UA One of the hidden features of Brazil is the -50% needs during Carnival. On high difficulties, one of the issues you often run into is the happy wall after growth. You get into a WLTKD, you hit a growth spurt, grow one pop, and then you hit a wall of unhappiness that slams your growth back down. As a consequence, many WLTKDs deliver far less growth bonus than it might look on paper. Brazil nicely avoids this problem, and I would argue they are a pretty good "growth" civ. Beyond that, obviously the +25% culture is very good, but its also hyper focused. Brazil is a brittle civ, it doesn't have the well rounded ness of many other civs, nor does it have the military might to compensate by going on conquests.
UI: Brazilwood camps are a fun and unique aspect of Brazil, but very terrain specific. Unlike other UIs which can be more of a puzzle to see how many you can fit on given terrain, for Brazil its more a question of "can I build my camps at all?" The right terrain and your golden, the wrong one....and your out of luck. For context, in the last game I just tried with them (before playing my current game with them), I had two camps total across my entire empire.
UU: The UU is a neat concept, but its also very niche. The unit is not a great combat one, even taking Survivalism I and II along with the 3 you get....they are not defensively strong units at this point in the game. The yields they give are solid, but not subject to city multipliers and are often short lived. Once the exploration phase is over...all of your UU luster is gone. Further, they upgrade into paratroopers, which well good remain a niche unit....so your not getting any secondary boosts from your UU either, like you do with many other civs.
So in thinking about the problem, here is my focus for changes:
- Utilize Brazil's "growth power" to solve the UI issue and give benefits for the strong growth Brazil is capable of.
- Adjust the Brazilwood camp to offer a little bit more well roundedness to the civ.
- Upgrade the UUs defensive capabilities just a bit, to make it workable as a defensive unit. Focus on the pillage power that scout units have, to provide a combat niche that also gives Brazil a more unique way to war.
- Ultimately we are going mainly for tweaks here. I like Brazil conceptually I think they just need a little bit of boost in a few places and little more well roundedness.