Mon Aug 16, 2010 2:55 pm by Chris33
Just my take on the matter:
First, I think you should build your second city as soon as you are able. The only exception would be if you are wanting to try and take over another players city, but I only recommend this if you have a strong alliance and you know the city you are taking over has resources upgraded beyond level 15 (which requires the use of coins). Otherwise, I would build your own city as upgrading the buildings yourself provides a great amount of prestige, although it does also take a lot of time. But to me, the prestige is worth it. Its the easiest prestige in the game. Also, if you take over someone elses city who has leveled up their resources past level 15, you need to be ready to move that city immediately which costs 20 coins. Otherwise a player of that rank will likely just take it back over if you don't hide it from them. Now, back to why you should build your second city immediately. Even if you find the task of commanding troops from two cities too daunting for the time being, it is still good to have your second city built and begin upgrades. This way you can just switch over to your second city whenever you have nothing left to do with your main or are waiting on something to get done and can leisurely upgrade your second city to gain some prestige and have it built up and ready for when you are ready to train troops in that city and begin actually using it more.
As for where to build. That depends on your playing style. I'm an attacker because that is the fastest way to gain prestige. So if you are like me and like to attack, build your cities where there are lots of other players, not out in the middle of nowhere (and I wouldn't worry about your city getting taken over, this happens rarely and even if it does, you get to build a brand new one and again gain all the prestige from upgrading, not the worst thing in the world). Also, as I am an attacker, I like to build my cities a little distance from each other so I have multiple points of attack, but not so far that it is a ridiculous task to amass all my troops together when the need arises. I usually put them at about 6 to 10 minutes apart (for infantry), but I have a pretty high speed and marching tech at 10.
Now, if you are not an attacker like me, and just want to gain prestige in the game from training and murdering troops forever, then yes, you can build in the middle of nowhere, but close to some nice forts to farm for resources.
The important thing is to try and decide what type of player you want to be right now as once you place your city you will only be able to move it with 20 coins. Which means if you put it far away, but decide later you are an attacker type player, then you are going to want to move it later or it will be of little use to you.
Sorry, this is getting long, but one final point I would say. If you aren't sure what type of player you are yet, I would put your city around a lot of people as though you were going to take an attacker strategy. The reason is, even if you decide later you aren't much for attacking, being near other players provides a great opportunity to farm inactive players which in my opinion is a much easier and more efficient way to gather resources than fort farming anyway. For example, you can farm 1 inactive player with a full warehouse and gather 340k of each resource (even more depending on break cranny skill) and you don't have to worry about losing any troops and you can just send infantry and cavalry who travel so much faster since you won't actually be doing any fighting since they are inactive.
