I think I get the whole

"Our nations are so protected by the people/nature that anyone trying to invade it would essentially commit suicide."

thing. Not all that special, I've seen it hundreds of times.

But riddle me this.

"The Harvest was bad this year, some people are starving in X region."
"There was a comet in the night sky, people call it an omen of the end of days."
"The snow melted too quickly and rivers left their bed."
"Drought"
"Locusts"
"Large mine is becoming exhausted"
"Lack of gold or silver for minting new coins"
"Plague"

How do you counter that?

I think random events should either be acts of gods, things that the players obviously couldn't have any control over, or have some foreshadowing. Not making a post about how barbarians come and enslave some people, but say that scouts have spotted a bunch of foreigners marauding, etc and let players deal with this.

The thing is that while random events can put certain players at a disadvantage, so will the divisions of people living in wonderland where every day is sunny, the waves are small, the harvest bountiful and so forth and those who live in a more realistic setting. I don't know people in this thread, but I doubt a lot of people would in a war say

-The war is going badly
-The morale is poor
-AND the harvest was shit, so people are starving

That or say that part of an invasion fleet was lost in a storm. It keeps things interesting, unexpected things can happen and let's not forget one crucial thing: The notion of 'Wage total war & genocide' isn't implemented (Or at least anyone implementing it is a dick), so what if you lose a war? Maybe you'll lose some territories, maybe you'll be completely invaded and your population reduced to slavery or forced to migrate out of your land. But this isn't a game over, it's just a change of gameplay, maybe the next grand leader supreme of the world will be you.