Culture and Propaganda Issue

[DarkStar723]

Ive been playing a game of Civ3 Conquests for awhile now, and it seems impossible to make opposing cities defect thru overpowering them with culture or using the spys propaganda ability. Ive had an enemy city with no improvements (a temple eventually) surrounded by 4 of my cities (only 1 space between, in all 4 cardinal directions) with every culture improvement available, including a few wonders, and my capitol is fairly close as well, whereas their capitol is quite far away, its been like this for about 100 turns without a defection. Ive been trying to initiate propaganda as well, trying once every turn with a city conflicting with my territory (including the city mentioned above) for every civ (thats 6 civilizations, so 6 times per turn), after this, i give each civilization a hefty bribe to make sure their opinion of me stays at polite, ive been doing this for 20 turns, and havent got a single result.

Im really just not sure whats going on, or what more could be relevant to this. I am fairly new to this game, but these tactics have always worked on the games i played before. Has anyone else had this problem, or, even better, knows how to fix it?

[vmxa1]

You have discovered the truth. It is very hard to flip cities in C3C and I for one gave up using propaganda way back in the original CivIII.

It is cheaper and easier to just take the city. Flips will occur, it just not all that common. Mostly you have to deal with flip backs form captured cities.

[DarkStar723]

In all the games ive tried before though, it was incredibly easy to flip cities, it was my key means of conquest really.

[Muad'Dib]

There have been many changes to Civ3 after Conquests came out that have totally changed the dynamics of game play. Flipping cities is one. Not being able to Paradrop on an unoccupied city is another. Like VMXA1 said, you're more likely to see your captured cities flip then you actually flipping one yourself.

Now you know why they are coming out with CIV4.
To fix what they screwed-up.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by DarkStar723
In all the games ive tried before though, it was incredibly easy to flip cities, it was my key means of conquest really.

What level are you talking about? I mostly play Sid and you will be way behind in culture the whole game, well until you take out most of the civs. I actually lost to a culture victory before I realized that you need to have one good AI civ to keep the double value in sight, till you catch up.

In the time C3C has been out, I know most of my emperor/demi games would see one or two city flips for me at most, no matter how big my culture was in the game.

I have seen cities with no connection and surrounded by me not flip for millenia.

I see captured cities that have noting in any direction, but my cities depose me. They would have at least a temple, while I was first in all the stats that count and the native civ has a few cities on one or two island to my 40-60 cities.

So that is all I can tell you. Flipping is not a prosperous was to try to get a city or a resource.