If gameplay didn't allow for making choices in early game, and reserved that until a civ had researched a key skill in the Colonizing tech-tree, then I'd be okay with that.
However, I completely and totally reject the logic that ANY reasonably advanced civilization would never achieve the skill or smarts to go beyond leaving the placement of their original colony to chance. I kindly (but firmly) call BS on this kind of logic, because I see it as a form of pessimism about the ability to learn new skills. We have "logistics", right? Well, if we can figure out how to coordinate large fleets, then why can't we figure out where to place the first outhouse and mess hall?
When discovering the Americas, sure it was left to chance (somewhat), but that's because we hadn't yet developed even an inkling that maybe we should explore up and down the coast before choosing a landing point. Or maybe ship and crew were so exhausted and hungry that they needed to stop NOW. But even then, once we landed, we figured out how to build our first villages and where to put that outhouse so that we wouldn't contaminate our foodstores or be eaten by bears and wild pigs just because we had a biological need to evacuate.
Eventually, we got pretty good with our decisionmaking skills with regards to colony layout. And that was HUNDREDS of years ago.
So certainly by the time we develop deep-spacefaring navigational skills, as well as the skills needed to build and launch colony ships that will be expensive and have long lead-times for crossing the voids of space and time, it would be preposterous to assume that we would think of everything EXCEPT where we would build our seat of power on the damned planet?
I reject the idea that we must randomize this part of the game throughout the whole game, and you should reject it too.
