Move your capital!

from Sins Forums
Since allegiance is based on number of jumps from your capital, it makes sense to locate your capital in a central spot where you minimize the total jumps. However, your capital starts off in a corner of a solar system, which is far from ideal later in the game. Moving your capital is relatively cheap and will pay for itself extremely fast in extra credits and resources from higher allegiance in a big empire. A jump from one solar system to another counts as one jump so if you put your capital connected to the star, any planet connected to another star will be 3 jumps away and you can expand throughout the galaxy without huge allegiance penalties. You also get a nice temporary boost because allegiance goes up around your new capital faster than it goes down around your old one. In my most recent game, a capital change increased my revenues by about 40% (around 20 planets).

Just thought I'd share this because it wasn't immediately obvious to me and I haven't seen anyone else mention it.
strategy
6,613 views 3 replies
Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
I still wish there was 1 capital per system.... like the olden days.... or my most excellent idea for regional governors
Reply #2 from Sins Forums Top
Yes, moving your capital is definitely worthwhile, in fact almost essential (on random maps atleast), There is the obvious additional reason of starting making a new capital before the old one is destroyed (should you be in such a situation) so that the morale loss is removed. In general dont get attached to your first planet, as it is almost certainly not in an optimum location for anything; especially if your first homeworld is next to a wormhole (which has happened to me 4 times), which makes defending it exceptionally hard.

and Not specifically on topic but..

As i see it, the problem with making 1 capital per system is that on smaller stars (say 5-8 planets) you would almost always have very high allegiance, which sort of defeats the point of allegiance. Granted it would be much more sensible on bigger stars, but i tend to focus on why things wont work rather than why they would.

Personally for my mini-mod (primarily for "i wonder what that does" purposes), i have increased the allegiance cap that culture gives from 10% to 35% which not only makes culture much more powerful, but means that your outer planets become significantly more important, as when fully cultured they get you 60% resources rather than a measly 35%. Which as i see it removes the need for multiple capitals, and sort of covers regional governers (ie you could take "Culture" as including the extension of central government)
Galactic Civilizations IV