Civilization VII is a failstate generator, and it's infuriating

So far I had three games. In the first one I got placed in snowy wasteland, spent twenty turns getting out to an acceptable location, and ended up being surrounded by a bunch of hostile barbarian cities who swarmed at me. In the second one I was able to make it to the second age but then four of AI civilisations declared war on me (even those who appeared to be friendly), and while I held them off initially, I was constantly bombarded by natural disasters which eventually crushed my economy. In the third game I got hit by an endless cycle of plagues which eventually killed off my entire population. Something is wrong. I understand the need to spice things up but there should be, at the very least, a way to predict such things and assemble some sort of protection against it. The entire crises mechanic is terrible, and only exists to kick your ass while you're already down. There's no way to disable natural disasters or barbarians, no way to prevent or fight plagues. It almost feels like a roguelike with the level of importance your luck has, and I simply can't appreciate this sort of approach in a game like this where a single session can take dozens of hours.