Divaythsarmour
Adventurer
I've been giving some thought to the different beginning strategies for a single player game. Like anything else, you take a certain amount of risk no matter what you do. And like anything else the degree of benefit or loss correlates directly with the amount of risk you take.
So if I wanted to take the most risk and thereby realize the most gain (or loss) I would put both of my workers on the same type of tile to maximize the effort.
My tendency would be to put both of them on food first and grow the city as a first move. It's true that other options like producing a quick warrior or researching HBR get put off for several turns. But as soon as you reach population 3, you have significantly greater leverage on your next move. You can quickly make up for the shortcomings in regards to lost production or research by emphasizing 3 worked tiles toward that endeavor (depending on you terrain of course). You could take a really balanced approach and switch to 1 food tile, 1 production tile and 1 research tile. You're also in a position where creating a settler is one of the options.
So if I wanted to take the most risk and thereby realize the most gain (or loss) I would put both of my workers on the same type of tile to maximize the effort.
My tendency would be to put both of them on food first and grow the city as a first move. It's true that other options like producing a quick warrior or researching HBR get put off for several turns. But as soon as you reach population 3, you have significantly greater leverage on your next move. You can quickly make up for the shortcomings in regards to lost production or research by emphasizing 3 worked tiles toward that endeavor (depending on you terrain of course). You could take a really balanced approach and switch to 1 food tile, 1 production tile and 1 research tile. You're also in a position where creating a settler is one of the options.