[The Panther]

And the answer is: It depends!

If you can scout and establish a peaceful border with a neighbor or two, you can expand at your leisure to the edges of your agreed border. Sometimes, it can be easy to establish a peaceful boundary equal to the current dominion ownership, as that usually spreads radially out in all directions from your home until you meet an enemy dominion.

If you expand too fast, your neighbors can become alarmed and gang up on you. This happens a lot, actually, for it is easy to form a temporary alliance with several people for the sole purpose of knocking down the leader. It is often problematic to be first in too many stats, especially provinces. The army size graph tends to be mostly useless because it counts a Van or High Seraph as the exact same thing as it does a wimpy soulless.

If you are a nation that does not need much gold income but relies on spells and summons (like Pangaea CW), then site searching in your owned provinces can often be more important than expanding rapidly.

If you expand too slowly, your neighbors will think you weak and might gang up to carve out your lands among themselves. Or a more powerful neighbor may simply try to assimilate your territory if you are deemed too small.

On the typical level 9 indy setting, you are usually fine to wait until Turn 5 before expanding. After that, you want to take around 2 provinces every 3 turns to stay abreast of the world. But there will always be those nations who took an SC Pretender and out-expand you if you do this.

Ultimately, the key to any strategy is scouting plus diplomacy. You MUST know where your nearest neighbors are located and which direction they are expanding. You also want to know who is on the other sides of your nearest neighbors so you know whom to ask to join your side in war when it comes to that.

Every time I take a neutral province, I look to see if a scout can be recruited there. When I find one, I pump out at least half a dozen of those guys and send them on their way.

You never want to be totally isolationist and suddenly see that 3 nations are attacking you on the exact same turn from 3 different directions!

One thing to keep in mind is that taking a province adjacent to an enemy capitol is nearly always considered a hostile act of war, so you darn sure better know where your neighbors capitols are located.