Moving your capital

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Hey, guys. Long time, no post.

Playing Civ here in my rare spare time, and I'm looking for some input on this situation:

I never move my capital. However, in my new game I'm thinking about it, and I'm not sure how to think about it. I'm only about 15 turns in, but here's the deal: Playing as Mali; standard size map (big-and-small), normal speed, no special settings, Prince level. My capital's in a fine location, with a little bit of everything (on the sea and a small river; hills, grassland, forests all in the BFC; two specials -- cow and wine -- in BFC).

However, my little bit of exploring (turn 15, remember) has revealed a spot for a city 5 spaces away that would have rice, ivory, and 3 gold, without any overlap with my capital's BFC. Gorgeous for the financial Malinese, right? And if that were the capital under bureaucracy, really nice.

So it seems to me there are a couple of options:
1) make it the capital asap;
2) make it the capital during the first Golden Age, to minimize time spent building the Palace;
3) make it the capital, but not until just before switching to bureaucracy -- there are more urgent uses for hammers early on;
4) don't move the capital; there are always better uses for those hammers.

Just wondering how you might handle this and, more broadly, when and why you move your capital. TIA.

[Verrucosus]

I have thought about it sometimes, but never ended up doing it for some reason. Your situation might be similar.

I would argue against options #1 and #2 because they make you spent hammers on something that won't pay off until you switch to Bureaucracy while you could spend them on something that gets you ahead right now (settler, worker, scout, almost any of these can make a huge difference in turn 15).

Whether you make the switch will depend on the situation when the time comes ... my guess is you won't because
(a) the new site might not benefit as much from the hammer bonus as the old capital while the advantage,
(b) you might have to farm a few grasslands at the new site to work the gold tiles and still grow (the rice alone won't do it I think) whereas the old site can develop towns on its grassland reducing its disadvantage in base gold production or
(c) because you'll find an even better site by that time (unlikely but you never know and why spend on something you might not want in the end?)

[wodan11]

A better reason to move the capitol is if it's a more centralized location, reducing city maintenance.

[rah]

The only time I did it, that was the main reason. (but it was to an ex-ai cap that, as usual, had better land than mine)

And yeah, three gold is nice as long as you have enough food to work all of them

[Theben]

Financial benefits from working more commerce tiles, not necessarily high-payoff ones. And if you snag a religion or 2 I think you'd rather have them in that city... which ain't gonna happen if you make it your capital.

[rah]

If you make it your cap after you've founded the religions..............

[Brael]

It's better to wait. See what direction you're expanding in first, you don't have civics to boost it for awhile anyways. Also, if you can get any religions you want them going to that city I'm guessing (assuming you're going to set it up primarily as a gold rather than science city).

About the only time I would recommend an early palace is if you're in the position to found multiple religions and your first religion went to your capital. Even then it depends very much on if you can chop and whip it. I think it's something like 30 hammers (marathon) invested, 3 forests chopped, and a size 6 city to whip it in.

From what you're saying though, you're getting I think 24 commerce in 5 tiles (3 gold+rice+farm to feed those tiles). Assuming the ivory is grassland you can increase that to 27 commerce in 6 tiles. That certainly makes a nice city but bureaucracy is awhile away, by the time you get it, it's possible you'll find a city (especially something on a river) that can generate more commerce.

[rah]

Yeah, a lot of enemy caps that I find have lots of flood plains. (especially when my territory didn't even have any rivers)

[Ming]

I rarely move my capital, but mostly because I just never get around to it. The few times I've done it, it was due to starting on the edge of the map, and taking a city closer to the middle of where my empire would be centered. And in those cases, it was usually an enemy capital that had great land, improvements already in place, and a couple of wonders, some buildings survived, and some Great People, so the palace was the first thing to be built.