I believe alot of the supposed 'imbalance' could be cleaned up with a reweighting of the luck scale. Or some sort of additive effect with it.

The main complaint, that I can see is the long term detriment of a bad event vs the 'instant gratification' of the good event.

Change the 1/4 population bad event to a single -500 gold, -250 Production event in tune with the corresponding good event and you more than likely wouldn't see it as a target for comparison.

If it's possible, bumping the population cutting event to +2 Luck and below and adding in a one shot -gold -resource event would more than likely calm a bit of the 'bad events are bad' talk.

Truth be told I prefer this way. It balances out some of the Turmoil nations so they are more feasible while not hurting any of the Order gold and making them pay for it with misfortune.

Maybe if some of the events were not so terrain regulated and finding a gold or iron mine in a valley or a barren it might take off some of the edge.

My choice of taking Order/Misfortune has not changed, I am more likely to do so, but I no longer groan at the thought of taking a forced Turmoil theme/nation.