Does propaganda work?

[homer]

Has anyone had any success using propoganda to convert a city to your own? Im in a game where my French culture is by far the dominant culture.. I have a little rinky-dink German (the Germans are impressed with my culture) city in a far corner of my emipre with the Germans far off on the other side.. the city is size 3 with several size 6+ cities around it.. and I use propaganda to try and convert it (paying like 2000 for the best chance) and still nothing... as an experiment.. I kpet reloading and trying it on numerous other cities and other civs.. and NEVER did it work..

Has anyone EVER converted a city?

 

[homer]

Also Ive noticed that civs are more likely to declare war against you when you are caught trying to catch one of their spies (almost always they declare war on me when I try to catch a spy) but will rarely devclare war when they catch me trying to blow up their buildings or convert their cities...

The espionage part of civII seems to be a bit broken.. hope the patch addresses this!

 

[bakant]

I beleive that with espionage when you reload the outcomes are always the same. I do not know why but it always happens to me.

Also if you carry out propoganda repeatadly (i.e. turn after turn) I beleive it slowly lowers that resistance of the city and so will defect to you eventually.

 

[Dell19]

Perhaps they wanted to avoid what happens in Civ 2 when you can just buy their cities basically and the computer rarely stops you...

 

[Galen Dietenger]

Well I cant say definately it doesnt work, Ive yet to have it suceed either. Thats due in large part to its simply(for the most part) too expensive to bother with it and too likely to start a war. Also its suffers from the a endemic problem in Civ3, the flawed premise. Strictly speaking 'bribeing' a city to join your civ is both highly unlikey and ridiculous to concieve of in the 1st place. Why its even in the game as a 'feature' other than habit on the part of SM+Co. is hard to say. Reloading will never affect the outcome either since the 'seed' that led to your failure is reloaded as well. The same will happen if you plant a spy and fail-reloading will not affect the outcome either.

All I ever get it either
A) This civilazation is 'immune' to propaganda -OR-
B) The people are not sypmathetic to your cause

Why its even in the game is puzzleing(like a lot else I might add), what should exisit are things like destabalize city, or wreck improvements(not just fubar current build). 'Propganda' in the strictest sense to my knowledge has never been used to 'buy' a city away from its parent country. Such a n attempt would never suceed in any event. Propaganda has been used to attempt to raise (or lower) morale of troops or citizens, create confusion, spread erroneous information about armies, objectives or insure domestic support for various initiatives and aims amoung other things. Who here thinks Vladivostok would join the USA or Japan for promises of ecnomic aid? Would China give Hong Kong back to Britain if they offered the Chi-Coms enough money and Luxury Cars? The anwer to both is no and never.

Take it out of the game and put SMAC spy options in, they actually made sense and were useful as well.

 

[costanza]

Yes, I've had a city convert once!

I've had many many many more failed attempts, though. And the one that did work was older and larger than most of the others that didn't work.

 

[AUDoc]

Been over a year since I've played SMAC, can somebody remind us what epionage was like? All I remember is the UN, it was awesome, bring it back like it was!

 

[time]

Try using propaganda when your enemy is in Anarchy, I took about 4 cities from the English this way.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Sure it works!!

When at war, killing most of the defense unit and reduce the city size using bombing (standard combined arms tactics anyway) but do not conquer the city, use propaganda. And you get a new city with a new defence unit, no ressistance too!.

Another advantages is that the city that you got through propaganda is less likely to revolt back to the original Civ as compared to if you capture it by force.

 

[Cyber-Freak]

Seeing that I have converted a city, without propaganda (unecessary).

Just have the city blocked off (best case scenario)

so you have 2 cities, right beside each other (1 square apart), all you have to do is expand your city, and wait for that city to become corrupt, wait a few more turns and it will convert.

then again this was on easy skill, so results may very.

its better in all cases to have the city surrounded on all four sides, just one or two blocks inbetween.

and vola the city has been converted all hail me.

 

[ROBO-Jesus]

Firstly, you should realize that every time you run a campagin it creates a bit of dissent. This means that even if it doesn't work on your first try, you can keep at it (can become extremely costly), and eventually win through. If you have your spy examine the city first, and then run a few propaganda campagins, then look back, you'll notice that some of the happy people are content, contents are discontent etc.

Secondly, like others said it's a lot easier to take over a city that is in anarchy or is currently in civil unrest. The more unhappy people there are, the faster it falls. It might be worth spending 80 gold to check out the city and see if it has enough discontent to spend a few thousand bucks on converting. Happy cities have cost me 10k....

 

[ROBO-Jesus]

Oh and if you really want to make it more viable, just add in more cultural levels to the game.

I added in 2 more at 4:1 and 5:1 so if you get that high, you'll have a fairly decent chance to convert cities.

 

[Dark Sheer]

Originally posted by ROBO-Jesus
Oh and if you really want to make it more viable, just add in more cultural levels to the game.

I added in 2 more at 4:1 and 5:1 so if you get that high, you'll have a fairly decent chance to convert cities.

Yup, thats what I did too. So they say great mind think alike

In fact, by adding in the two level, when I check my cultural advisor screen I can tell how far behind the other Civs are in culture.