I've noticed that some cities when doing advanced start (at 100 points only -- enough so you get your initial city placement (costs 90) within the 5-radius line of sight around your starting location) start with expanded borders (2 radius) instead of just the normal 1 border. I'm talking first turn border expansion. I've even had it happen to me; I rarely play creative so I doubt it's that.

Any ideas what's causing this?

I would assume the further out you go, the more turns it would take to expand your borders. Sounds like the game takes the movement into account on advance start.

What I'm saying is this, if you place a city 5 squares away from starting location, the computer uses the turns it would take to walk there and subtracts them from 10,15 or whatever for your border to increase.

2 Examples:

1) Stay where you are at, no turns lost, automatic border expansion, 1 culture a turn for 10 turns.

2) Move 4 spaces away, all forest. Takes 4 turns, so your advanced city would be 4 turn shy of expanding it's border.

Just a guess however, since I haven't tried advance start.

Testing... It is not related to your distance built away from starting location. It's even simpler than that. Creative leaders in advanced start have their borders expand automatically to 2-radius. They start the game, turn 1, with 10 (14 on turn 2) culture. That's a pretty potent difference from a normal start, where you still have to wait a few turns before you have your 2-radius.

Fortunately, the game charges the normal 2-to-3 radius cost for "increase culture radius" in advance start. However, it feels as though creative leaders get a free 25 advanced start points per city (just checked: its every city and normal cost of expanding borders to 2-radius is 25) they found because of it. I understand the reasoning, but I'm not sure I agree with it.

Yeah, I tested it last night and that wasn't it.

Guess Creative does make sense.