Springfield has the terrain the be a 4-turn settler factory. If we make it one, we'll expand very fast, but we'll need to somehow get some military to protect those cities. A city in the NE region of Springfield would do that very well. Cruller can be a worker pump.

Agreed on springfield as settler factory.
Agreed on NE city as unit factory.
Agreed on Cruller as a worker pump.
Shelby for settlers and workers.

Agree all the way around.

Sound like a damn fine plan to me, we need to consolidate the river basin and start opening up the terrian east of springfield and this should do it just fine.

Sounds good. We'll probably want several barracks towns eventually, fortunately there's a lot of good terrain up north.

A 4-turn settler factory can operate at size 3.0-5.0 (that is, from size 3, 10 food in the box to size 5, 10 food in the box) as follows
turn 1: work cow, wines, bonus grass -> +5 food, 6 shields
turn 2: work cow, wines, bonus grass, and forest on growth -> +5 food, 8 shields
turn 3: work cow, wines, bonus grass, normal grass -> +5 food, 7 shields
turn 4: work cow, wines, bonus grass, normal grass, and forest on growth -> +5 food, 9 shields.

Total: 6+8+7+9 = 30 shields = 1 settler.

For this we need to mine one more grass tile.