How about you add flexibility as a needed game skill, and choose to change up sets as you see fit with random changes you feel like making. Some could/should just be ridiculous suggestions while others an overall test on your part. War happens more often from stagnation. Same reason a lot of greifers greif.
Ex: Pang implements a no earthquake set, and 1/2's the number of bots. Also, it takes 200 turns to leave protection this set. Declaring war this set costs a lot more. Find out at own risk.

Get rid of mehul factor, it is dumb, and why do I always get way more random negative than positive events???

I disagree with every example you made, but agree with the premise. I think changing the governments around would be a more interesting and simple approach that forces people to find new optimal ways to net or war.

Govts are already overpowered and/or underpowered for certain roles, but by changing a few numbers, without changing the backbone of the govt, people will be forced to think out or take a gamble on what is strong and what will be the 'meta' this set. Those who get it right reap the rewards, especially if they are the only ones who got it right, because of the market.

I had a long discussion about earthquakes with another player a few months ago, he was saying that earthquakes are the worst addition to the game and that players quit over it and such. I think that earthquakes have no purpose or effect in the bigger picture, doesnt matter if we have them or don't. So in that sense I agreed with him that if 1 player ever quit because of them we should remove them. Removing earthquakes for one reset tho accomplishes nothing, since no one will have to make even the slightest modification to the way they play because of it.

1/2 the bots have been tried. or actually 40% the bots. It was terrible and it will be terrible again, you get 50-200 acres on your grabs depending on which bots you grab, meaning tyranny will be the only viable govt again (everyone went tyranny to ffo or tyranny to demo techer or tyranny to rep casher back then). If you want to see what happens with twice the bots you just need to go to FFA. What would be interesting is perhaps to remove one bot type or half the number of that bot type affect change in the market, and those who foresee the effects of that will reap the rewards. But I guess thats harder to do well.

200 turns to get OOP sounds a bit uninteresting but I dont see a reason not to try it. More chilling time to build CS early is nice I think. :)

Old limited server. Oop was turn 120

I would be down with a RNG on the govt bonus capped at 50% on another server though. Maybe tournament.

Team was designed for this exact purpose...

I just Threw out randomness as ideas... gave none of it thought, expecting chat responses.
I do like the idea Gerdler posed about changing up govt. #'s ... would love to run a tyranny casher hehe

Also.. aside from earthquakes being useless, does Anyone really utilize 'luck' to spend bonus on?

Some did for war mostly on team server. I dont like it and Im not sure how it works.

That aside, didnt you play the tyr casher challenge in express? I'm sure you did. Its pretty bad, as is expected.

I started a discussion on this a while back and actually just recently brought it back up in a limited setting

I did this on team for two or three sets primarily to increase my batch explores. The effect seemed a little low one set and about right another set. I think I got it to 12 or 13% iirc and my explores were usually around that much bigger. Overall not worth it because other bonuses are better.

I figured it's best use (luck) would be in Express utilizing market sells at a faster pace

Bonuses are so small on express. I think I use them for booms,turns, expenses or free GDI depending on my strategy and a little about when I play. Never thought about luck much, I played around with it on alphaffa and it has not seemed worthwhile.