Of course, the system will have to be smarter than that. Otherwise, you could have an inactive city bang in the centre that would never move. Maybe the centre moves over time, perhaps heading in your direction, Gargon, if you are receiving players.
I see no need for it to be any smarter?
An inactive town will not moved anywhere, it will be put into storage eventually ( maybe they started that now?), but so far they have simply stayed where they are. The only point of discussion was how to define active vs. inactive.
But yes there can be inactive cities in the center (no matter dead center or nor just close by) as previously active cities get abandoned. But so what? That doesn´t change anything in the moving algorithm. A space is either free or taken, if you have an active town far from the center and a free spot with the same specs closer to the center the town will be moved, if no such free spot exists the city will stay where it is.
The inactive city in the center is a job for a different algorithm that has really not much at all todo with moving cities. It is simply an algorithm that removes inactive cities from the map by deleting them or putting them into storage. Of course this then creates free spots on the map that can then be used by the moving algorithm again (of course it only uses the ones close to the center).
Another thing that may confuse people is: The size of the center changes. When inactive towns are removed and active towns are moved into the center the size of the center shrinks (minus the removed ones). That means people that used to be in the center suddenly are at the edge. I myself am in that situation now and I expect to be moved at some point in the future, while I used to be rather far from the edge before.
This also proves that the algorithm really isn´t much smarter than that. because towns have very recently been moved into my area. They will soon be moved again. The simple explanation is: They were farther out before, when a spot came available they got moved a little bit closer to the center (or into the edge area of the center), next time the center shrinks (by removing inactive towns), they will be outside the center again and when another spot become free closer to the center they will get moved again.
Others that get moved into the middle of the center will only get moved once. Just depends whatever spot is free at the time when you get moved.
I never really cared if I get moved or not, but now I am kind of getting excited to see where the game drops me off
Although I love all the gold mines north of my town for the FA
Wish I could move to the desert during FAs and then move back home the other 5 weeks of the cycle