I really don't know, I had a similar experience with my first month too, a few landings I took care of well followed by a progrom early in the next month, though I jumped at the chance to get good guns and did the progrom. That actually went pretty well for me all things considered.
I had to pass on a tower and a rodeo in south america after that, and I hit some ships to close off month 2. But I got like a negative 200 score at the end. Next month was more eventful and I did more research and actually got to do a few landings and other things, but my score dipped to -400.
Then I had a super eventful and nice month and took out like, a church, two warehouses, a rodeo, a humanist ship and another progrom. ... -900 and I'm warned.
Looking in my save there was like 1000 or so points worth of activity in australia I couldn't do anything about, and a lot all the way down south in africa. I barely got an UNARMED ship that can reach most spots on the map from europe by then. I have no idea if I was supposed to do things differently or if I just got fucked by RNG.