Option for capital placement or just more reasonable default placement

[d-albrecht]

The ideal situation would be to give the player an option of where to place kingdom capitals in cases where new placements are necessary (the old capital being captured, the kingdom being split). But this would slow down the game significantly as each player potentially would have to be active in every enemy turn. But the way capitals get moved in the current version is definitely a disadvantage most of the time.

I don't have a clear suggestion on how to improve the situation, but I had a few thoughts that I wanted to share:

• if you capture a capital, the new capital is one of the neighboring tiles. That both has pros and cons. pro: the remaining tiles still have some limited protection. con: the same enemy could capture your new capital in the next turn, again leaving you with very little money. Hence, it might be a better idea to freely place a new capital somewhere not near the borders if possible. But as I said, this can leave you open as well, so I don't know if this could be an actual improvement.
• if you split a kingdom, the new capital of the newly formed kingdom is near the attack as well. For splitting, I would actually prefer for the new capital to be father from the attack position.
• Regardless of which tiles are candidates for the new capital, I would suggest a more strategic placement. Because the current placement seems pretty random.
  • One option would be to choose the least protected tile, or the tile that would offer the most amount of protection in the remaining (border) tiles
  • Another option would be to choose the most central tile. Imagine a four-tile kingdom in the shape of a diamond where the capital is one of the "central" tiles. If someone captures this capital and the new capital is placed on one of the outer tiles, this leaves one tile vulnerable. Placing the capital on the other central tile would still protect all remaining three (on a low level of course). Center placement and protection placement will work out similarly most of the time, but differently in others. Hence, I provided these two ideas.
• If you had a settings menu, each player might be able to specify which strategy the game should use in case a new capital has to be placed. Because every play strategy favors other capital placements. If I play quite castle-heavy, then moving any new capital to the inner tiles of my kingdom would save me from losing money every turn as no enemy will be able to rush for my castle. But if your strategy makes use of the capital as a point of protection this surely won't be ideal.

[Sesu8642]

Playing the new capital close to where the old one was indeed keeps it in the "danger zone". This somewhat forces the attacked player to defend it better in the next turn (if they can). Destroying the capital over and over again can be a strategy to defeat a player with a larger kingdom than you have. And indeed if you relied on the capital protecting your tiles, the new one still protects some of the same tiles.
When a kingdom is split, the new capital should be placed randomly. What you observed was probably a coincidence.
Making the logic configurable by the player, could be frustrating because you'd have some control but there will always be situations in which the placement would be undesirable.
But I think it is indeed a good idea to remove the randomness. I'd have to play around with your ideas to see what works.