[PvK]

Great suggestions, Pocus!

I wonder if there is a bias in the random events generator, where it is something like a chance per player instead of per province, so that when a player has very few provinces, their home province is much more likely to suffer a catastrophe, than when they control more provinces. That would tend to make these early-game problems much more likely.

At any rate, as you wrote, an option to specify an "only minor events" period for a game would nicely handle it.

PvK