expansion question

Okay, so i have a few questions about expanding to a second village...any advice would be helpful:

1. Is it best to go for a 15 crop field as the second village?
2. Okay, so i trained a settler today and will have another probably tomorrow and the third in 2 days, but i need to make sure these guys are killed before that, would the best thing to do is send them as reinforcement to another village far away and then just call them back as soon as they arrive that way they are in transit the whole time instead of sittting ducks in my village? i dont have many, any in fact right now, defensive troops so i dont feel comfortable leaving them in my village. or is there some other way to protect them?

thanks

1. I prefer a 15 cropper *must get them before anyone else can!*
2. You can send them to my village! I don't get attacked at all. and yes, you should protect them. at ~23K resources a pop, it's best that they don't die

If the cropper is close to your original village then go for it. If it is far away, settle a normal village right next to it. !5-croppers produce almost no resources of their own so they constantly need to be supplied so location is key to it being successful or not.