As I put forward in my first post about the starts, I think that our continent will be crowded and relatively inhospitable. One of the many challenges when playing the Americans at higher difficulty levels is that their first research choice is a bit... crummy.
We have Pottery. No one will pay us much of anything for it but it is obviously the critical first tech in many games -- granaries. If our civ didn't have it, this would be our choice -- 100% rush to Pottery. We also have Masonry. This tech will be our best trade bait early, depending on our neighbors.
BW-IW is great in that we need to know where the iron is, in order to make sure that we have it in place for making knights in the early MA. I think that the likelihood that we can put together any type of Swordsman rush early is slim in this setup. Therefore, the argument could be made that simply trading for BW is satisfactory, and then re-evaluating the need to grab IW quick.
CB is well, not particularly useful. We won't be building temples in the AA when going for a Conquest win, so it won't be a great use.
I would put forward the suggestion that for a first choice we consider either WC for some archers or the Wheel to spot the Horsies. Any AA war we fight, would need either archers and/or horsemen, so that might be the way to go. Esp. considering raging barbs.
Another possibility would be a minimum research or zero research track until we open up a second level tech like Writing - explore, grab goody huts or trade for WC, the Wheel, HR, BW-IW and especially Alphabet... then go all out for the Republic slingshot Writ-CoL-Philo-Rep.
There's a good chance our neighbors will already know any tech we choose straight out, and since we don't need any of them (unlike Pot) why waste the $$ until we can invest it wisely in something like IW or Writ? There is certainly a reasonable chance that in the first 25 or so turns we could trade for a tech...which would be faster than we would be able to research it. A gamble, but a calculated one.
Just some musings.
On the other topic, if you would like I can post something detailed about the settler factory options in our start... No sense me writing out things everyone knows though if thats the case.