See there will be random events in HK which sometimes seem to be tied to events on the map (battle) but mostly be generic and have random timing

Such a mechanic has been used in Rome 2 among others and is running the risk of degrading the user experience if they do not fit in with the events driven by the player and their effects are overpowered (derailing the players own narrative) or non-factor (some bogus effect like +1 happiness in a random city or +2% attack on some unit type...)

Rome 2 is a good example as the events were:

1. Random: Didnt seem to derive from any user action

2. Non-factor: Usually <10% effect on some irrelevant aspect of the game for <5 turns :)

3. Repetitive: Lots of events occurred in every singe play-through independent from CIV the player was playing as

Each of these aspects need to be avoided less the mechanic degrades the game and it would be better off without it

Suggestions to avoid the above:

1. Tie events to specific actions the player has done on the map or in the diplomacy menu

2. Avoid using minor boost to some particular parameter or the game as most players don+t even care enough to read them. More effective approach is altering/providing on the map objects or enabling construction of unique building/unit. e.g.: In case of Rome 2 there is an event that Some bandits offer to help the player: Choosing any option will result in +5 in some diplomacy param... A good solution would have been to have a unique type of mercenary unit appear in the service of the player with one option, and a raiding army appear on player territory lead by the most dissatisfied family member of the players faction giving the player the opportunity to kill that character (and the mercs) without diplomatic incident

3. Tie events to era and culture the player is currently using and also avoid them being offered every time if the same circumstances align

There is another aspect that is dangerous with these type of mechanics which are random or semi-random and are obscure: don't know what if any of them the enemy got and how they resolved it.

If the enemy AI does not get the same events, that puts the player objectively in a better position which lowers difficulty and thus user agency = bad

If the enemy AI does get these events and resolves them, how does the player know about? that in order to avoid the above AND not stumbling into quest armies all the time like in EL?

My suggestion is to have a notification event which lists AI decisions in such matters or if the effect can always be read out from the map (unique unit) that works well but need to make sure the player is not battling stronger "event" armies then the actual armies of the other empires as in EL the enemies sometimes tended to trigger a lot of event armies they couldn't handle afterwards.

Another danger when using param bonuses as effect is that it trains players to ignore the event type and text altogether as they will most likely not be roll-playing when choosing flat out bonuses wasting both the time of the DEVs and the players. This is so as in such cases the benefits are not interesting enough to choose a sub-optimal option but are also not significant enough to drag away player attention from their actual map stance. They will get an unrelated event to their situation (when they were contemplating something else) and see that there are 2-3 choices each giving some minor buff to some param - player will likely chose only based on the buff and get back to the more interesting happenings going on in their game without reading the actual dilemma and decision.