Looks pretty fun! Thanks for keeping the series alive all of this time! I am doubtful to have time to complete a Standard-Sized game, but it might be fun to give this one a go to see how well I can do by, say, 1 AD, to at least have a basis of comparison.
Based on the "crowded" description, it seems wise to push westward away from the Coast as far as is practical while still earning the Corn and the Deer (as well as a workable PH Riv For square): 2W of the Corn or 1 SW + 1 W of the Corn.
I'd rather keep the PH Riv For square available for a longer-term source of Hammers instead of settling on top of it. With so much Grassland, there might be very few squares to work for sources of Hammers. Even the Deer doesn't come with a Forest on it.
As for the Scout, probably move it 2 SW or 2 NW, giving us information about the west in one direction or the other. If something nice is revealed in said direction, settle toward that direction. Otherwise, settle toward the opposite direction and hope for something nice in the hidden squares.
I think that I'm leaning toward exploring 2 NW with the Scout, since by moving 2 SW on Turn 0, the Scout's move westward on Turn 1 appears to be limited to 1 movement point in any of the 3 possible squares to move to, as it sure looks like another GH square on the square that is 3 SW of the Scout. Let's hope that my map-reading skills won't fail me after all of this time.
By moving 2 NW on Turn 0, the Scout can move 2 squares further westward on Turn 1. Also, it leaves open the chance to change my mind and settle on top of the PH Riv For square if something gets revealed. It was an annoying long-ago SGOTM where players who settled in-place instead of moving to a PH on Turn 0 missed out on a hidden Silver Resource, and settling a Forever-Size-1 City #2 just to get that missed Silver Resource also hurt the teams who settled in-place. That's another reason why, if we ever have another SGOTM, it cannot be a random map and it must be well-balanced by a thoughtful and careful Map Maker.
I have to say that it is a very clever idea to "copy and paste" a portion of one map into another map. It's a nice way to keep things fresh. If that's done again (using a smaller-sized map type to paste into a larger-sized map type), perhaps doing so using the Small Map Size for the two map types instead of the Standard Map Size could be a good way to keep the overall size of the map more manageable.
It's +25%
[bonus for workers], not +50%.
