The art of war is over and it seem that I’ve won the first prize!
They were some great post by other players, here some of my favorite :
What city/cities to place your mansion or annexe.
Great guide to have a city of 400000 k of troops.
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6839&extra=

How to defend your city:
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6832&extra=

General guide by Chris soon
It’s cover pretty much everything
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=6800&page=2&authorid=135650

Guide per kingdom and a good intake on each unit of all the kingdom
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=7454&extra=

Great spreadsheet with the analysis of each kingdom
http://forum.koramgame.com/viewthread.php?tid=8154&extra=

Hope it’s help and happy TKOing.

It’s a tricky tactic that can help you take a city before the defender can realized it and prevent him to use the curfew command.
To make the train work you need 5 lobbyist (4 for wei) or ask player of your league to help you by attacking with some lobbyist too.
The train is quite hard to do since you only got 6 schedule deployment and you have to have 5 different attack with a lobbyist, your clearing wave and your demolisher wave.

First : check when your lobbyist and demo of all your city take to get to the target. If the difference of time is less than 10 minutes you should be fine to launch them at the same time.

Second: Pick a time that you want the attack to land or just launch the attack that from the city that the farthest from the target, note the times of that attack will land

Third: Time your clearing wave and demo wave to hit before this time, the clearing wave first and the demo wave a few second after. Make sure to hit the annexe and that you have enough demo to clear the annexe.

Fourth  : Launch all the other lobbyist attack so the land after the other attack by less than 5-10 minutes, if you have enough schedule deployment left use them.

If everything go fine you should have the city in one sweep.
To increase your chance you can always fake a train by using fake attack of demolisher since they have the same speed.

Another variant you can do : attack normally with a clearing wave and a demo wave and clear annexe of their cities. And after send a train with a clearing wave since that only 5-6 attack it’s easier to do, but since you’ve cleared there annexe they probably think you want to steal there city.

Hope it’s help.

Today is another post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online. Today it will be about “Offense tactic” 

A traditional attack usally have a Clearing wave and Demo wave, here how they work how to counter them and how to use them effectivly.

Clearing wave

The clearing wave constitute mainly offensive troop, a mix of infantry and cavalry.
It might be a good idea to include ram in it to minimize the effect of the opponent city wall.
Defensive Counter : Dodge the attack if you expect to be overwhelmed by the attack or stack a lot of unit in the same city to minimize your lost if you expect to win.

Preventing the counter : Fake attack or Timing your attack (see below)

Demo wave

(more in my previous post)

A mix of demolisher and infantry or even only demolisher for maximum impact.
Your offensive level and number of demolisher should be high enough to be able to target to building.
Defensive counter: Defensive troop good vs infantry, if it a only demolisher attack just defensive troop is enough they are very weak when attacking alone.

Preventing the defense counter : Timing your attack with the clearing wave.(see below)

Lobbyist

The lobbyist must arrive after the clearing wave and have some offensive troop with him, so he won’t die when it’s attack land.
The annexe must be destroyed too in order to reduce the loyalty of the city.
Defensive counter:Dodge the clearing wave and have troop in your city before the attack hit. Curfew command, relieve if you’ve been hit by a lobbyist

Preventing the defense counter : Timing your attack (see below)

Fake attack

If you opponent have many city, it can be a good idea to mix thing up, send a bunch of fake attack to one city while launching a full attack to another city. That way he won’t know which city defend.

Timing your attack

So you launched a attack like a noob and the clearing wave was dodged and the demo wave was destroyed because he had enough time to bring is troop back before the demo attack hit.

Here how you can prevent this

Schedule your demo wave to arrive just one second after the clearing wave. If you really confident that your clearing wave will clear is troop, send the demo wave one second after. So if he dodge the attack he will pay for it and if not you will probably clear is troop and demolish is city.

if you have specialized your city with specific kind of unit (like only offense or only offense and demo) it pretty easy to time your attack with the schedule deployment feature.

Pick a time and make a schedule deployment in your clearing wave city that will arrive at this time and schedule a deployment in your demo city that will arrive 1-2 second after the first attack.

If your city consist of only the kind of troop for the attack, set the schedule deployment to deploy all troop if there are troop missing.

Use your defense for offense

Piking

This tactic is simple, you send troop to defend a city you know your opponent is plundering.

Since the attacker only launch part of his troops to plunder, you can actually do some pretty good damage.
While this tactic used to worked well in tribal war where you don’t know who is supporting the city. In Three Kingdoms online, since you know who is supporting the city you’ve attacked this can be considered has an act of war.

I’m trying something with my Lobbyist, and if it’s work I’m gonna tell you about it. Do any of you have other tactic that could be include here?

Today is another post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online. Today it will be about “Using your demolisher effectively” 

Planning where gonna be your demolisher city.

Since the demolisher use six grains a hour, you will need a city that can produce a lot of grain or you will have to reduce the number of other unit you have.

Option one: in your main

Since your main can have resources at level 20 that mean your main will probably have a lot of grain so it can sustain the extra food required for your demo.

Step to have it :

During beginner protection focus on your field and completing quest for the extra cash, try to have 200 of pop by the end of beginner protection because that will give you around 300 of your base unit, you will need this to plunder. If you manage to build 500 soldiers by the end of beginner protection that’s even better.

By the end of beginner protection your field should be at level 5-6 and drill ground at level 5 at the very least.

With your soldier plunder all those zero point cities around you, they hold 800 of each resources so that mean you have to send 54 militias, 80 swordsman or  107 spearmens. And they refill to 800 every 2 days, so attack them every 2 days.

1st step build your drill ground to level 10

Now what, alternate between your ironwork and drill ground until they are level 20, you will have to upgrade the warehouse from time to time.

I you can build some unit to in case of an attack and to plunder.

You will discover something magical is that with the demolisher if you have it and they don’t you can juste prevent them from growing be destroying there building.

A city dedicated to demolisher

Instead of you main you can build a city just for demolisher or a mix of infantry and demolisher.

Pure demolisher city

This is probably insane, you will expect you other city to defend this city.

You build it the same way has explained for the main city except that you need to build some troop to so you can plunder at the same time your building.

The best spot for demo it’s probably a 4 timberland with 5 stone and 3 iron tend to require mostly stone, but that not entirely true since building the ironwork required a lot of iron

A city that have mix of infantry and demolisher.

Since infantry unit are slow the are a good fit with the demolisher and while your leveling your Ironwork and drill ground to level 20 your infantry can plunder surrounding cities.

Depending on the kingdoms the build look like this
Shu
Glaiveman + demolisher
Wei
Guardsman + demolisher
Wu
Sheild Infantry + demolisher

They all require a more iron but since the demolishers require mostly stone and wood probably 4 spot for every resource is better while 3 wood, 4 stone, 5 iron might work, demolisher usually need 900-950 wood each so you might be a little low in wood.

Where to aim

Aim the granary and the warehouse first, so he won’t be able to have the food for support and not enough resources to rebuild.

Aim the farmland after, his city food output will fall in the red and he won’t be able to produce any troop.

Note, if planning to take the city with a lobbyist here what you should do.

Aim his annexe, if you want to steal the city, don’t aim the mansion – It’s worthless, you won’t destroy the resource fields that are more than level 10 or more by destroying the mansion and you won’t be able to lobby is city if you destroy the mansion. Why because you’re confusing main city with city with a mansion.

Yes when you build a mansion in a city this city become your main city, but if the mansion is destroyed the city remain the main city. And the main city can’t be converted by a lobbyist.

The only way to change the main city is to build the mansion in another city.

Other Tactics

Destroying surrounding cities
If your planning a war or they are to strong to strike, you can always send your demolisher to destroy the granary and warehouse of the cities that you know he is farming.

Cutting him this source of revenue will slow down is unit production. and give you time to prepare for war.
Not that if they found out, they might get angry…

Countering the demolisher

Demolisher are actually very easy to kill if you have some defensive unit.

If you know that he is sending a clearing wave before sending his demolisher (it’s obvious when the attack come from a county since a county cannot build demolisher). Just pull your city army out before the clearing wave hit and return your army before the demolisher hit.

Note that demolisher cost a lot of resource and are slow so if you have a lot of offensive cavalry unit, you can attack his city and steal his food.

Your cavalry might even arrives back before the attack land and if your enemy food consumption is in the red a bunch of is unit will die.

The monitor office reduces the effectiveness of the demo so if you can build a monitor in every city (how to here).

Heroes can have a skill and an item that can help by increasing the durability of your building (like Lord Lu’s secret script)

Today it’s a post that Thungbard gave us on our Forum, it’s a great tips to be able to build tougher sub city and have extra oasis.

The Basic Premise of the Strategy is simply to NOT have a Capital, letting your Capital Float from town to town as needed. The obvious downside is that you can’t have above level 10 Resource Fields in any of your cities, Other than that, the Benefits are practically endless.
Here’s a Step By Step Guide, let me know if anything is flawed in the concept, or if you need further clarification on something.

Step 1 : Demolish all of your Mansions and Annex’s

Yeah as crazy as that sounds, that’s the first step. Clearly you don’t need to do it all at once, and if you’re close to accomplishing one of the other steps in this guide you probably want to do that first.
Note: you might not have to do that if your starting on a new server, some of the step can be done at the same time.

Step 2:Build a level 10 Annex at your new villages

A level 10 Annex can build 1 new city, just the same as a level 10 Mansion, except the Annex is cheaper to build. If you demolish an Annex or Mansion you still keep control of the Cities it’s built, so pretty much once you’ve used a city to build a new city the Annex is useless anyway, since it’s a lot easier to build a new Annex at the new city than to bring the Current Annex up to level 20 in order to create another city.

Step 3: Build a level 5 Library … Everywhere

Sounds easy enough, all you need to do to accomplish that is make sure you have a level 10 Drill Grounds everywhere.

Step 4: Build a level 1 Mansion

Doesn’t matter where, as long as there’s a level 5 Library. Congrats, you’ve now got the criteria for Step 5

Step 5: Build a level 1 Monitor Office

The Monitor Office once upgraded to the max doubles the durability of your buildings in that city, which will double the number of Demolishers that your enemy have to send at you in order to beat your city into the ground. The Monitor Office lvl 1 can only be built at a city that possesses a Mansion, but … if the City loses it’s Mansion or even become no longer your Capital, the Monitor Office remains and isn’t automatically destroyed like resource fields above level 10 are. Please Note that a level 1 Monitor Office is enough, since once it has that, the city CAN upgrade the Monitor office even if it’s no longer the Capital, it just can’t build the first level unless it’s the Capital.

Step 6: Build a level 15 Career Center

That is the requirement to capture a 2nd Oasis for any city that has a Mansion. If your Mansion isn’t in the city that has the Career Center, simply Demolish the Mansion where you built the Monitor’s Office, and rebuild it here. Then go and Capture the Oasis … Just like Monitor’s Offices, if this City is no longer your Capital, you still maintain control of all of the Oasis’s it has, this way you can get your SubCity to actually Own 2 Oasis’s without having to bring your Career Center up to lvl 20. A Level 20 Career Center is mighty expensive, so I haven’t had a chance to test whether or not your SubCity can actually own 3 Oasis with this method, but it certainly can own 2 without a lvl 20 Career Center … ’cause mine’s doing it right now.

Note : The level 15 Career Center is required for the 2nd Oasis for the main city, so even if the mansion is destroyed the city remain your main city until you build a mansion in another city.

Step 7: Rinse, Lather, Repeat

Repeat the above steps until all of your cities have Monitor’s offices and own Oasis’s long before they should be capable to. One of the Beauties of this is even if they start attacking you with Lobbyist’s you can move your Mansion to any City you want in under an hour to protect it, without having to invoke the ‘Curfew’ command.
Like I mentioned earlier the fundamental shortcoming is that you can’t have above level 10 resource fields because they’ll be downgraded to level 10 once you change the location of your Mansion, but having an extra Oasis at all of your cities probably evens out the resources you could be gaining from larger resource fields. Plus at any point in time once you’re satisfied with your number of Cities, you can leave one as the Capital and start upgrading your resource fields above level 10, and still reap the benefits of extra Oasis’s and Twice as tough Buildings at your other cities.
It’s just every extra village you do this in the more versatile and durable you’ll be. If we had a large portion of people doing this,

Your enemy will now need twice as many Demolishers as we’ll need to flatten their cities and you’ll be more protected against Lobbyists.

Today is a post for the Art of War contest, which a contest about strategy to help player dominate there opponent in three kingdoms online.

Today it will be about “What city structures are useless after a certain time.”
It will be the part 1 of 2.

Useful

First of all there building that you absolutely need like the granary and warehouse, the barrack is pretty essential since you need it to build unit in it but you’ll probably will let it at level 3 for a while since at the beginning it’s hard to recruit more unit than the barrack can recruit for the same amount of time. The command center is important too, it’s required for other building and to recruit messengers if you are planning on plundering a lot.  Note that if you don’t have a Command center you can’t send attack or support to other city.

Useless

There are three buildings that are rarely needed, the Bunker with is ridiculous amount of unit it can hide,  is almost only built for the quest that asks for it and to store pioneers while you’re recruiting the other pioneer. The League Flag might me useful if your league is really active  and your league mate want to move away from an enemy and be near you, but to move away from an enemy the state token give more bang for the buck so the league flag is rarely used. Finally the theater, can be an useful building  to store extra resources but since you can take the resource from every city you only need one so you can builds it in a sub and use the extra space in your main for something else.

The others

For the other struture it can depend on the player stance and the stage of the game.

If you’re a very aggressive player that plunders a lot then you will have a lot of troop so probably you won’t really care about a protecting them in a bunker, protecting your resources with a hidden warehouse or increasing the resistance of your building with the monitor office. You’ll probably rather spend all these resources on units and upgrades.

But if you don’t play often and you fear you’ll get attack or other players are plundering your city often, building 2-3 hidden warehouse in your city make sense like we already talked about in my previous article tips to increase your defense that your can see here.

Note that hidden warehouse might be very useful at the first month of the game or in a newly built city but using a city space to protect a 1000 of resources when your city produce around 2000 to 4000 of each resource a hour is pretty wasteful, so once you get to that point you can destroy the hidden warehouse and build something else.

There are other building that can always be destroyed later once they served their purpose, once you researched all the unit you needed in your drill ground you can always destroy it you won’t lose the unit you’ve researched.

The same idea can be applied with Armorsmith, Weaponsmith and Valor camp, but If you badly needs that space they’re probably a league flag, bunker, hidden warehouse or theater that can be destroyed instead.

So this is the end of part one the next part will talk about the other building and which building can be removed for specialized city (offensive city, defensive city, demolisher city)

When I started playing a three kingdom online on server one I realized that many of my league members were struggling with there city.

Since most of the attack that happens in this game are plundering attack.

Other more potent attack with demolisher or lobbyist happen much later in the game so we won’t talk about them for now.

Since plundering attack are made only to steal your resources and destroy your troop here a few steps you should follow

1- Build a hidden warehouse to level 10 and once it’s at level 10

Build another one (or three other one), this should prevent them from stealing your cash.

Side note once you have a building level maxed out (like granary, warehouse, hidden warehouse) you can build that building more than once so you could have one hidden warehouse level 10 and two other both level 5.

2- Use your special item in time of need

If you’re under attack and you still have the bronze shovel or the emperor order, use it. They both increase to effect of your hidden warehouse by four. (like I said in  a previous post don’t use it to complete the quest, using these item at the right time can save your butt)

3- Hide your cash in your other building

You can put extra resource in your market and theater too and they can’t steal it. If your afraid they will steal your resource, just put them in the market or in your theater. The market is better since you can get the cash back after the attack has landed.

4- Build a decent city wall.

I’m always surprised when I’m entrusted with someone account that they don’t even have a level 10 city wall.

Why build a city wall ? Because
1- It’s raise the defenses rating of your troop
2- You can build defensive traps
3- You can build a higher level tower with it
4- It’s doesn’t cost that much to build and it’s doesn’t require iron at all (note It’s seem it cost iron now, but on server one it’s didn’t cost any iron leveling your wall.)
5- When other people support you they won’t get pissed that there troop were killed because you didn’t have a good wall.

Side note :In your main your city wall should always be maxed to level 20.

5-Build Archer and put them in your tower

If you happen to have archers or crossbowman put them in the tower, in the tower the attack of the archer = def vs infantry so a auto cross bow man got 120 of def vs infantry, that part of why I was able to wash 1800 guardman with only around 300 acher in the tower.

6- Run away

If you expect to lose all your troop you can always schedule attack on a empty town near you one minute before there attack land. So you won’t lose any troop.

7- Upgrade your unit defense

Upgrading your unit defense can make a big difference in the outcome of a battle. each level increase your defense by 1.5%

8- Upgrade your unit attack

Since your archer attack = def vs infantry in the tower, it’s might be a good idea to upgrade there attack.

9- Heroes

Your hero statistic can help your army in battle, Leadership and Strength have a effect on the heroes usefulness in battle.

Leadership is probably the most important, one point Leadership will increase the attack and defense of your army by 0.2%. and the Strength affect of your heroes combat skill in battle. The initial attack and defense of the hero is 100 + is Strength so a hero with 35 of Strength will have 135 of attack and defense.

10- Always build troops

Plain simple, if you have troop you should hurt your enemies enough that they might leave you alone

11- Your defence formation

If you know what kind of attack your attacker is going to use, use the one that counters it. Here how to know which to use against which:

Formation of the fish is strong against formation of the bird but weak against formation of the moon.

Formation of the moon is strong against formation of the Fish but weak against formation of the bird.

Formation of the bird is strong against formation of the moon but weak against formation of the Fish.

12- Ask for help

Ask your league mate and allies to send you some support.

Beware not receiving too much support you can handle, if you don’t have any food and you food output is in the red, the support troop will die of starvation once they arrive in your city.

13- Send a email

While this tips doen’t really increase your defense, it can save you a lot of trouble. You can always send a nice email to your attacker, you never know he might leave you alone. Sometime they are attacking just because they think your inactive.

1. Know your kingdom

The first time I played I made the mistake of taking shu because I liked Liu Bei and I though I would get Guan Yu, Zhang Fei and Zhao Yun.
While shu is good if you already played these kind of game, I would have liked to pick wei instead to be able to build a resource at the same time I’m building in my city. I’ve kind of felt that I was forced to have aggressive behaviors because I had shu.
So has a rule of thumb If it’s your first time you play this kind of game or you want to be a tortoise player probably wu is the best fit for you. If you really gonna be an aggressive player, shu is probably better for you since you will benefit from the extra resource you can get.
I think the “dual building” of Wei is awesome, being able to build in your city while a 72 hours resources field is building is pretty neat…

2. Don’t use your free item right away for the quests like the bronze shovel and emperor order, use it when you really need them

While the quest are usally useful the quest for the bronze shovel is usally given while you are still under beginner protection. And since the bronze shovel prevent you from being plundered and you cannot be plunder during the beginner protection using the bronze shovel at this time is worthless. While the emperor order will be useful under beginner protection but most of it’s feature are useful later, (the bronze shovel effect, the faster recruiting, the extra speed)

3. This game is time consuming, specially when you’re at -30000 of food, you really need to plunder every day

I’m use to tribal war where you have a finite number of soldiers but were you can pack a bunch of soldier in one city. You cannot do that in TKO because if you pack all your troop in one city and you don’t have enough food to feed them they will starve.

4. The game is to addictive even though it’s really time consuming

Having a mix of simcity and warcraft is always fun even when you realized your not really going anywhere.

5. There is a grease monkey script for this game

The script is very useful if you just starting or if you have a new sub city, it’s train the heroes, visit them, level them up. It’s also build resources field and building for you (only one at the time though so you cannot take advantage of wei second build slot) You can download it here.

6. You don’t have to build your mansion in your first city

You can wait to have a more decent setting like a 9 farm spot or a 15 farm spot.

7. Focus on a limited numbers of unit type so you don’t waste money upgrading them

Specialized your city on offense or on defense so you don’t waste money upgrading and researching all of them.

8. Get you demolisher fast do so you can really cripple your opponent or at least to give you something to strike back that will makes them regret striking you.

If your one of the first to have them you can be one of the first to strike with them. And there no better retaliation than destroying an opponent granary to level 0.

9. Do scrimmage, attack camp guard and do all the faction quest you can with you heroes to raise there level

I didn’t know that attacking camp guard and doing scrimmage raise your heroes experience. And I’ve learned something else, doing scrimmage while give you training point that can be use to accelerate you recruiting.

10. Guarded places have a different arrangement of fields focused on food, so you can build a bigger army.

Really useful to build large army, a 15 food spot with two or three +50% grain oasis can build a city of greatness.

In my previous post I’ve talked about city and where to build them and how to increase you resources outputs with an oasis.

A nice spot should always have at least one oasis you need, from the eight type of oasis the hybrid ones are probably the best you can grab. By hybrid I mean the one that gives food and another resource (iron, wood, stone) or a 50% grain bonus. Like this:

Requirement successfully to take an oasis :
First be sure to have a career center that gives you the right to have an oasis here the rule took from the previous post :

Career center in a city  with a Mansion

Level 10 career center = 1 oasis
level 15 career center = 2 oases
level 20 career center = 3 oases

Career center in a city  with a annexe

Level 10 career center= 1 oasis
level 20 career center= 2 oases

An oasis can only be attack with the plunder mode and once you destroyed all the troop in the oasis the oasis is your. If you don’t fulfill the first requirement the oasis will be left empty but will not belong to you, the army wills recover randomly every day.
Note: it seems to be an increase of 5-10 of every type of troops everyday but that was just an observation.

Tips

-The oasis can only be attacked in your 7×7 area of your city so you might want another city near it and have that oasis in it 7×7 to be able to help you strike that oasis.
-Since the building the career center to level cost a lump sum of resources why not build it to level 15, build a level one mansion and then grab an oasis.
you can destroy the mansion once you got you two oasis and you don’t have to level up your career center to level 20.

Note : It seems that the number of troop an oasis can have top at 200 of each except for the yellow turban and the swordsman that seems to top at 50 of each.

The strength of the unit in the oasis and how to grab an oasis from another player can be found here.

Update :

I added a thread about how to grab a oasis from another player here.

Many players ask me how to build a city and how did I manage so many city. So here a quick tutorial about how to build a city.

The basic :

What a sub-city and what’s a main city ?

The Main city is the city where a mansion is built. You can only have one mansion so choose your main city wisely. The other cities are called sub-city and have an annexe instead of a mansion in it.

The main city have many advantages compare to your other city:

1- you can build your resources field to level 20 instead of level 10.

2- you can build a monitor office to increase the durability of your construction in a city with a mansion

3- you can have three oasis instead of two oasis

4- you can build three cities from your main city instead of 2.

Since it cost less money to build an annexe level 10 than build a mansion to level 15 and to level 20, the last point is not really important.

So how does it work by level ?

Mansion

Level 10 mansion= 1 sub city
level 15 mansion= 2 sub cities
level 20 mansion= 3 sub cities

Career center in a city  with a Mansion

Level 10 career center = 1 oasis
level 15 career center = 2 oases
level 20 career center = 3 oases

While a sub city can only accumulate 2 sub cities

level 10 annexe= 1 sub city
level 20 annexe= 2 sub cities

Career center in a city  with a annexe

Level 10 career center= 1 oasis
level 20 career center= 2 oases

Where to build your city ?

Once you get your mansion or annexe you need to recruit three pioneers.

Then you choose an empty spot where you want to build your city. Each empty area has its own unique resource configuration on like… 4 5 3 6, 5 4 3 6, 5 3 4 6 which means…

That for a 4 5 3 6, It has 4 timberlands 5 stone mines 3 iron mines and 6 farms. (like on the previous image)

Guarded empty place (where there a guard standing on the map with a 9 and 15 number on them)

The guarded field have a slightly different configuration giving less resources but more food, the configuration might be 3 3 3 9 (which mean 3 of each resource field 9 farm field) or 1 1 1 15 (which mean 1 of each resource field 15 farm field). Those fields are perfect to build large army since they provide more food.

How to choose the best spot for your city ?

You can choose a resource configuration that suit a type of troop you want to build, like for defensive city for shu would be a city with pikeman, lancer and auto-crossbowman which require a lot of wood, so a 5 timberlands spot might suit you well. You can always cope your lack of certain resources production by grabbing some oasis.

The oasis can only be attacked in your 7×7 area of your city so you might want another city near it and have that oasis in it 7×7 to be able to help you strike that oasis.

I will make another post later on “how to grab” a oasis but for now you can always check that link on the TKO forum.

Note :

You can build your city anywhere has long it’s a empty spot, so it’s mean it can be outside your 7×7 area and yes it can be in another state.

You don’t have to build a mansion for your first city, instead you can wait to have a better spot or even if you feel adventurous on field with more food like a 9 or 15 farm field. Imagine having a main city with a 15 farm field level 20, you would have almost a force that could wipe most of other cities.

If you want more information you can always go check the information on city on the forum here

There a other way to grab a city, and that’s with a Lobbyist, but that will be in a other post.

For now you can always check the forum information on that here.