[Gandalf Parker]

That sounds like what the Watcher mod was for. To allow the game admin a secret place in the game to do things that the game doesnt allow us to add. Basically to duplicate most of the events in the game but less randomly, and expand on that.

The things you mention arent specifically in it but would be easy to look at the mod and add those. Mostly it tries to add a "player" with very little impact on the game but lots of ways to watch and affect it.

One hint in using it:
the game automatically numbers provinces from bottom left to upper right (by pixels which is why it seems random to some people). On any map, if you add one white dot to the farthest upper-right corner then you will get an unattached province with the number of whatever-it-was+1. Putting the watcher nation there works nicely. And if you turn on --comptrn in the game then you can view the turn files of all AI players which is useful also.