no room for expansion

I am new to this game and I like it so far :) after playing 4 days now I reveal more of the worldmap and I see that on one side I have sea and the other three sides are other players close by.

I am wondering how I can build a decent country when there is so few space?

Welcome to TT2. Lack of space is on purpose. They like us to fight for it, or you can start a new hero and hope for a better location.

well "fight for it"wil be a bit hard as the game sort of directed me to be a collective player as a newby.

If you want , you can change your politics from Collectivism to Despotism.

But change is kinda expensive , so I recommend you consider before you do change it. 

Just get the new politics that reduces corruption with towns that are close together (was it Monarchy?).

I am almost ready to get my second town and I could use some advice where to start.

I have some  room left of my but at the seaside I can build a harbor, what would be best?

Last alpha, my first, I ended up being not too crazy about the harbor feature - I might be wrong (and if someone could point out an interesting thread about this, that would be great!), but my impression was that it isn't too useful/interesting for a (beginning) collective player. So I'd go for the space :)

Thank you , I think the boats look nice, I wil try to enlarge my domain a bit further so a riverplot will be inside.

I love harbor towns, for many reasons. One being that they are lovely to look at. But they also have other benefits that are more useful.

1. You can travel much faster to other players by raft/brig.  This is useful for reinforcing, as well as attacking.

2. Some ships can pirate. Really fun and not so risky for more timid players to try.

3. Ships are like floating towers. Great for defense and can be moved to defend more than the town they are built in. 

4. Sea ports are awesome for moving resources to other players. Usually much faster than by land travel.

5. You can clear fog from the sea. Very useful for seeing globals and islands.

6. You can have a watermill to increase your food production, if you build your harbor town on a river.

7. You can catch different fish in a river or sea, then you can catch in the little ponds in our inland towns.

This is just to list some that come to mind. I am sure that others can add more benefits to it.

this is very useful information indeed, thanks !