Does it really change the outcome of the war? Does a country fall when the capital city is captured?
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If you’re looking at the war from a purely logical standpoint, then the capital city has no more significance than any other city. All cities hold both strategic and tactical significance. Strategically, cities represent significant portions of a countries economy and logistics. Taking a city from an enemy can cripple both their ability to buy/make more good and equipment needed to carry on the war as well as make it much more difficult to distribute the goods (including food) and equipment that they do have. Cities are also where large population centers are held, so capturing them can deprive a country of many recruits, as well as damage morale significantly.
On the tactical level, cities are immensely important because actually *taking* a city from an enemy is incredibly difficult. You’ve probably heard of guerilla warfare, and how it’s hard to fight against enemies that know the land and make surprise attacks from random directions before retreating away. Often, people picture this as being bad in environments like jungles, but in actuality, cities are about the most *perfect* environment for unconventional guerilla based warfare. There are so many roads, alleys, buildings, windows, sewers, etc. that the defending forces know extremely well that they will use to defend the city that taking a city becomes a nightmare. The most famous example of this is probably the battle of Stalingrad in WW2. Before Stalingrad, the Germans had steadily pushed back the Russians with no sign of being slowed down, but once they reached the large city of Stalingrad, the German army was effectively swallowed by the city and for more than 5 months they tried, and failed, to take the city from the Russians. Eventually, they were pushed out altogether and it became the turning point in the eastern theater of WW2. This was made possible in no small part because of the fact they were fighting in a large city that the Russians knew well and the Germans did not. The significance of cities in warfare is actually supremely interesting (at least to me). I would recommend reading about it. [Here’s](https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://scholarship.law.columbia.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi%3Farticle%3D1722%26context%3Dfaculty_scholarship&ved=2ahUKEwjK5Z33vY6AAxUcOTQIHfdDAcYQFnoECAwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw0ilf-B5i4oBBWNTEMNERar) a great article to get you started if you’d like (the link is to a download able article, so don’t be surprised if a download message pops up).
All of the above said, capital cities have the same significance as any other city, both strategic and tactical, with the added significance of being symbolic. From a purely logical standpoint, the loss of a capital city would have no more impact on a war effort than the loss of any other major city. In fact, quite often, it would have less impact since capital cities aren’t usually the largest cities in terms of population, production, economy, or logistics. The true loss is in morale. Regardless of how the loss of a capital city may or may not impact the war effort in a practical sense, many people lose hope in victory if a capital city is lost since it represents the “heart” of the country, as the seat of government. When in reality, so long as the government officials escape before the city is captured (along with any important intelligence) the government can be run from practically anywhere. But people are rarely logical about things, and when the morale plummets, the will to continue fighting is lost and surrender often follows quickly.
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