TUrn off mega events if you don't want your "flow" disrupted. Mega eents are there specifically to throw things into chaos.

Yeah, the Jagged Knife event is just as bad or worse. You lose a ton of your planets to a new empire that forms out of thin air. As Vinraith said, turning off mega events does the trick. I suppose it is a matter of taste, if you find radical changes an exciting challenge or a frustrating game breaker. It is a nice way to vary the game.

the patch did much to rectify this if i recall correctly. in any event, the mega event should be quite cool as long as it applies to all of the races. i have learned to really like mega events, so long as it doesn't appear to look like an AI cheat.

I actually like the spice the GalCiv2 Mega events give.

You know, it is kind of like turning off natural disasters when playing Sim City. You build and look around and build some more, and finally your city is done. What to do now??? *** twiddles thumbs *** No action, dull, mundane, boring.

Some of them can be quite devastating, and on occasion, depending on your status and time released during game play.... quite fatal. I would rather struggle and die, then achieve an easy, repetitious victory. I feel the events make you have to adapt to the environment fully. You can not rely solely on your strategy. First I build this and then I take that and then I build this and then and then and then... Get the idea?

The Mega events keep games from being cookie cutter, and often offer a very exciting game. One way or the other of course. Just my opinion.

"To conquer without a challenge is to be victorious without glory"

I've had the dread lords happening to me twice, had no problem dealing with them even with a rather weak fleet. Killed them in 1 turn once, the second time i never even got to meet them, some other race killed them.

The pirates on the other hand has been far too powerful in the latest 2 games, outnumbering me with far too powerfull ships (i had, by far, the strongest millitary among the other races.) The events seems very unbalanced, a little chaos is just fun, too much and it will ruin the game imo.

Maybe so but therein lies the challenge. At least they don't have the capability to invade your planets, otherwise there would be some serious trouble. Like everyone else has said in numerous other posts regarding the mega events... if you can't stand the heat stay out of the kitchen... turn them OFF.
I myself think the pirates in the game are actually a good thing. Any devs out there who may be reading this one... leave the pirates alone, please.

I can see your point (and obvious frustration ). I have only encountered the pirate mega event a handful of times and in every instance I was at a point in my game where it was only a matter of three to five turns before I could muster up a potent enough fleet or two to deal with them. Since my economy was running steady and my research was along quite nicely, the damage the pirates were dealing was insignificant. However, that being said, I could see how an early game appearance by the pirates could wreak havoc. Sorry, wasn't meaning to 'downplay' your situation.

I found the pirates to actually be the most fun bit of a fairly dull game, where I could have just allied with everybody to end the game, but wanted to fool around with inciting proxy wars against the leading Altarians and trying to mess with them without going to war. (Worked, but only to a limited extent.)

The pirates shook things up, and finally gave my fleet some exercise. To my surprise, I was able to handle them without many losses, and even early on, I was able to cobble fleets together to stop the ones in my territory fairly quickly. I thought they'd be a lot more powerful than my ships, but they weren't. Maybe my having a bunch of large hulls around while the pirates seem to be all medium and small helped too?

Anyhow, after cleaning up my territory, I had fun sweeping the pirates from the rest of the galaxy. (I suppose I should've let them devastate the others, but got carried away.... )

The DL event is too weak yes, but the pirates are way too hard.

A probability slider or a difficulty setting for the event itself could solve that people have very different opinions on this matter.