I'll also be gone from the 26th to the 29th.
As for the settler / hut thing, here's what I think happens when you pop a hut:
First the game figures out what you can get (ie: Techs, warriors, barbarians, etc) then it adds up those items to get a base number. Then it generates a number from 1 to the base number. Finally it looks up in your list of things to see what you get.
Example: Game is at Monarch, you have no military and you have a settler active.
You can get a City (5), Tech (15), Gold (10), Map (10) or Warrior (10).
So your base number is 50. The computer gets a RNG value. if the value is 1-5 you get a city, 5-20 you get a tech, 21-30 you get gold, 31-40 you get a map & 41-50 you get a warrior. Now if you are playing as Sumer, you can't build warriors, so that 10 is gone. That means in this case Sumer's chance of getting a tech are 15/40 (38%) while everyone else has 15/50 (30%). I've yet to prove that you can get a city when you have a settler in process, but there are no mentioned restrictions for cities except must be valid terrain for settling.