Sub cities

Where's the best place to build your sub-cities? Near your main city or far away somewhere not so close to others? Same for your 3rd, 4th citites?

[Backburner]

It is up to you and down to your personal choice.

If you build your subs right next to your main city then you can transfer troops and resources alot faster, however if you spread them out more you will have a bigger range to attack and farm, albeit you will spend alot of time on troop dispatch etc.

So there are pros and cons, it is up to you.

I keep my main away from my sub cities. Its nice to have your main 30mins to an hour away so it doesnt take too long to move troops...also if you plan on attacking a lot it may be a good idea to keep one sub city isolated so that if u r locked (a cat is sent from hours aways so u cant warp/drop ur city somewhere) u can still warp at least one city

These are both excellent tips....

I like to keep my main far away enough from my branches that theyvarent so easy to find when someone does a player search on me. I try and keep two city complexes around two different clusters of forts, so it's easy to dispatch a farming army between them and keep a steady rotation of forts in my diet. As I jump around alot, it doesn't much concern me to position my cities for attacking various areas, so I make fort concentration my main focus when placing cities.
One thing I've noticed is that if you put your main city in an isolated spot of the map where you are all alone, it will soon become a spawn point for new generals, creating a crowded neighborhood. This is not the case with sub cities....they won't attract a spawn point if isolated.
I don't know if this still holds true with the advent of the 236 new servers haypi has constructed, but in the past, it has been the case, so it's something to think about if you want a remote location.