I apologize for my earlier statements.
The person who assigned capitals got trapped by the addition of an extra player and two players had to get the short straw.
I am one of the unfortunates.
If only two players got the short straw, only three moves to an enemy capital, then it was just being trapped by the mathematics of the situation.
For a perfectly hexogonal map, filled with six sided provinces, wraparound, in order to have everyone 4 moves away from the enemy capital you need 18 provinces per player. For three moves, you need 9.33 provinces per player.
However, there is less than six linkages per province, normally, but not that much. So less than 18 provinces, perhaps around 15-17. However, this is clearly very close and make proper distance assignment difficult. Thus it is very difficult to give EVERYONE 4 moves to enemy capital.
I drew the short straw.
But someone probably had to.