What's so great about Expansive?

[novice]

The new tile has to produce 4 yield to break even, accounting for the 2 extra food consumed on the grow-during-settler turn plus the normal 2 food for the new laborer on the next turn. (And break even is slightly less than even since he costs maintenance.) You need to be adding a really good tile to come out ahead, a resource or a floodplain farm or Biology farm, or else you're better off clicking "Avoid Growth" for that turn. (A river hill breaks even on yield, but by converting food to hammers at 1:1 which is not always good.)

That's often the case though, early game with low happy cap. And you want to minimize the number of turns needed to grow back to whip again. And you're often halted for two turns because you're putting overflow into a second settler/worker, in which case a three-yield tile is enough to break even.

[mackoti]

Oh, my head.

[darrelljs]

Oh, my head.

Your fault for reading past the first few words .

Darrell

[Krill]

Yeah...playing the numbers game with granaries gets absurd. Especially when you try to go to the next level and factor in items such as cottage growth, extra commerce, quicker GP etc. I think that if you are working to that level of detail, you need to find a new job.

[SevenSpirits]

You can grow while building a settler as Krill stated, but the usefulness is limited. The 2 food eaten by the new citizen is subtracted out of what goes into the settler that turn, but the tile that would be worked by that new citizen is not counted that turn, so you come out behind. (Worse, the city screen doesn't correctly account for this ahead of time, so you actually get two less production into the settler/worker than the screen shows.).

However, if you are not producing any surplus food this turn, you actually don't lose out. E.g. your food box is at 20/20, you're producing 0f+16h into the settler, you will grow and actually get all of those 16h because the only thing being reduced is the hammers from food surplus, and that value doesn't drop below zero.

[Lewwyn]

Your fault for reading past the first few words .

Darrell

I skimmed.