Just wanted to mention: the next version will include a new profile setting named "Upgrade lands within 50m instead of capturing new", but please note that it will target any land within the 50m radius (which you'll hopefully have just one ), not the "closest one within 500m", as it used to work before.
The reason behind this is that for 1.15 I've rebuilt our "land search engine" to be based on land borders, instead of their centers (that allows to perform very accurate merges & collision detection) and it's very easy for the game to say if you're standing within or next to any land.
However, performing searches in a 500m radius and choosing the nearest land is an extremely heavy operation in this new system, which is why for the new profile setting the radius got reduced to 50m and the matching lands are no longer sorted by distance (as otherwise it would slow the game down for everyone or require more powerful hardware that I just don't have yet ).
I hope that's ok, but please remember that even if you don't switch this setting on and keep pressing the big "Flag" button (creating new land every time) you are still going to end up with a single land eventually: there's a limited amount of flags that can be placed within a certain radius and after that limit is reached your clustered lands will inevitably start merging.
Please let me know if that doesn't make sense or if you have any questions!