In the old builds, I could see the value of building settlers if they came with your initial explorers to the new world, since you otherwise would've had to have waited a set amount of turns to produce the colony model/plan/blueprint based on the production of your outpost, and also waited for the outpost to be constructed in the first place. However, now that we can buy the colony model/plan/blueprint instantly using a very small amount of influence (200-300), it makes no sense to consume 3 population and a whole bunch of production to make the settler instead. This is made worse by the fact that the colony plan is unlocked at the same tech as settlers and gives exactly the same thing: 

• The City starts with 3 Population and 1125  Production
• Starts with all Infrastructures from eras 1-3

Another point is that the cities made by both settlers and the colony model/plan/blueprint don't come with the listed infrastructures. They don't come with any at all as a matter of fact. I hope that the devs see this and realize that: 

1) the settler is currently just plain worse than the instant buyout with influence option and doesn't present an interesting decision to make

2) The colony model, plan, and blueprint currently don't do what they say they should be doing in terms of infrastructures they should come with

Great game overall though!

I had the same problem with the colony plans it was kind of frustrating and i didnt even bother getting settlers

Don't know why your pictures aren't loading, so I'll try to add to the issue

Hm... what should I choose?