I find it REALLY offensive that people do not consider Brazil a civilization but are perfectly ok with America.
Brazil isn't deserving of inclusion in a game called Civilization - that's not the same as claiming Brazil isn't a civilization and America is (it's questionable whether America by itself can be considered a civilization, but this is equally true for most of the game's civs, including England, France, Germany and others that form part of a larger relatively homogenous civilization).
There isn't any reason to equate Brazil with America - the issue has nothing to do with the things these territories have in common, such as approximate age and population size. The Civilization series is intended to reflect world history, and to select its component civs largely based on their relevance to that standard. America has been the defining power of the 20th Century; Brazil is an eternal aspirant, which has so far failed to live up to predictions of impending superpowerdom for decades and is presently in a period of relative decline following strong growth over the last decade.
Commentators on Brazil's claims to "superpower" status have questioned whether it can yet be qualified as a "great power", have pointed out its higher income and social inequalities compared with other "
emergent superpowers", chronic underdevelopment of the north and high crime rates; and lump it in a group of "emerging nations" that includes
South Africa. Its GDP per capita is
106th in the world according to the CIA factbook, while its real growth rate in GDP is 164th (of 220). Internationally, it exerts little to no influence outside its region.
Brazilian culture has not been heavily exported outside South America; samba is a minor craze in some areas, but nothing even vaguely comparable to American blues or rock 'n' roll in their heyday, and no one's wearing Brazil's equivalent of blue jeans.
Architecturally, what can Brazil boast? A statue built by the French and an opera house designed by an Italian. Not exactly an achievement the locals can hail the way America can its Empire State Building. Even in Civ V its cultural output is represented by a Brazilwood Camp - something harvested for export for use in foreign musical instruments, nothing reflective of Brazil at all.
It may not sound that way, but I like Brazil (though I only visited once, and for the wildlife rather than the people) - nevertheless by global measures it's politically irrelevant, economically strong in only one measure of economic performance and below at least half of the world's nations in most others, and its cultural influence on the rest of the world is (in BNW terms) at best "Exotic". It's not the originator or hub of world-defining technologies like flight, geosynchronous satellites or the internet. So how exactly is it comparable with America (a country I don't much like despite having lived here for three years, but which I can hardly deny is light years ahead of Brazil on every one of those measures and more)?
I'd be more mellow towards the idea of Brazil in Civ if they'd done something vaguely characterful or interesting with them, but it seems the designers were as flummoxed by trying to work out what Brazil could contribute to Civ as anyone. Their abilities feel lazy and tacked on ("gotta have a tourism civ - oh by the way, we've got to stop the fans moaning that Brazil's not in the game. Chuck something with the keywords 'tourism' and 'culture' together, will you, and call it Brazil?), and the UA name is as stereotyped as every other aspect of the civ is inappropriate for Brazil - pretty much the only thing they got right (by general agreement, I know nothing about him) is the choice of Pedro II as the leader.
