Succefully using propoganda

[Luca Brasi]

I finally upgraded to 1.16 and for the first time, I actually found a use for propoganda option. In my current game, I've taken about 12 cities that way. Here's the deal: I'm playing on my America mod (link in signature), Regent, and it's me (France), Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas left. I'm miles ahead of everyone in science (modern armor), while they're all still stuck in the industrial age. But I'm building up my modern armor so that I can kill of the f-cking Incas fast (they have about 30 cities), and I don't want to go to war with them before that.

So I see that the Incas and the Aztecs are starting a war, and then the Incas switch from Democracy to Communism. So every turn, I try propoganda on their cities. Now bear in mind that if propoganda fails 2 times in a row, I reload and try it on the next turn. But I pick a city which is 1) small and 2) close to my borders. As the Aztecs attack the Incas, they reduce the size of their cities. And this is when I grab them! Aztecs reduce Incas' #2 original city to size 2, and then it becomes all mine! As I said, I took about 12 cities. Two of them straight from the Aztecs' noses. And completely took over a Cherokee island (6 cities) the Incas took in a previous war.

Now, the key here is (other than reloading) is that I build culture in neighboring cities ASAP (rush build library, temple, and university or cathedral immediately). And you gotta go for the cities which are close to your borders, or it simply doesn't work. None of those cites have flipped on me yet.

I am not sure how this damages my reputations, but the Incas were furious with me anyway. And I let their two wandering archers on my land without pissing them off, but then again what can archers do against mech. inf's...

It's costly, it's a bit cheating if you consider reloading that, but it works.

 

[Ironstone]

Interesting stuff Luca.


I think that propaganda is probably pretty under-utilised. Certainly it isn't discussed much here, and I've been pretty lazy about trying it too. I must try it more.

I did try out a test to see how it worked and successfully flipped a city a huge distance from my territory. It took a few turns of trying though.

On the flipping subject I had a rather amusing occurrence of it. The English had banged down a few cities on my border and I had taken a couple by culture flip. There was one more left - with me on 3 sides and sea on the other. I was patiently waiting for it to flip.

To my horror, the Chinese suddenly attacked it with a sustained bombardment from 3 ships. "Damn", I thought - as having the Chinese there was not on my agenda at all! After several turns they had bombed it right down to 1 population and looked set to take it over. Then it suddenly flipped to me! I could almost hear the last citizen saying "Uh, oh - better go for the lesser of two evils!"

I swear I could see the look of astonishment on the look of the Chinese ships as their target vanished, and they had to sail away again!!

 

[Luca Brasi]

The Incas, Mayans, and Aztecs are now all dead. And getting the 30+ Inca cities down a third by using propoganda sure helped. Here's the one thing which is intersting from the AI view: say the Aztecs are attacking the Incas and from nowhere I (in peace with both of them) use propoganda to take the Inca city (or even a simple culture flip). If I was in the role of the Aztecs, I'd be pissed. If I was in the role of the Incas, I'd be pissed too, because the city is still mine. But the AI doesn't react -- I mean, it could be pissed "behind the scenes" but theres no way for me to learn about it.

P.S. I should learn to spell "successfully".

 

[Rushton]

I´ll try the propaganda thing , it could be great.

By the way, as I haven´t tried it, where does it say what form of government the other civs have?

 

[Luca Brasi]

Military advisor screen (F3), right column.

 

[Shaitan]

Hmm...

I had zero success with propaganda when I first tried it and have ignored it since then. Perhaps I'll revisit it, now that you've shown it can be done successfully.

 

[Luca Brasi]

Forgot to mention that my culture was at least 2x everyone else. And I had NO success with propoganda pre-patch.

 

[bst1]

My problem with propaganda (and all the espionage options in general) is that it's not really practical to use them in any meaningful sense in a contested game. For the most part, the only time you can afford to use espionage is when you already have a huge lead in the game. Otherwise those hundreds and hundreds of gold are much more efficiently used rushing production, buying techs, etc. Yea it's "fun" to mess with them when you do have a huge lead, but I still consider it largely worthless and overall a broken part of the game.

 

[Luca Brasi]

I agree to a point; it sertainly is not as developed as one would like, but in my situation the Incas had about 35 cities when this whole idea started. Getting them down to 20 really helped. I did have a huge lead tech and money wise, and I was getting techs in four turns and about $600/turn. And I don't like long wars it just becomes too tidious, plus then war weariness kicks in.

 

[LaRo]

I agree, propaganda is too expensive and works only near your civ radius. Don't even try at the other side of the world. I never use propaganda.
Where can I see if a civ is immune to propaganda before spent money on that?

 

[Luca Brasi]

Military advisor screen (F3) lists each nation's government. Democracies are immune.