[licker]

I think that a solution to this problem lies primarily in the luck scales, not so much the order scales. The issue is that luck +3 is nowhere near potent enough, especially as the bad events dominate the good (even in the 80/20 split) to the point where it isn't just 'risky' to take luck&turmoil, but its suicidal. Over the long run you will lose out on the luck scale alone, without even worrying about your lost income to turmoil.

There have been several suggestions as to how to rebalance the luck scale, and what seems reasonable is for the events to be classified into 'major' and 'minor' or even more gradiations. Then the luck scale should effect the chance of getting major or minor, not just good and bad. Order may be too strong as it is as well, however the easy change there is to not get protection from random events from taking order, but still get the increase in random events from taking turmoil. Now you take order specifically for income, but it won't shield you from the random events (good and bad). You take turmoil specifically to get more random events, and set your luck scale accordingly. This still costs design points for players like Kier so it may not be satisfactory to their world view, but something is out of line in the way that the order and luck scales interact, and something should be done to rectify that.

As an aside...

I'd like to see specific pretenders for each nation (and perhaps theme) who's sole function is to provide high bless effects. I was thinking of something along the lines of a pretender who's magic levels were doubled to determine the bless effects, then I thought that may be a bit too much, so a pretender who had discounted majic picks (somehow...) but who's magic levels were halved for purposes of casting and research. It would be interesting to try a totally tricked out bless race, without having to totally compromise your scales.