Henroo
Oh Wise One
Of the 2 I would say the expansion is more important. The 3rd builder has not been as useful as you think, getting it was more of a luxury. The first time through the game, I had not bought a 3rd builder for any of my original cities at this point and I still moved pretty quickly through the tech tree.I politely disagree. New players are unlikely to see this thread because - unless someone links it to them on Discord, or they're lucky enough to get in a FS that peruses the forums, there's no way for them to find it.
This thread, however, is extremely helpful for established players who - for whatever reason - want to start a new city.
New players, though, won't have the diamonds to purchase both the early expansion and the 3rd builder that Henroo did. Unless, of course, they purchase some. Those two purchases are, IMHO, responsible for much of Henroo's early rapid progress. And his knowledge of the game is responsible for much of the rest.
New players make bad decisions occasionally unless they have someone watching over their shoulder saying "Don't do that!" Example: not knowing about the requirement to be in a FS for advancement further down the road, they may decide they want to play solo - so they build factories for their non-boosted goods to minimize the trading they have to do.
I know, because I was that player. But I found these forums shortly before I unlocked FS, and I spent 3 days combing through them. Then I deleted my non-boosted-goods factories and did more trading. And when I got FS unlocked, I was fortunate enough to get into a good one - with players who answered (and STILL answer) my questions about "Why do this?" and "How does that work?"
At his stage of the game, build times are still fairly short. What I have found is that with 3 builders, they are working in bursts. So, I unlock a tech advance and then put all 3 builders to work doing the freshly unlocked upgrades. Then I either finish the upgrades or I run short of population and all 3 builders are idle. If I only had 2 builders, it would obviously take longer to do each upgrade cycle. But I also think there would be less downtime for the builders, which would somewhat compensate. In terms of overall game progress: I probably have come out ahead by having that 3rd builder, but it is nowhere near a total overall 50% difference in speed.