I like events. They are a break from the "chores" of base-building and maintenance.

If you have a good moat and or walls, you can ignore events entirely, or go to your archery platform(s) to plink attackers, as the mood takes you. If your defenses are not adequate you can kite the invaders away from anything you want to protect; the mobs will chase you and only destroy things you have built in an effort to get to you.

So if you don't want to deal with events, then as soon as you have an idea of the scale of the project—by laying out the foundations, say—build the defenses. A base without well thought-out defenses is not in the spirit of the game, after all.

You might enjoy planning the defenses first, based on the terrain. Put the moat through the valleys and take the highest hills you can, that sort of thing.

How can you not like events? Do you really want to be uninterrupted when you're digging 14K of moat? :)