Of course the crab nets give +2fpt. WhatI'm looking at is that at p1, Stone is already working a 3f2c oasis tile, so the 4f2c crab nets add very little value. This is low value after a 9t wait from Gems, but even chopping the wb in Stone is low value imo, for a measly +1fpt compared to chopping the library, simply because the 5f rice and gold tile are waiting. But that's just my gut feeling without testing it.
While the Oasis does throw a loop into things, consider which Food-based square we could work at Size 2 then.
I was under the impression that the Rice was unirrigated, making it a comparison of 4 Food from the Rice versus 4 Food and 2 Commerce from the Crab if we Chop out a Work Boat.
ZPV delays the library in Washington but still gets math on 1160BC because he settles Stone so late and hasn't settled Pigs yet.
Let's be careful about how we combine the various approaches here. My understanding is that Stone has a lot more Forests that would be Chopped into The Pyramids than our capital does.
Even if our capital does have several Forests, we'll probably want to use a good portion of those in Workers/Settlers (or even Archers/Warriors now?), so if we build The Pyramids in our capital, we'll either use up less Forests for other things (potentially slowing us down) or else will need to settle Stone City sooner, so that our capital can spend a good number of turns manually building The Pyramids using the Stone-Resource-production-enhancement factor.
If we settle Stone late and don't build The Pyramids there, then aren't we essentially delaying the value out of a whole ton of Forest Chops in Stone City? If not, then would we really focus on making those Chops anytime soon?
Chopping a ton of Forests in Stone City for The Pyramids is pretty nice since:
a) We have enough post-Math Forests to be able to almost complete The Pyramids, to the point that the City's Centre and working the Stone with our Size 1 citizen can finish off the last bit of The Pyramids quickly
b) We could do it with 0-pre-Chopping using 3 Workers being near the Stone at the last minute and a 4th Worker coming in at the very last minute
c) We could virtually clear-cut (maybe not one of the Silk or Spice) the Forests in our capital as soon as possible for non-Wonder build items, while keeping those Workers nearer to other Cities and not feeling that we need to save said Forests
d) Our Workers won't be out of position later by having to go up and Chop Stone's Forests for post-Math Chops into random, non-Wonder build items
As I mentioned in point b), we could aim to send 3 Workers to the Stone to Road and Quarry it as soon as the City is settled (or with a bit of ideal timing, Road it just before the City is settled).
Alternately, we could just use 2 Workers for Quarrying if we need the 3rd Worker to be elsewhere (Worker "A" in my diagram below is this flexible Worker, while Workers B and C would definitely be Quarrying the Stone--it's not a one-Worker-job).
A 4th Worker, Worker D, can arrive at the last minute from elsewhere to Chop the last Forest.
the maintenance costs of Pigs+Stone push back the completion time of math, imperiling our early GLH date.
It may not be feasible to Mine and work a Gold in time for it to contribute fast enough to Commerce to offset a potential drain on our economy by settling Stone City earlier.
Then, there's the issue of how do we leverage all of Stone City's Forests if we aren't using them on The Pyramids. Yes, there is The Great Lighthouse, but then we'd probably Chop most of them or all of them pre-Math, right?
Anyway, I'm not discounting any ideas, but combining them might not work as well as the two main existing approaches, since certain trade-offs were calculated in each one--saving Flasks by settling Stone late goes hand-in-hand with putting The Pyramids in Stone, since, otherwise, we can't really leverage it's Forest Chops.
Meanwhile, settling Stone sooner makes us say "well, let's use those Forests, but let's probably not wait until Math and just Chop as many as we can into The Great Lighthouse." At 20 Hammers instead of 30 Hammers each, that 7 * 20 = 140 Hammers--a good chunk of The Great Lighthouse. A balance of some pre-Math and post-Math Chops could work, too, if, say, we Chopped a Forest into a Work Boat and saved most of the Forests until after Math, but it sounds like the timing makes it just very tough to do, since The Great Lighthouse needs to come out sooner than The Pyramids.
Thus, I really like the synergy of building the Wonder that we want quickly (The Great Lighthouse) using a lot of production squares (i.e. putting it in Marble City such that Marble City is settled adjacent to the 2 Hills squares), since Mine-based Hammers do not pay a penalty pre-Math like Forest Chops do.