Moving a capital. Why, and for what end?

[culdeus]

This is something I grapple with quite a bit in the mid game. I think I underuse this technique, and fail to understand when it is useful. To move the capital is very cheap hammer wise relatively.

What reasons do you find, and at what levels does this make sense? Also would you move a capital to cherry pick the best colony situation?

 

[ViterboKnight]

AFAIK, I see two possible reasons (and I usually use only one of them).

One reason, the one that I use sometimes, is to better place your capital in your empire, in order to decrease the distance of the most distant cities. If you have a group of cities (or a long line on a snaky continent), your capital is best placed in the middle of the group, rather than at the edge. Maintanance costs are lower.

Another reason could be to have the best possible outcome from Bureoucracy. If your current capital is a GP farm (that makes Bureocracy useless), and you have another city with a big hammer/trade output, you might think to move your capital there and to adopt Bureocracy.

 

[madscientist]

If you capital is at the end of an empire then centralizing it drastically cuts costs. Also you may want to move it to a well cottaged Burecratic area. Also capitals tend to be well fed and thus make great GP farms, something that a capital does not really help except for teh extra happiness.

I rarely move the capital but have done so as needed. Two examples are in my RPC, TNG game. The second Lennin game I moved the capital off the small home island in the south to the larger northern landmass. The other was the earth-map where I played as Genghis and built the capital in Shanghai to center the Mongol empire and recover the economy.

 

[bioelectricclam]

Another good reason to move the capital is to avoid colonial maintenance. It's a rare case but sometimes you start on an island and end up having more cities on the main continent. It is usually worth moving the capital if your home island has less than three cities and you have built more than three cities on another landmass.

Only time I've really seen this done though is on Archipelago maps and on the Earth maps if you are playing as England or Japan.

 

[UncleJJ]

In addition to the other good reasons already mentioned I often move my capital in the late game when using espionage. Usually I'll be in State Property so distance maintenance isn't a problem. But the cost of spy missions is, and moving the capital close to the target city can reduce mission costs by maybe 20%. When you're paying 25,000 EPs to steal a tech, that is a big saving. Also the spies return to the capital after a successful mission, so it's a shorter distance for them to return to the target city

 

[culdeus]

In addition to the other good reasons already mentioned I often move my capital in the late game when using espionage. Usually I'll be in State Property so distance maintenance isn't a problem. But the cost of spy missions is, and moving the capital close to the target city can reduce mission costs by maybe 20%. When you're paying 25,000 EPs to steal a tech, that is a big saving. Also the spies return to the capital after a successful mission, so it's a shorter distance for them to return to the target city

Ah, good point here.

 

[mfie]

An other reason is moving your capital when your almost launching your space ship to have it better protected.

 

[Grashopa]

From my current game. Its pretty obvious after a bit of scouting I will be moving my capital to the spot where the northern warrior is if I want the commerce bonus from bureau. If I'm stuck in wars I'd leave the capital where it is since it has more hammers.

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