Propaganda

[Schnarrd]

Propaganda (and espionage in general) has never been a large part of my Civ 3 strategy. However, on a whim in a game that wa essentially already won I attempted propaganda. Didn't work. OK, it was attempted on a semi-large city that was far away from my capitol. So I tried it on a size 1 city that bordered one of my major cultural cities. Still didn't work, even after repeated attempts at propaganda.

So, what I want to know now is the factors involved in calculating whether a propoganda attack will be successful. So far, I believe it's like inducing a cultural flip, and we've had the basics of that revealed. However, do multiple attacks produce a greater chance of success? Do attacks "linger," increasing the chances over time of a cultural flip? Are the same factors for cultural flipping involved in calculating the chance of a successful propaganda attack? Can you take over another civ's capitol through propaganda (you can launch an attack on another civ's capitol). If you launch an unsuccessful attack on a city and take it over militarily on the same turn, does the propaganda attack affect the amount of resistance experienced in the city? If anyone knows the answers to these questions, please enlighten me.

 

[ih8ualot]

Who's a jigga wha?

 

[Quokka]

I tried testing it the same way as you did and never got it to work. I have never used it since. Too expensive to even try in most cases. For the money build a huge army of Modern Armor and take out the whole other civ not just the one city you are targetting with Propoganda.

 

[gonzo_for_civ]

i think the factors are:

Your overall culture
The target cities culture and whether or not they have a courthouse
Their overall culture
The amount you spend on the mission
The target cities size and distance from your capital

 

[LaRo]

and the distance from HIS capital. You have better chance of succeed when your capital your nearer than his.
I tried propaganda 3 times and it never worked. I probably won't try anymore.

 

[Dark Sheer]

It is essentially the same as culture flip except this one is controlled by you. This means the following counts:

1) Your type of government vs the AI
2) Number of happy/content citizen in the city (each attempt reduce some of the happy/content faces in the city)
3) Amount of troops in the city
4) Number of foreign citizen in a city (try it on the newly captured cities, works most of the time )

I use propaganda alot towards the end of the game to shortern the conquest time :coool:

 

[Schnarrd]

Propaganda reduces the amount of happy faces in the city? So as soon as you create enough unhappy faces to create disorder, you take over the city, right? And the affects are cumulative (ie the more propaganda missions attempted the greater the chances of success)?

Dark Sheer: Have you actually gotten a successful propaganda mission? If so, could you post a game?

 

[cegman]

You use it after you bomb and bombard the city. They usually go over. It works well if they have strong defenders or it is far from your stacks/armies

 

[LeroyJr]

Isn't propoganda mostly used on the citizens of your own country in the real world? You use it to keep the wool pulled over your own citizens eyes so they are not aware of what is really going on.

You should be able to spend some cash and spread some propaganda in your own cities. Combat war weariness with it as you tell the citizens how you are destroying the ememy despite losing cities.

Mostly it is used for internal consumption. Sadam Hussien going on Iraquis TV and telling the population that victory is near during Desert Storm. Excuse me? Which war are you watching? Of course the version that we were watching was the version that the US wanted to give with its own version of propaganda in it.

During the war in Afganistan the US said it lost a plane due to "mechanical failure" the Taliban countered with they "shot it down" with anti aircraft artillery. Which was it? Both sides dress things up so much that you never really know when you are getting the straight goods and when you are getting a spin story. Mostly it is all for Internal comsumption though.

 

[Furry Spatula]

hey thats a good idea. i would like to see propoganda changed. It would be pretty sweet if you could use propoganda to counter war weariness. It would be expensive non the less to avoid people taking advantage of it. Maybe a Gold per turn that would cause a campaign of propoganada to last for X ammount of turns.

 

[Mozenwrath]

I always use propoganda in the later wars. It seems almost always to work with cities the enemy has just captured. I suppose resisting or unhappy citizens must play a big role in it. As for the other espionage techniques; I used them at first but I find that they aren't really worth all the money...

 

[Umask077]

I always plant the spys for the extra advisor info. But the missions are a tad bit high priced to be used much. Most of the time they dont work for me.

Being a fairly competent programmer I was going to write a spy trainer which would let you steal maps and plans. The problem I ran into was even cheating and giving myself oodles of cash and paying for high success missions I couldnt get spying to work often enough to pinpoint memory locations. End result, I gave up and found the revealer in the utility section which ultimatly told me that seeing others unit movements slowed down the time between turns even more then it was already and wasnt worth the trouble.

 

[cegman]

Originally posted by Umask077
I always plant the spys for the extra advisor info. But the missions are a tad bit high priced to be used much. Most of the time they dont work for me.

If you bombard the city to a few people propoganda costs about 100 - 500 gold not bad if you take in affect all the time you can put wealth on your other cities because your army is huge and you don't need anything else

 

[cegman]

Originally posted by LeroyJr
Isn't propoganda mostly used on the citizens of your own country in the real world? You use it to keep the wool pulled over your own citizens eyes so they are not aware of what is really going on.

You should be able to spend some cash and spread some propaganda in your own cities. Combat war weariness with it as you tell the citizens how you are destroying the ememy despite losing cities.

That is a good idea but what about the bombers that dropped pamphlets and the resistance during ww2. Desert storm used propoganda on the people on the battlefield to lower morale (key to most victories)