Thanks for the comments. You are probably right that I am undervaluing these cards, but Catapult is so much worse than Militia. It's worth noting that it is not $1 less on play, it's $2 less because you trash a copper to get the effect, and combined with how slow trashers you really want to get rid of your Estates ASAP but with Catapult you want to kill the coppers because the discard effect is so much better in the early game you just end up with these super bad hands all the time with a high Estate density. Surelike Trade Route it has its use when you will take anything to get trashing, but for every card in the game you can construct kingdoms where that card is good, like Scout and Adventurer and Trade Route but those are still cards I'd rate 1/5.
Good point about sifting for Bustling Village and Settlers. Part of my reasoning for not being so keen on Bustling Village is because I found out when playing with City Quarter that only having 3 or so villages in your deck can make it super hard to kick off if the village isn't in your starting hand, which is less likely when you have so few, think about decks where you need Crossroads as your village and how often that can dud. City Quarter is 5/5 though because the drawing is insane so you don't need to buy terminal draw as much, and it plays nicely with other villages if they are around to help you use draw to find it and you still want it because it draws so much, while with bustling village I probably won't want it when other villages are on the board because it's so much harder to get and I can just use those other villages most of the time. And plowing through the settlers also means that while I spent time on getting g these not great cards I ended up also letting my opponent buy the Bustling Villages without them having to waste time buying bad stuff, so if you can't make the settlers work for you then it seems kinds bad.