Propaganda?

Should Civ4 make use of Propaganda? Such as if a unit passes through a city with a printing press it may get extra bounuses. Airdrops of Leaflets could be made to troops or radio tower could be set up. You could send messages to the enemy to try and lower the bonuses.

I think this is a rather good idea but I don't want to fully bring morale in as a new game concept as I think that will make things incrediably complicated and after reading the whole of the Civ3 manual I don't want another even larger one for Civ4. I was thinking of radio towers give a certain bonus to unit within a certain area. Or Tv Masts instead of Radio towers. Satelites could display radio and Tv around the globe. And the internet don't even get me started.

Good idea? Yes or No?

Civ 3 currently has the iniate propaganda for the cities to get them to join your civ.


That being said, I also like the idea of incorporating morale in the game, but without that propaganda can still be added for units and cities.

"Surrender or I'll kill a bunch of people in your city/ unit!" Wouldn't it be great to say that?

Also Civ 2 had the ability to bribe units to switch sides. Why not add that back to civ 4?

yes and also other forms of influencing people like tv, cinema, radio, priests.

also des- or informational campaigns, statistics, scientific studies, bribing politicians, noblemen or governors

introducing spies or dissidents in enemy cities, letting them accommodate and socialize with the population for more success later on

support unhappy or conquered population

I never quite managed to use propaganda effectively. By the time I have a spy, the AI is in democracy...

every form of government should be vulnerable to propaganda, espionage, sabotage and terrorist attacks

I agree; I never really understood why Democratic governments are immune to propaganda. I guess it would just be unamerican to have any sort of city revolt against Democracy, since everyone knows that it's the most benign, caring, ideal form of government and anyone who says otherwise must be shown the error of their ways and then chaired.

EDIT: Oh, yes, and I've also thought that Propaganda should only make the target's population sympathize with you more, which would also make it more likely to flip. Still, if it doesn't flip outright, it should still create a few unhappy faces in that city.

I agree with Mewtarthio

and want to go further saying that you can even use propaganda on your own people to compensate eventual foreign influence or even to bypass some hard times. the effect of propaganda should be volatile and last only for some turns

I agree. Propaganda should work on anyone, and there should be more variety in the dosages.

Also, propaganda on your own citizens should be an option, and to some extent necessary.

Propaganda on your own people already is realized by the concept of the luxury slider. What better propaganda could be than to give the people what they want?

Commander Bello said:

Propaganda on your own people already is realized by the concept of the luxury slider. What better propaganda could be than to give the people what they want?

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it would be funny to start a disinformation campaign in press, tv or whatever with some risk that the truth is discovered. if anything goes well, then you get the bonus of a higher approval rate, if it leaks out then the opposite effect occurs.

I think propaganda could be more targeted, and thus more effective (without necessarily solving other problems).

War weariness is a key one. Making your people hate the enemy so much they'll let you do anything to stomp em out.

(And, vice versa, against an opponent, stimulating him with images of atrocities that make people question the value of the war. This happens all, the, time.)

How about a propaganda slider along with the science and luxery sliders. Propaganda could make cities close to your boarders flip over - the same as they do now but they arn't targeted directly. I could also make your citizens happy and combat war weariness slightly.

I imagine it being something available when you build the "intelligence agency" mini-wonder, just like some of the other spy techniques.

But how often do you use those techniques?

Steal maps... steal technologies, for thousands of gold...

Initiate propaganda is this thing that steals cities, only if they're not democratic, and only if you can afford it.

I'm thinking more nuisance and non-nuisance effects. You should still able to use your spy network in war times:

- to create war weariness in a rival country (with a potential for backfire)
- to quell war weariness in your country (with a potential for backfire)
- to create hostile attitudes towards a country, within your country or in someone else's country
--> so you can decrease demand for their products, thus reducing the chance of their culture spreading (e.g.: freedom fries)
- to spread illegal drugs to a rival country (increasing corruption, from which you benefit)

These are just ideas, strictly a brain storm. But these are things that governments both powerful and fringe have done to others, or even their own people.

Maybe you could use it to soften deals.
For Example:
You are buying a tech and the civ charges you 1000 gold. You won't pay.
You initiate so pro your civ propaganda.
The AI civ then charges you less. Only real flaw. Would have to be dead cheap to actually save money.

LOL! The truth is out there; it is up to us to hunt it down and kill it...

Yup, the current espionage system is practically useless. I can sometimes plant a spy if I've killed someone off and have "respawn AI" turned on. Otherwise once one AI gets democracy, the others all trade for it.

Likewise, by that point I've usually got the majority of the world mapped out so stealing maps is useless. Spies need to be available much earlier. Perhaps the Intelligence Agency can allow an upgrade of some kind or boost success instead of being the pre-req for spying.

I like these ideas of propaganda being more useful, I'd like to be able to target propaganda at one civilization against another, like tell Russia that Germany is planning to attack them, making it more likely that they'll go to war or less likely to trade

I think that spies in general should be more useful ,and should come along much earlier. Spies have been in use for much longer than just the industrial era. Spies have been used as long as there has been war. Also, Democracy really should not be immune to propaganda. That is just stupid. Since when is democracy immune to propaganda? Sure, in democracy, propaganda is used primarily against its own citizens (9/11 Bush campaign commercials), but that should be allowed. Propaganda should have a greater effect than luxuries, but should have a chance of backfiring on you.

My Thoughts on Propaganda:
I think propaganda should be seen as an iniative and a program, rather than a one-time action. All this programs should be formatted like this.
Civilization 'x' should feel 'y' about civlization 'z'.
Now the exact syntax and such will change as y varies. Also, x and z can be the same. I'll give what examples of y would be.

x and z can be any civ, including yours. If x and z is the same for you, its internal, such as increase support for war. If x and z are the same opoonent, your trying to influence their people, such as decrease support for war(war weariness). If x is you and z is opponent, then you are trying to make your people feel a certain way about another civ, whether it be increase or decrease freindliness. If x is opponent and z is you, then vice versa. If x and z are not you, you are trying to get other people to feel certain ways about another poeple. Examples would be trying to garner good relations between various states you trade from, or try ot instigate a war.

As for what y is:
Increase War Weariness - x and z the same.
Decrease War Weariness - x and z the same.
Increase Hate - x and z different
Decrease Hate - x and z different
Increase Unhappiness - x and z the same
Decrease Unhappiness - x and z the same
Increase Flip Chance - x and z different
Decrease Flip Chance - x and z different
Infiltrate Military - x is always you. if z is you again, it counts as counter-intelligence
Infiltrate Research - x is always you. if z is you again, it counts as counter-intelligence
Infiltrate Government - x is always you. if z is you again, it counts as counter-intelligence

AS for implementation. Once you discover writing, you can have one such propaganda program running at any moment. Once you have Propaganda Corp(Small Wonder avaliable with Printing Press), you can run as many programs as you feel like or have the money for. For each program you have running, you would have a slider that would determine how much money went towards that program. The settings would be simple such as Minimal(50%), Light(75%), Moderate(100%), Heavy(150%), Priority(180%).

Program Growth:
Each program would accumulate 'espionage points' based on how much you fund them. Think of it like research, except your results are different. At each new plateau, you would get higher levels of effectiveness(you citizens really hate the enemy civ, i.e. little to no war weariness). Also, the higher the level, the more missions that would become avaliable.

Espionage Missions:
You would still have missions, but they would appear when your programs reached the right level of investment. For example, whenever your Research Infiltration reached the right level, you could try to steal research, or steal scientists, which would cause research points to be transferred over. EAch espionage mission cost gold and espionage points(part of your network is discovered). Another example, if you want to increase hate of another civ, your program would eventually allow you to arrange and assassination of one of your political leaders and blame it on the other guy. Mission dealing with counter-intelligence would often appear only whenever you have enough investment. They also depend on the existence of espionage programs of opponents in your civilization. The Intelligence Agency would allow for much greater success and variety of missions.

How would one defend against that type of espionage? The Propaganda missions would obviously be countered with some Propaganda of your own, but Steal Technology looks pretty much invulnerable. Incidentally, would using propaganda against an enemy on an enemy cause the target's citizens to experience "Peace Weariness" or what?

Mewtarthio said:

How would one defend against that type of espionage? The Propaganda missions would obviously be countered with some Propaganda of your own, but Steal Technology looks pretty much invulnerable. Incidentally, would using propaganda against an enemy on an enemy cause the target's citizens to experience "Peace Weariness" or what?

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Some missions would be very hard to complete successfully, but become moderately easier once Intelligence Agency is discovered. Also, it would be important to develop good counter-intelligence programs. The more powerful operatoins require very deep infiltration, something that agressive counter-intelligence could hamper somewhat.

As for your second question, it would be a good way to manipulate world events. Here is an example: You want some of Egypts territory, but don't want to fight Saudi Arabia, their ally. You also have a MPP with Sudan. You start programs in both Egypt and Saudi Arabia that cause ill will to the other. Whenever your deep enough, you even use some missions that cause incidents between citizens of both nations. After awhile they will not be able to cooperate(hopefully). At the same time you 'suggest'(using military and government) through penetration agents they need to attack Sudan. Sudan gets attacked and you come to their rescue. No one ever knows you are responsible for the war you helped end. Of course this assumes everything went right on schedule and nothing ever went wrong, and something always goes wrong. But the idea is that you can try to encourage conflict if you sell arms. You might patch relations for a future conflict, etc.