"Effect" and "affect" are hilariously messed-up. They have subtly overlapping definitions sometimes but other times mean totally different things. They look almost the same in writing. They can sound almost the same. In spoken English, for some senses of each word we denote what we mean by changing the sound ("affect" may be pronounced almost like "effect", or, for one of its noun definitions and a related verb definition, very differently) or stress (for "effect", in some cases we hit the second syllable a little harder than other times).

The way you used "effect" here, its verb sense of "to bring about or cause" is the one that suggests itself, which isn't what you meant.

The simple way to keep the words' overlapping meanings straight, is that it's "effect" when it's a noun, "affect" when it's a verb. "Effect" can also be a verb, and "affect" can be a noun, but those definitions don't overlap.

Your post did indeed call for "affect", as you suspected.