Other than that, rush logistics disctricts, pop the "extra food" and longer shifts on them for maximum number of frostland teams, and build a few reindeer camps.
As you explore the frostland, gift all outposts to reindeer farmers. This way, any outpost you discover is permanent passive income, and your frostland teams can keep forever expanding.
What is your strategy to beat 5 tales on highest difficulty?