What is the effect of losing your capital?

[The diplomat]

Does anyone know what exactly is the effect of losing your capital? The game automatically moves it to another city immediately, but I don't see any obvious downside. There must some penalty for losing your capital, what is it?

[bbaws]

If you are building a spaceship it gets destroyed, iirc.

[The diplomat]

I know that. I was talking about before the space race. When you are fighting a war, and the capital is taken, the comp will automatically resettle your capital, but there doesn't seem to be any obvious penalty from it.

[Zero-Tau]

That's because there isn't any. Your capital just gets moved - sometimes to a worse location, of course, but that's all the penalty there is.

[The diplomat]

Originally posted by Zero-Tau
That's because there isn't any. Your capital just gets moved - sometimes to a worse location, of course, but that's all the penalty there is.

that's a shame. Of course, losing your capital does mean losing lots of accumulated culture. So, I guess that is one hidden penalty.

I was just thinking that there should be some incentive to taking the enemy capital, like in civ2, where you could throw the civ into civil war.

[Zero-Tau]

Originally posted by The diplomat
Of course, losing your capital does mean losing lots of accumulated culture. So, I guess that is one hidden penalty.

Well, no. You never lose accumulated culture, you just don't gain any more. But then again, losing a city that generates lots of culture is a penalty, I guess...

I was just thinking that there should be some incentive to taking the enemy capital, like in civ2, where you could throw the civ into civil war.

Yep, that's been debated a lot here. Right now there's no incentive to go for the capital, except that it might be one of their most productive cities.

[Ethelred]

When the capital is taken the new capital is that largest city by pop. This may be very bad for your corruption levels in your core city. Or the AIs core city.

Any civ that loses its capital is on the ropes in any case. Especially after the early ancient age.

[ChrisiusMaximus]

I think it increases war weariness making it more likely for civil disorder to occur and or your goverment to collapse into anarchy.Especially if you are a democracy.

[Cidifer]

yes it's definatly worse then just losing another large city, it may move your capital that you just moved yourself back to the onld one, meaning you wasted all those turns building a palace when you could have made a bunch of units to protect yourself. Also unless the city it's moved to is close by the corruption in the citites around you will rise. Plus it's probably a big producer of units and culture so there are incentives to take out a capital. For example if your out numbered by their forces launching a surprise raid on a lightly defended capital (especially if it's near the ocean) can really stall an enemies production and let you catch up in your army size. Usually this isn't a problem for me in gerneral but once every few games I do send a suicide squad to another civs capital to stall it's production, and for the most part it helps.

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Ethelred
When the capital is taken the new capital is that largest city by pop. This may be very bad for your corruption levels in your core city. Or the AIs core city.

Actually in my current game this wasn't true. I captured Paris from the French, and their capital moved to a previously captured Iroquois city (26) that was smaller than Lyons (32). In fact, there were a few other cities that were larger than the new capital, which was wierd. So I was able to rule out the fact that the new capital didn't become Lyons because it had the FP or something. I'm sure I have some saves to show this, but it'd take awhile to dig them up.

[Ethelred]

Then I wonder what governs what city becomes the new capital. I can't think of a case where it wasn't the next largest city. I used this once to make a capitol jump by abanoning my capital that was too far off to the side to be usefull long term. Worked pretty well although the manuever did set my empires growth back a bit for a while.

[Saint Marcus]

it has to do with importance I think, not size. (the same thing that decides which cities are in the top5)

[Traelin]

Originally posted by Ethelred
Then I wonder what governs what city becomes the new capital. I can't think of a case where it wasn't the next largest city. I used this once to make a capitol jump by abanoning my capital that was too far off to the side to be usefull long term. Worked pretty well although the manuever did set my empires growth back a bit for a while.

I'm not sure, because in every other previous game I played, it was always the next largest city. In fact I had my MAs set up in the current game to take advantage of the cap city jump, and I was like WTF where'd it go? Maybe it has something to do with where the AI located the FP or something, because I vaguely remember determining that the FP was in a reasonably well-placed location WRT their new capital.

[Proteus_MST]

Obviously such as it is at the moment a far better strategy than taking the Capital is just destroying all roads which leadfrom the capital to the other cities in the enemy realm.
Ressources have to get to the capital first before they can be traded to other nations. So if you cut all supply-Lines with the capital, all Trading-Treaties of your enemy with other nations become void.
ALso all Ressources which are bought from other nations must first get to the capital before they can be ferried to all the other cities in the empire.
Destroying alls Roads from the Capital is a really good way to throw the enemy empire into turmoil.
At one time I had a war with America, which was located on another Continent.
After establishing a Beachhead and conquering the first enemy city I at first had a very hard time, fighting off hordes of enemy Cavalry (my Military consisted of Tanks and Infantry, but I nevertheless lost a lot of Units and even one Army to the sheer number of enemies. If I hadn´t build an Airport at once after I conquered the city which gave me the ability to ferry 5 Units per turn into the conquered city, I surely would have lost it. )
The attacks went fiercer, when the Americans told their Neighbours and close Allies, the Babylonians, to declare war on me.
So I suddenly had 2 Empires throwing their Cavalry-Units against my Tank-Units.
But then I started a Counter-Attack and succeeded in taking a city close to the american capital.
The next turn I ferried my Bomber-Units into the city and started destroying all improvements on the 8 tiles directly adjacent to the Capital.
The next turn after I had successfully destroyed all improvements in those tiles, the whole empire went into anarchy with a lot of their most productive cities rioting and so the americans lost their ability to successfully stage a war. America had only 2 Luxury-Ressources, so I think, they must have been very dependent on their Luxury-Imports.

[Keeper of Hell]

Originally posted by ChrisiusMaximus
I think it increases war weariness making it more likely for civil disorder to occur and or your goverment to collapse into anarchy.Especially if you are a democracy.

Okay, unless you're just referring to the effects of having any large city with high culture taken or razed by your enemies, then this is bull. The capital city has no special significance in terms of war weariness or chance of your government collapsing other than the fact that your people don't like getting beat up too much. And of course, all negative effects of war are intensified under democracy, so that's just blindingly obvious.