Even in the first islanders it was sometimes profitable in the long run to place a building scoring negative points, on the condition that doing so allowed you to gain more in the long run playing buildings off your "core". Now, the Sustainable and Neighborly boons work in most situations, but you might not have those, and there are some cases where buildings gain negatives off of things that cannot be nullified. Take masons for example. Often received in large number, and a fantastic boost to temples, but awful for the temples best friend the cliff house. Placing a bunch of low scoring masons may seem better to do after the level up, but, if you've already set up all the cliff houses you have room for around your temple, you can squeeze in a few masons with this method, and then gain much greater points off of them with one or more temples, that are boosted with other boons, to get 20~30 more points per mason or more, than if you'd just placed them on the outskirts.

Your "investment" trick is hot garbage, and costs points. Consider the following scenario: You have 100 points, a hermitage, and "Upgrade to next level." The next level is at 200 points. You can place the hermatage in one spot for 20 points, or another spot for -40 points. You can do the following:

Get -40 points from the hermatage, This drops you to 60 points. You then use "Upgrade to next level," which gives you 140 points. You now have 200 points

Use the "Upgrade to next level" immediately. This sets you to 200 points. Then you place the hermatage for 20 points. You now have 220 points.

I know, but the trick is not about agreement - it just works this way.

Yeah bigger area boon works better with temples and Precious boon is better for Pyres

I disagree about the Pyre tip. Increase area is extremely effective on temples, where, with huge range and few points of score, the precious boon, that lets a building claim 1 point for everything in range that doesn't score, is much better for Pyres.