Speaking of sandboxing, there's basically two major decision points in the road to the first settler:
1. Tech Mining > Bronze Working or tech Pottery.
2. Second Worker before or after first settler.
The current semi-consensus seems to be BW and after settler. Here's what that looks like:
In this scenario we have:
3 Food improved
2nd city settled t32
TR upon founding in second city
1.5 wasted worker turns (The 1t of road between the capital and the cows isn't going to be very useful in the short-term at least. The one burned between the deer and the cows is unavoidable.)
4 warriors
New city builds warrior to start
1 worker
Hunting, Animal Husbandry, Mining researched, plus 141b of Bronze Working.
If we tech Pottery before Mining, the things that change:
-1 Warrior
+21h into a Granary at the capital
New city builds Granary to start
-141b of Bronze Working, + Pottery
Obviously, Pottery first is better in a vacuum. Unfortunately, waiting that long on copper could be very dangerous. BW may also start to shine more after the sim, when we could whip the second settler. And generally speaking, earlier revolts to Slavery are better since they cost you less beakers/commerce/etc.
Still need to run a 2 workers sim, though I think a lot of 2 workers value is dependent on whether or not there's horse nearby. Anyway, just an update since there's nothing actually going on in terms of the game.