Brazil Help

[Carl5872]

I played a game as Brazil, and need some help.

Since I started in the jungle, I thought I should go piety to build faster shrines and ensure the jungle bonus pantheon. I got it, but found that I am horribly behind most other civs. I think part of it was due to me missing out on the benefits from tradition. What would you recommend social policy wise for Brazil?

Also, I felt that since I delayed chopping down jungle tiles for the woodcamps, my production was crap early on, and I kept missing wonders by a few turns. Can anyone help me with how to play Brazil?

 

[fyar]

What difficulty are you playing? Brazil is always going to be a slow starter because of the jungle bias. You just have to accept that, and try to build up your base until you become a cultural beast starting with Brazilwood camps. My first game of BNW was as Brazil, and I went down a difficulty level to get used to the new mechanics. Even still, I had a tough early game (lost a city to Indonesia) because I got overaggressive but didn't have the production base to fight two fronts. (Also, I didn't know yet in my first game of BNW how ridiculous Shaka's Impi-spam would be!)

I would not open Piety for that reason. You're already going to be behind in growth/production, and opening Piety just exacerbates that. I would look for some other external source of faith, either a natural wonder or religious city-state. Either Tradition or Liberty could work for that, but I think the consensus is that Tradition is usually more powerful.

Also, I think it's easy to get caught up in trying to snatch up huge swaths of jungle as Brazil. But you really need at least one strong production base, especially if you go for a cultural victory (you need those cultural wonders) or a domination victory. For that reason, I would put my 2nd or 3rd city in a more "traditional" city location with some hills/forest/plains instead of only settling near jungles. I think you're playing it right not to chop those jungles near Rio, the woodcamps are just way too powerful to sacrifice for a little early production. But to make up for it, you should probably make Sao Paulo a good production city.

Lastly, because of Brazil's slow early growth/production, I would stick to mostly internal trade routes in order to compensate. Later on, those woodcamps will give you a fair amount of gold to compensate.

 

[Glieze]

Never open piety. Piety is fine later on, but really not for opener.

 

[Carl5872]

What difficulty are you playing? Brazil is always going to be a slow starter because of the jungle bias. You just have to accept that, and try to build up your base until you become a cultural beast starting with Brazilwood camps. My first game of BNW was as Brazil, and I went down a difficulty level to get used to the new mechanics. Even still, I had a tough early game (lost a city to Indonesia) because I got overaggressive but didn't have the production base to fight two fronts. (Also, I didn't know yet in my first game of BNW how ridiculous Shaka's Impi-spam would be!)

I would not open Piety for that reason. You're already going to be behind in growth/production, and opening Piety just exacerbates that. I would look for some other external source of faith, either a natural wonder or religious city-state. Either Tradition or Liberty could work for that, but I think the consensus is that Tradition is usually more powerful.

Also, I think it's easy to get caught up in trying to snatch up huge swaths of jungle as Brazil. But you really need at least one strong production base, especially if you go for a cultural victory (you need those cultural wonders) or a domination victory. For that reason, I would put my 2nd or 3rd city in a more "traditional" city location with some hills/forest/plains instead of only settling near jungles. I think you're playing it right not to chop those jungles near Rio, the woodcamps are just way too powerful to sacrifice for a little early production. But to make up for it, you should probably make Sao Paulo a good production city.

Lastly, because of Brazil's slow early growth/production, I would stick to mostly internal trade routes in order to compensate. Later on, those woodcamps will give you a fair amount of gold to compensate.

I play on marathon and on emperor. I really like your strategy. By going with early internal trade routes, I will have fine production, and wont have to dedicate troops to protecting foreign ones. Also the early ones are usually under 5 gold anyways. By the time sea routes are available, I can pursue those for a lot more gold.

I see the error of my ways in starting/forcing piety. While the extra culture from jungles is nice, I am getting the impression that unless your civ gets a faith bonus, or you start by an external source of faith (ex. a natural wonder), you should not aggressively go for religion.

 

[fyar]

I play on marathon and on emperor. I really like your strategy. By going with early internal trade routes, I will have fine production, and wont have to dedicate troops to protecting foreign ones. Also the early ones are usually under 5 gold anyways. By the time sea routes are available, I can pursue those for a lot more gold.

I see the error of my ways in starting/forcing piety. While the extra culture from jungles is nice, I am getting the impression that unless your civ gets a faith bonus, or you start by an external source of faith (ex. a natural wonder), you should not aggressively go for religion.

Glad I could help! I would amend that statement only slightly. I think there are very good occasions for going aggressively for a religion. It can be very powerful when seeking a cultural victory, for example. I would just add that aggressively going for religion doesn't necessarily mean going down Piety. Aggressively seeking a religion might mean utilizing a good faith-producing pantheon, a natural wonder, or a religious city-state. You can do it without Piety. If I do go down Piety, it's as a secondary tree, maybe in between Tradition/Liberty and Rationalism or maybe even after Rationalism.

Unfortunately, as Brazil, taking Sacred Path would be optimal, but it doesn't help you get a religion. That's why I suggested a natural wonder or religious city-state if you can. Without Piety, you might not have the most widespread religion, but you just want it to be strong enough to keep your Sacred Path pantheon in your core cities. Also, try to get Chichen Itza if you can! Unique Ability +50% is always good, but the AI seems to like it, so at Emperor it might actually be easier to conquer it.

After my playthrough, I honestly think that Brazil is one of the weaker civs precisely because of their slow start. But they can also be one of the most fun when you get to the end game.

 

[weregamer]

The piety/Aesthetics split has made Piety a much much less attractive tree, and a horrible one to start with. You have to get 4 policies into it to get anything that really helps anything but faith, and it's just too easy to get faith with a well-chosen pantheon for your city sites.

The reformation beliefs are what really make Piety powerful, but there are only a couple good ones depending on your goals. I think this is a big reason why many folks only go Piety at all if they are going for a Culture victory and can afford a couple near-wasted picks.

 

[secon]

i just started playing as brazil the other day and so far they're pretty fun. i've been trying out starting with other policies since i was getting a bit bored of doing the same basic starts alot. lost my first couple games one due to being caught between zulus and atilla and getting smashed and another due to a pretty bad start and getting way behind korea in tech. 3rd try seems to be doing well so far.