Brazil seems underpowered

[Sovietof17]

Brazil has zero early game. I will make my case here. It has to be the weakest civilization I have seen.

- Their unique unit requires plastics (!).
- Their special tile requires jungles, and machinery.
- Their unique ability, carnival, isn't very good at all. Why?
- Tourism gradually unlocks as you play through the game. You get writers, artists, and then musicians.
- Wonders are situational. It's very possible to be beaten to them, losing the writer/artist/musician slots permanently.
- Bizzarely, Guilds (Medieval era) gives you Artist guild, but there is no corresponding standard building to place artists until... Archaeology, two eras LATER in the Industrial era!
- Yet, acoustics gives you Musicians guild, and opera house to slot the musicians, right off the bat!
- As brazil, you will endlessly generate a flood of artists and writers with nowhere to go, other then to pop for ... another carnival !
- The golden ages aren't really that useful overall.

So am I right about Brazil, or am I missing something? I am only playing on prince, and using a regular start. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Dux1]

- Carnival is incredible. You can use it to win a Cultural Victory before diplomatic or science options are even possible.
- You can use Cathedrals to store Great Works of Art before Museums.

As Brazil you want to focus on Tourism and Happiness. Get those Golden Ages going and get as many as possible.

 

[Petiscator]

Brazil has zero early game. I will make my case here. It has to be the weakest civilization I have seen.

- Their unique unit requires plastics (!).
- Their special tile requires jungles, and machinery.
- Their unique ability, carnival, isn't very good at all. Why?
- Tourism gradually unlocks as you play through the game. You get writers, artists, and then musicians.
- Wonders are situational. It's very possible to be beaten to them, losing the writer/artist/musician slots permanently.
- Bizzarely, Guilds (Medieval era) gives you Artist guild, but there is no corresponding standard building to place artists until... Archaeology, two eras LATER in the Industrial era!
- Yet, acoustics gives you Musicians guild, and opera house to slot the musicians, right off the bat!
- As brazil, you will endlessly generate a flood of artists and writers with nowhere to go, other then to pop for ... another carnival !
- The golden ages aren't really that useful overall.

So am I right about Brazil, or am I missing something? I am only playing on prince, and using a regular start. What am I doing wrong?

- Yeah, Pracinhas are not very good, but they can get you a very big GA by the end of the game.

- So what? You also got a jungle start. Eventually, you'll get Machinery. I don't see the problem with this. The Brazilian jungle tiles, with the appropriate buildings and beliefs, might get you 2 3 3 2 on a Carnival, and when you build Hotels+Airport+National Visitor's Centre = 12 tourism per tile on a Carnival.

- Why do you think it is not good? It has a synergy by itself. In a GA, you generate Artists, which can start a GA, to get you Artists, which adds to infinitum. It is awesome! Pumps up your tourism a lot.

- Yes, it adds up, so what? If you go Tradition -> Aesthetics and get the Parthenon, your first GA starts a bit after the Writer's Guild is built, so you can, in theory, get an early tourism boost. I don't see why is this a problem.

- And this applies to every civ going for a cultural victory, and to France much more than to Brazil. If you didn't build it, take it. It is ok to lose some wonders, just do a major beeline for Chichen Itza and you're good for the rest of the game.

- You forgot the Palace, Cathedrals, Sistine Chapel and the Uffizi.

- And what does that have to do with Brazil?

- So you will endlessly generate a thousand of GWAM. Is that bad? You will probably have space to put the works. It is possible that you'll fill them all. What is so bad about popping an Artist for a GA? It is good! +20% +20% and +1 on every tile already generating gold (cof cof Brazilwood Camps) is awesome. Also, remember the National Wonders. Most of them have some slots.

 

[Tyrvos]

They are a late game team and golden ages are very good.

 

[Rob (R8XFT)]

My first BNW victory came with Brazil. If you're heading for a culture victory, they're the civ to play.

 

[Cyanfunk]

Only use the writers for great works

Use the artists to launch or extend a carnival

Use musicians to tourist bomb stubborn civs

Finish Patronage for the free great people from city states and Aesthetics for obvious reasons.

Focus entirely on getting Chichen Itza for the entire early game

Go for Freedom and nab the +25 great people production (Leaning Tower of Pisa as well if you can manage it) and longer golden age tenets

Sit back, and watch everyone start buying your blue jeans

 

[Jon the Bastard]

I haven't played with them yet, but it does seem like it could be very difficult to survive to the mid-late and late game if your neighbors are aggressive military types. I don't know about you guys, but I very rarely have an abundance of both horses and iron and my early and mid-game armies are usually reliant on the UUs of the civ I'm playing. I'm still eager to try Brazil out though, for sure.

 

[Sheershaw]

- Carnival is incredible. You can use it to win a Cultural Victory before diplomatic or science options are even possible.
- You can use Cathedrals to store Great Works of Art before Museums.

As Brazil you want to focus on Tourism and Happiness. Get those Golden Ages going and get as many as possible.

Wouldn't you want to wait a bit before you start getting Golden Ages? The costs increase the more of them you get, and it's better to save them for when you have a good bit of tourism going.

I'd say expand a lot in the early game to keep your happiness in the black, then once you start getting tourism, start picking happiness buildings and policies and popping those Artists.

 

[ahawk]

Only use the writers for great works

Use the artists to launch or extend a carnival

Use musicians to tourist bomb stubborn civs

Finish Patronage for the free great people from city states and Aesthetics for obvious reasons.

Focus entirely on getting Chichen Itza for the entire early game

Go for Freedom and nab the +25 great people production (Leaning Tower of Pisa as well if you can manage it) and longer golden age tenets

Sit back, and watch everyone start buying your blue jeans

This is the best advice I've seen for Brazil in quite some time.

However, as it ignored religion, I'd add that:

Since the UI appears in Jungle, go for a religion and take the pantheon for +1 culture from Jungle (it won't be added to Tourism later on, but it will make the improved jungle tiles amazing once you also have a university up -- 2 food, 2 gold, 3 culture, 2 science is very nice). After you have that pantheon, take Cathedrals (for the Great Works slot) and take whatever else you need (usually production-focused beliefs to help offset the lack of production on those jungle tiles) to be competitive until the late-game.

Depending on your start, you may even take Piety right away and get the Reformation for added Tourism to buildings purchased with faith. This would allow you to get Tourism on up to two faith-buildings of your choice if you are okay using up your beliefs that way, or it would at least allow you to spread other religions in your civ and then build their buildings for added Tourism.

So long as you can found a religion without sacrificing Chichen Itza, you're in great shape if you combine this stuff I mentioned with the advice in the quote above.

 

[Dai]

I feel as though a lot of the stuff in the OP is general to culture victories and how great work production works, not just to Brazil. If you don't like shooting for a cultural victory, you probably won't like Brazil, and they're very focused on it. If you are going for a cultural victory, Brazil is one of the top choices.

 

[pozz]

My main problem with Brazil is that they really don't really do well with anything else than culture, I don't think they're underpowered, just rather monotone. =)

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

If Brazil wins the International games, it will have an obscene amount of tourism, especially if you time a golden age and have the appropriate wonders... you can be looking at 20 turns with 4x tourism when you are already likely to be the leader or close in tourism

 

[Wuddel]

They are a bit of a one-trick-pony geared towards a cultural VC, with some extra gold. What kills me is always the low production jungle start.

The only game I won so far was on a very odd starting location on a "rainforest" map, where some desert floodplains and 1-2 dersert hills were surrounded be 1-2 plain desert tiles and all jungle around them. I could get Hanging Gardens and Petra, for easy specialists and some production and could go form there. However I was deliberately going for a diplomatic VC (to get the achievement), instead of the probably easier culture one.

 

[Dai]

My main problem with Brazil is that they really don't really do well with anything else than culture, I don't think they're underpowered, just rather monotone. =)

You can sort of make an argument that bonus tourism helps in general (since it alleviates ideology unhappiness and increases other peoples'), and Brazilwood camps let you get extra gold from a jungle tile earlier than a trading post (Trading Posts produce two gold at Economics), but I agree that Brazil points so hard in one direction that it's hard to imagine not doing the tourism thing as your victory condition.

 

[mistermoo33]

You are right about Brazil being bad. That said, if you're only playing on Prince it's a problem primarily with your play and not the civ.

To elaborate, any VC is fairly easily attainable on prince even using a hypothetical "vanilla civ" with no unique abilities, unit, buildings or improvements - it just takes the right strategy and/or know-how.

 

[Sovietof17]

I managed to win as them right before/ as I popped hotels [before the hotels I had 6 - 7 turns to win, after it was a next turn win]

I went Tradition->Patronage->Freedom, and I played on a small pangaea map. I had a very defensible position on the nw side of the pangaea, where the south side was a valley choked by mountains, and the east was a city state and mountains all the way to the city state. So the AI could not rush me, leaving me free to build and trade. On the other side of the pangaea, Inca was tearing through civs including Egypt and England, and a couple of city states to boot. The sw side of the pangaea was occupied by Maya, and southern was Venice.

 

[VainoValkea]

Carnival is awesome. Brazilwood camp isn't all good - all that jungle means bad production, which is not nice even if you're raking in culture and money. Pracinhas come too late to be really meaningful most of the time, but could still be useful if most of the late-game kills weren't done by ranged units anyway. I'd rather see them give GA points for combat, not killing an enemy.

 

[chazzycat]

they don't really bloom until the mid/late game when tourism kicks in. Focus on surviving at first and getting Chitchen Itza at any cost. But if you can reach the late game with a decent core of intact cities with jungles, you should be good to ride the brazilwood camps and Carnivale to culture victory.

make sure to complete Aesthetics so you can buy artists & musicians with faith. artists to keep the golden ages coming, musicians only at the peak of tourism output. i.e., win the international games + research internet + be in carnivale. As Brazil I've had great musicians with strength over 10,000. A couple of those will make a huge difference in finishing a culture win.

basically the entire mid/endgame should be spent in Carnival. Between Taj Mahal, your own artists, faith bought artists, and free ones from policies/wonders, it should be pretty doable. If you find yourself without enough artists then you can use your UU to help with that too, but with enough planning that is unnecessary.

TLDR - they are situational and weak early game, but if you can make it to the end game they are very powerful for culture VC.

 

[HerrDoktor]

I haven't played with them yet, but it does seem like it could be very difficult to survive to the mid-late and late game if your neighbors are aggressive military types. I don't know about you guys, but I very rarely have an abundance of both horses and iron and my early and mid-game armies are usually reliant on the UUs of the civ I'm playing. I'm still eager to try Brazil out though, for sure.

Jungles are a free Great Wall. Just remember to upgrade your units to rough terrain bonuses, they'll have no chance.

 

[vcj]

I must disagree with you, OP. My first game of BNW was with Brazil. I was quite excited to see how the late game had changed, so imagine my surprise when I won a Cultural Victory by accident two techs into the Modern Era. I had just barely picked an ideology, and my game was over!

Does Brazil shake things up a bit? Yes. Is it underpowered? In my opinion, no.