Capital City location choice.

[Francesco]

Is it better to put your capital city on a hex with a bonus or no bonus?
Is the bonus factored in or is it lost?
I've noticed the capital city building only has certain bonuses associated with it. If I place it on a hex with +3 wealth bonus will it add to the Cap. City base effect gross income +10?
If I put it on a +3 research hex will I lose that bonus because the Cap City hex has no base effect research bonus?
I have lots of questions like this and I'm not that into just experimenting by checking bonuses before and after. I'm definitely not a codes kinda guy. Just looking for some quick answers by some experts.

[Illauna]

If you look at the tooltip card below the name you'll see the type. The Capital is a "Population Improvement". So it levels by putting it on terrain and adjacent to tiles with Population adjacency bonus.

For instance you can put it on a Grassland for a +1 population level from the terrain. Or next to a farm for a +2 Population level from adjacency. The effect of those levels is listed in the tooltip. The capital city gives 5% gross income and +1 population cap per level. So if you put it on a grassland tile next to a farm you would get a level 3 capital which is 15% gross income (3 x 5%) and +3 population cap. The improvement doesn't level if you don't match the bonus. So it would be a waste to put it on a research or wealth tile because those add research and wealth levels.

It's a little bit older but I do have a video series which I cover bunch of questions you might have.

Below is a video explaining many of the Planet Management Concepts at the beginning. It's the 10th video of a fairly long series. I do cover some of the concepts also through an actual playthrough. I am prone to over explaining everything so consider setting the speed of the video to 1.25X or 1.5X speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMa1zyTEAfg&list=PLQ6cMI_FhPVUsT-PMlOVYRKG18fDnKplI&index=11

[SLG]

I try to place it on a population tile especially ones where other population and food tiles are around it.

[Francesco]

Originally posted by Illauna:

If you look at the tooltip card below the name you'll see the type. The Capital is a "Population Improvement". So it levels by putting it on terrain and adjacent to tiles with Population adjacency bonus.

For instance you can put it on a Grassland for a +1 population level from the terrain. Or next to a farm for a +2 Population level from adjacency. The effect of those levels is listed in the tooltip. The capital city gives 5% gross income and +1 population cap per level. So if you put it on a grassland tile next to a farm you would get a level 3 capital which is 15% gross income (3 x 5%) and +3 population cap. The improvement doesn't level if you don't match the bonus. So it would be a waste to put it on a research or wealth tile because those add research and wealth levels.

It's a little bit older but I do have a video series which I cover bunch of questions you might have.

Below is a video explaining many of the Planet Management Concepts at the beginning. It's the 10th video of a fairly long series. I do cover some of the concepts also through an actual playthrough. I am prone to over explaining everything so consider setting the speed of the video to 1.25X or 1.5X speed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMa1zyTEAfg&list=PLQ6cMI_FhPVUsT-PMlOVYRKG18fDnKplI&index=11

Thanks for the info. whew! almost 4 hrs long. I'll check it out and run it in the background while I play around. Thank you!

[Illauna]

IIRC think it's 1 hour for the expanation and 3 hours for continuing the End War scenario I was working on. Part 1 and part 3 are the beginning of the series and I cover many of the concepts broken up.

After video 10 I was trying to cover some concepts in the beginning of each play through. I went through the ship designer, influence, etc...

[Charlemagne]

It is one of those things you have to weigh. Sometimes good pop tiles are situated in otherwise bad locations, for example a +3 but it is at the tip of a snaky peninsula. You should also consider that your capital gives +2 to all adjacent tiles, for everything. So you want it to be in a central place where it will give as many +2 tiles as possible. The capital is a good booster for any type of tile cluster (industrial, science, food, whatever). Having some other +pop tile adjacent is good too because there will be a mutual benefit with any pop building you make there.