... are these actually desirable? I find them to be a terrible distraction. Repeatedly searching a ruin? Map nodes with an extra resource drop to try and predict it's impact.

Also maybe I'm too stupid to notice. Do dusk eclipses happen on a regular or an irregular cycle?

I haven't even seen or collected any of the faction affinity bonuses of the map so as of right now I'm just guessing it's something the AI is always going to take ahead of me.