[bluebrooks]

i never figured out how to change the respawn time, but i would think that there has to be a setting somewhere.

as for the explosions, yes you do this fairly easily with a little scripting.
a) get the coordinates of where you want the explosions to be.
b) write a little thread into destroyed village that spawns them every random amount of seconds.

it would something like...

//(put this part at the main script section
thread crazy_explosions

//(put this part after the main section and before the very bottom
crazy_explosions:
local.waittime = randomint(45) + 15 // gets random # between 15 & 60
wait local.waittime
spawn fx/explosion/mine.tik "origin" "x y z" //where x,y,&z are the coords
// (i just guessed on the tiki file name above)
goto crazy_exlosions