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Relocating capitals
Japan relocated its capital from Edo to Tokyo, Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. The capitals in the US, Australia, and New Zealand are not where they used to be. Northern Africa and the Tigris/Euphrates "fertile crescent" are full of relocated capitals. The Indian capital used to be at Agra, and I'm not even sure where the Chinese capital used to be except that it probably wasn't Beijing. And all of that doesn't even get into the temporary relocations that have occurred during war and been reversed when the war ended.
The point, obviously, is that relocating capitals is not a particularly rare occurrence IRL, nor is it prohibitively expensive. There might be good gameplay arguments for making capital relocation extremely difficult in Civ3, but no serious realism argument. The current situation is markedly unrealistic in the context of history spanning millennia.
Japan relocated its capital from Edo to Tokyo, Brazil from Rio de Janeiro to Sao Paulo. The capitals in the US, Australia, and New Zealand are not where they used to be. Northern Africa and the Tigris/Euphrates "fertile crescent" are full of relocated capitals. The Indian capital used to be at Agra, and I'm not even sure where the Chinese capital used to be except that it probably wasn't Beijing. And all of that doesn't even get into the temporary relocations that have occurred during war and been reversed when the war ended.
The point, obviously, is that relocating capitals is not a particularly rare occurrence IRL, nor is it prohibitively expensive. There might be good gameplay arguments for making capital relocation extremely difficult in Civ3, but no serious realism argument. The current situation is markedly unrealistic in the context of history spanning millennia.
Back to what the original poster suggested, I don't think it would be too difficult, depending on where you're hoping to place the palace. I was just playing a warlord game as Persia where I'm on a large continent that's divided into two landmasses with a wide isthmus connecting them. I had control of the northern landmass, and France, Russia, and Babylon were sitting on the southern one. I took out Russia and Babylon, providing me with some large cities that would be good producers if they weren't so far away from my capital. I had ambitions of dislodging France, who's my chief rival in the game, but it took my Cavalry 4 turns to reach there, and I was still using Immortals from my less productive cities, they took 12 turns to reach the front. I got a leader and slapped down an FP in Moscow (who says never march on Moscow, ha!) I had an instant productive center on the front.
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