I would suppose that is to mean that you can build little outposts to capture resources and that if you really want them to grow into cities, you must use an additional food for the first hut. City spam control?
Yes, for a city to grow, you must you two food, one for the city and one for a hut. However, food is pretty plentiful and getting cities above lvl 3 is not really even worth it until much much later in the game when you can actually build something in them.
Here is the thing with city spam in 1.09n. It is actually sort of worse in some ways for a number of reasons. Firstly you don't need local pop to build units or improvements. Since specialists are global, that new lvl 1 city can now spam any amount of lvl 1 buildings it wants as long as you have your capital up to about level 3 which should be easy with the 5 food you get for free. Secondly, you only need to research a bit of adventure to get more food resources to spawn. And lastly, you almost get an advantage by simply creating a small force with a pioneer, marching them to your enemies border and setting up shop, since now you will have a unit producing city that can pump out as many units as you have specialists for. If you are smart you will even move your beacon of hope and high charisma bonus person to the front so that your new invasion city can be leveled super fast to build unit groups. Oh yeah, and when the war is over, just destroy the beacon of hope and you get another pioneer to the next front.
