[dogscoff]

Yeah, that's exactly how I suggested it. The first city in each system to reach a minimum capital size becomes the regional capital. Systems without a big enough city are counted as part of a nearby system.

Moving a capital (either by choice or because the old one was lost) should take several turns and have a cost in resources. It should also cause a temporary drop in happiness because there is no centre for law and order. It is during this happiness drop that you risk civil war, especially if there is no city of the minimum capital size.

The minimum sizes for imperial and regional capitals are determined by the size of the empire - that way, when a capital is destroyed and cannot be replaced quickly (because the remaining cities are all too small), happiness drops, civil war breaks out and the empire splits up.

As the empire becomes smaller, the required minimum capital size becomes smaller and smaller until it matches an existing city. When that happens a capital can be assigned and happiness would increase again. The civil war would end and the fragmentation would stop. That would answer the "how much of the empire splits off during civil war" question.

I also thought that if an empire has no capital and can't build another, it could become a protectorate / subjugated empire, and get it's law and order from the controlling empire. Those treaties are hardly ever used otherwise.

Does all this make sense to anyone else or am I too deep into it to describe it to other ppl?

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There is an exception to every rule. Including this one.