Brazil is weak early game

[Chiatroll]

Haven't tried them yet but. they'll probably most dangerous enemy in late game.

Luckily the AI is terrible at him.

 

[tat501]

I was struggling a bit too. Beeline to NC, then go back down the tech route for workshops, or wait till university to do this. Try and found a second or third city in an area with better hammer opportunities, and you can use an internal caravan from the capital to provide even more hammers. Build iron works in this city, and use the capital for population/science/gold/GWAM production. Run an engi specialist in the capital to get GEs. It may be a change of pace, but you will probably have to forget about all ancient/classical wonders.

tbh, I'm not sure if it's better just to go all the way to university before going back for metal casting. In my last game I didn't get to architecture first, which was annoying. I haven't tried this enough yet.

Brazil doesn't really take off until you've got universities and machinery, but at that point you will be on the road to catching up and taking over in tech.

Yes. I agree but I do think that finding a good way to get Chichen Itza could be huge for Brazil.

Perhaps - 2 city start - NC around turn 70 if possible. Bee-line to civil service, try CI, then go to Universities and machinery (which is on the road to Printing Press) before expanding to 5 cities or 6 maybe if there is a lot of jungle. Prioritize getting uni's set up and then grow them and focus on happiness.

There might be 2 problems here. 1. Missing CI anyway. 2. Not founding a religion. A religion can be very helpful in the culture/happiness game. Especially if you get Cathedrals and then Sacred Sites.

 

[Scott Jegg]

Religion would be nice, but unless I have some faith producing luxuries from a pantheon, I'm not going for it at all. CI is a great wonder for Brazil, but it's an AI favourite. I'm seeing it built before turn 95 on many Immortal games, and I'd say that turn 90 is a decent target for the human player just to be getting to Civil Service, never mind building CI on top of that with weak hammer output. Let the AI build it, and take it from them later in the game when golden ages become more frequent.

 

[TyBoy]

Near as I can tell, as long as you get a strong expression of your start bias and squeeze 20 or so jungles into your territory nothing else you do as Brazil matters much for a culture win.

I played one game as Brazil to try them out. 3 cities, each spread around the edges of my starting jungle patch, level 8. I didn't even try for earlier culture wonders. I did get the Louvre, but it came pretty late, I figure nobody else opened up exploration. Other than that national wonders only. In spite of being right in the running tech wise I won a handful of turns after getting airports, well before the tech that opens up Sydney Opera House.

I had some things come together at the end that sped my win up. The World Congress voted for the International Games sometime between hotels and airports. I dedicated all my hammers to them and won. I dedicated a lot of hammers to archaeologists as soon as I got them and picked up 8 artifacts from outside my territory. I also naturally popped a golden age around the same time, though that didn't really matter since I also picked up representation around the same time and popped an artist. I had like 30 turns of golden age left when I won.

The win kind of snuck up on me. With all those bonuses going, plus buying airports in my cities as soon as I could I was generating over 1,000 raw tourism per turn. With faith and the liberty finisher I had 3 10,000 strength musicians. My actual tourism per turn to the other civs ranged from 1,500 to 1,900. I ended up using 2 of the musicians in my neighbor's territory just because the 20% bleed tourism plus my per turn was going to get me a win faster than getting them to the correct civ's borders. I went from exotic with the culture leaders to counting the turns to victory in the blink of an eye.

The point being that, even with a slow early game and not even coming close to wonders, I still won much earlier than science or diplomatic victories were even a possibility. A lot less could have gone my way and I still would have won.

I did get the pantheon that gives +1 culture to jungle tiles. I briefly tested it out to try and see if it was translating into tourism and it wasn't on unimproved jungle, but I think it may have if there was a brazilwood camp on the tile. If it was then that is a pretty significant effect. I was the last religion and didn't get anything too great for the other beliefs.

The jungle start is notorious for taking a while to pay off but in the end it's pretty much a guaranteed win for Brazil. I'm convinced that, as long as you started in the jungle and don't chop it down you can play however you want with Brazil up until the atomic age then decide to start going after a culture win and still easily pull it off.

 

[rastak]

All 4 games I've played with Brazil, I cannot seem to get enough productivity to build any wonder. I usually go liberty, and rack up stonehendge and the pyramids asap. I can't do that with Brazil.

Brazil's start bias usually sticks you in the jungle, and I want to save most of those jungles for Brazilwood camps. But I can't even get enough production to really even build garrison units. It literally takes way too long to build anything until the population gets high enough which by then, is too late. I'm either far behind on every victory front or being invaded with no chance of survival. Not even enough productivity to be able to put that tourism bonus to use.

How do you guys handle them early game? Is it just me?

I had a slow start in my Brazil game and actually thought I was going to lose. I turned it around with a well placed war mid game and won a culture victory with 5 turns left in the game.

 

[HerrDoktor]

The best games with Brazil are those when your capital is not surrounded by jungle. If it happens to be, just chop it off. Leave jungles for later cities.

 

[Qbone]

Whenever I play Brazil, I really feel like I'm losing and that there's no way to catch up until like the mid-game, where theming bonuses come into play. I just won a game right now (on Prince, admiteddly), without conquering any civs and before even getting airports.

 

[HerrDoktor]

Confirmed my theory yesterday, on King. I had a coastal capital with just a few jungle tiles and lots of hills. I've managed to build a lot of key cultural wonders, had enough strength to repel an invasion from England, which was the number one on pontest sticks, even start conquering them late game just to see the Pracinhas in action. I've built just one city surrounded by jungle at early medieval, sent two food caravans to it. It paid off in money, culture and tourism, but the productive capital outshined it by a long margin.

 

[True_Candyman]

Confirmed my theory yesterday, on King. I had a coastal capital with just a few jungle tiles and lots of hills. I've managed to build a lot of key cultural wonders, had enough strength to repel an invasion from England, which was the number one on pontest sticks, even start conquering them late game just to see the Pracinhas in action. I've built just one city surrounded by jungle at early medieval, sent two food caravans to it. It paid off in money, culture and tourism, but the productive capital outshined it by a long margin.

That doesn't confirm your theory at all. Firstly, that's one game's evidence, following maybe a few games hypothesis. Secondly, that's one difficulty and map/time setting, you can bet it changes with those factors. Thirdly, that's just your playstyle. There are plenty of players who find they can play better with a high food start o jungle start than a production start.

 

[ajok]

if you have hill, go to bronze working for"remove jungle", build mines

 

[Arachnofiend]

Yes. I agree but I do think that finding a good way to get Chichen Itza could be huge for Brazil.

Perhaps - 2 city start - NC around turn 70 if possible. Bee-line to civil service, try CI, then go to Universities and machinery (which is on the road to Printing Press) before expanding to 5 cities or 6 maybe if there is a lot of jungle. Prioritize getting uni's set up and then grow them and focus on happiness.

There might be 2 problems here. 1. Missing CI anyway. 2. Not founding a religion. A religion can be very helpful in the culture/happiness game. Especially if you get Cathedrals and then Sacred Sites.

One possibility would be to go Liberty. You may want to do that anyways for some added production, and the free GP comes around just in time for you to use an Engineer on Chichen Itza.

 

[Chiatroll]

Confirmed my theory yesterday, on King. I had a coastal capital with just a few jungle tiles and lots of hills. I've managed to build a lot of key cultural wonders, had enough strength to repel an invasion from England, which was the number one on pontest sticks, even start conquering them late game just to see the Pracinhas in action. I've built just one city surrounded by jungle at early medieval, sent two food caravans to it. It paid off in money, culture and tourism, but the productive capital out-shined it by a long margin.

What was your play-style though? I had a 4 coastal jungle city one landlocked jungle city game as Brasil and I shared an island with china. I wonder rushed using hammer filled caravan's/boats for wonders and only cut resources that I wanted from jungle tiles. It was a piety/tradition start and luckily I got the +1 culture per jungle faith. Even with my trade routes focused on hammers the Brasil wood camp spam saved my economy.

I had to wipe China off of my island late game because they had been aggressive to me since the very beginning and that gave me their cultural wonders and some jungleless high pop land late game that couldn't compete with what my jungles made in any way.

I took a risky early tradition expansion for my first four cities to pump them out ASAP.

I think what you proved was on your play style on king difficulty it worked out.

 

[HerrDoktor]

Well, just to be clear, my theory is: it's better to have a non-jungle capital for Brazil.

On yesterday's game, I went Tradition, Liberty, Aesthetics, Exploration, Rationalism, Freedom. Rationalism just when I didn't have anything interesting to unlock in Freedom anymore. Finished by 1963, culture win. I waged just two wars, one to conquer Theodora, who was sitting on 3 cities using spearmen while I had Great War Infantry, all while being the 2nd in tourism after me - too tempting. The other was Elizabeth, who tried to conquer my jungle city - which was great, because it's like having a free Great Wall. She also tried a massive coastal assault, but I had submarines against her ships-of-the line, thanks to beelining for refrigeration. One sunk per shot.

But I made some mistakes. My religion, with faith by number of foreign cities, culture from jungles, cathedrals and I don't remember which else, was pitiful. I thought I could expand it fast enough because I've built Stonehenge, in the end I couldn't even keep it in all of my cities. England was very aggressive in expanding her religion. I decided to conquer the Bizantine Empire after they've sent a great prophet to two of my cities and broke their promise to stop preaching.

Back on topic, yes, you need wonders in your capital and for that you need production. I guess the extra science from jungles can maybe offset the lack of early wonders, but I don't know. In my first game as Brazil I had a jungle capital, didn't chop it off, gave up by medieval, after failing too many wonders on Prince.

TL/DR: You'll only have a slow start with Brazil if your capital is surrounded by jungle. I'm not sure if it's compensated by later progresses, but I prefer a non-jungle capital with secondary jungle cities, starting a few turns before you can build brazilwood camps.