When should I move my capital?

[tobyr]

When is it worthwhile to move one's capital, taking into account the form of government, stage of the game, etc.?

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[rah]

If you start out on a peninsula and expand away from it, you may want to move it to the center of your empire to reduce corruption and defend it better. (any goverment but democ since no corruption in democ.)

If your capital is being threatened by other civs because of it's location. Move it to a better place.

If in any other government you may want to build it in you SSC to maximize it (no corruption)

If you've launched a space ship you may want to move your capital to a city built on a mountain top to maximize your defense. (depends on location also)

If you start on a small island and expand mostly to one large continent, (see first example)

It is always best corruption wise to have it in the middle of your empire.

Even though a palace can be expensive, it will pay for itself quickly.

Having said all this, I rarely move it. But I have under certain circumstances. THe above are just the ones off the top of my head, and I'm sure others will list their favorite reasons.

RAH

[Ming]

There aren't many reasons to move your capital... I think I've done it maybe once or twice in over thousands of games.
But here are some reasons why you might.

1) Your capital just sucks! If you get a terrible starting position (polar ice cap), you might consider moving it.

2) Your capital is about to be taken, and you want to move it away from the front

3) For some strange reason, most of your cities are far away from your capital, and it will be a while before you get into a modern government. Sometimes, corruption just kills you.

So as you can see, I just don't change mine very often


Added later... Damn Rah... I guess this proves again that we are twins... you beat me by one minute
[This message has been edited by Ming (edited June 27, 2000).]

[tobyr]

By the way, there is a really unusual reason to move your capital in the ToT fantasy game. I wasn't even thinking of this when I posted my question. In the fantasy game, if you get the Crown's Emissary wonder (= Marco Polo), your powerful one of a kind "hero" unit shows up in your capital some time later.

You might actually move your capital near the front so that your hero shows up there, and then later move your capital to safety.

Also, you might want your hero to appear on a specific map, so you would relocate your capital there just in time.

- toby


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toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com

[St Leo]

In some scenarios (say, Arab Conquests as the Franks) your capital is on one side of your empire and all the juicy cities you will conquer on the other. This would be a situation in which moving your capital is a must.

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St. Leo
http://ziggurat.sidgames.com/
http://www.sidgames.com/forums/
[This message has been edited by St Leo (edited June 29, 2000).]

[KhanMan]

If this is a MP game, there are more devious reasons to move your capital.

For example (I think Makeo did this one), you could rename three of your cities the same name, then move your capital to one of them. This will confuse human opponents, and it can help if you're in the space race (and want to hide your capital). Or there was another trick that, I think, involved:
1. being in democracy (or fundie, or communism, none of which have any corruption)
2. build a population 1 city
3. rush build capital there
4. following turn rush build settler or engineer

*poof!* No more capital, and space ship is home free.

-KhanMan
(who loves laughing at the ai, which moves its capital every two turns in some games...

[DaveV]

I've never moved my capital, either (though I would have had to build a new one if Carolus Rex had one more horsemen on his trireme). But another key advantage your capital has is bribe resistance. It could be worthwhile moving it to a mountain stronghold in the front lines, or to that wonder-laden city you just captured. Then the opposition has to take the city the old-fashioned way, instead of a cheap bribe.

[Ming]

Yeah DaveV... One time I did move my capital for that reason. My starting location stunk... and my third city ended up building all the wonders. It was an MP game, and everybody was wondering why I bothered to my capital