Talking to @sdee and thinking on the comments that we as players don’t use the whole map… Well that’s because we can’t. There’s no explorer function.
I think perhaps a small group could be designated as “explorers”. They’d collect 6-7 days worth of food (jerky, yuck) and a notification would pop up when they had assembled at the banner. The notification would let you disband them or send them a direction!! Of course you’d be able to give them new directions (maybe once every day). Once they had found something you thought was cool, you could send them home or have them settle a new town.
If you made a new town you could select groups from either town and send them from one town to another.
If you had sent them home you could have established a marker that town members could make a pilgrimage to. Maybe a camp site for summer or whatever.
Having two towns would give you two economies or perhaps just one with regional item control. This would be an @sdee question about how the devs wanted to handle that aspect. Wouldn’t want someone walking 5 days away for a plate of berries, now would we?