Playing Brazil on Emperor Level

[EDaddy]

I love Brazil! Their special improvement and UA is very good. Om my very first Emperor game of BNW, I almost got the cultural victory only for Portugal to get a Diplomatic victory at the last minute. Ever since then, I have had trouble with the initial setup of Brazil, especially with all of those jungles they start with. They keep falling behind in tech and production making it impossible to build Chichen Itza or any of the earlier wonders. By the time I even get to Civil Service, the Chichen Itza wonder is already built by another civilization!

How do I catch up with the AI in the early game on Emperor level as Brazil or any other nation and what is the overall early game strategy for a nation like Brazil? Brazil is fun to play, but its not any fun when you are always falling behind! Thanks for your comments in advance!

 

[budweiser]

Just grow baby. There are often 3 food tiles in the jungles. Farm the open tiles, chop the wood and keep the jungles for later.

 

[civ54lyfe]

i found Brazil to be pretty rough to win by specifically using their UA. their unique jungle is kinda garbage from experimenting with it vs. a normal Trading Post on a jungle. i was never able to build Chichen either, and it would seem that this wonder is kind of a must-have to take advantage of GW/GM bonuses during a golden age.

i'd try to chop/mine jungle hills if your cap is starving for hammers and just do the usual to try and max the hammers. rushing to Civil Service is important as you already know. i found that Brazil pops a ton of GMusicians when it comes to that time in the game. to me, GM's are useless but then again, i hate giving AI Open Borders. you might want to focus early-mid on being Friendly with as many AIs as possible (not like people who aren't trying to dominate don't do this anyway) so that the door is open for Open Borders, and then send those suckers to go On Tour.

Freedom ideology might be a neat little hat-trick for Brazil. Once you pop Volunteer Army, it might give you Prachina's instead, but i haven't tested this. Once you do get Replaceable Parts though, i guess that you're supposed to go on a rampage against at least one AI or something, to get those Prachinas to kill stuff and keep getting Golden Ages.

overall Brazil seemed pretty fruity to me.

 

[kamikazees]

Brazil is a powerful, but fairly complicated civ. I find that Chichen Itza is very difficult to get on Emperor and higher, especially if other cultural civs are in the game. Better to plan on taking it from someone than building it yourself.

In fact, Brazil almost has to take Freedom because of its UA. Universal Sufferage (+50% GA) was made for Brazil (and maybe Persia). Volunteer Army is also insanely powerful for Brazil (they upgrade to Pracinas).

You are going to have to chop a lot of that jungle, especially riverside/lakeside jungle and jungle on hills if you need production.

But you don't have to be peaceful. In my last game as Brazil, there were 3 other cultural civs in the game, one of which had Chichen Itza. I went Autocracy and killed them all, winning a cultural victory shortly thereafter. I also hit a GA during the war because the Pracinas were getting GA points for killing and taking cities.

 

[kb27787]

i found Brazil to be pretty rough to win by specifically using their UA. their unique jungle is kinda garbage from experimenting with it vs. a normal Trading Post on a jungle. i was never able to build Chichen either, and it would seem that this wonder is kind of a must-have to take advantage of GW/GM bonuses during a golden age.

i'd try to chop/mine jungle hills if your cap is starving for hammers and just do the usual to try and max the hammers. rushing to Civil Service is important as you already know. i found that Brazil pops a ton of GMusicians when it comes to that time in the game. to me, GM's are useless but then again, i hate giving AI Open Borders. you might want to focus early-mid on being Friendly with as many AIs as possible (not like people who aren't trying to dominate don't do this anyway) so that the door is open for Open Borders, and then send those suckers to go On Tour.

Freedom ideology might be a neat little hat-trick for Brazil. Once you pop Volunteer Army, it might give you Prachina's instead, but i haven't tested this. Once you do get Replaceable Parts though, i guess that you're supposed to go on a rampage against at least one AI or something, to get those Prachinas to kill stuff and keep getting Golden Ages.

overall Brazil seemed pretty fruity to me.

Foreign legion certainly do upgrade to pracinhas.

And this is not GnK, the ability to build +2 gold +2 culture (completely upgraded is 8 tourism with hotel airport NVC and internet) on a SINGLE tile is huge, especially the culture part; and this does not chop down the jungle so 2 food, 2 science as well. This is almost like running a specialist slot.

The problem is the struggle for wonders and production in general early game, which to me makes Brazil sometimes hard to play for CV, esp if another civ becomes a culture runaway; but those extra culture points from those camps are really good for any type of victory really; get sacred path in your religion if possible to pump your culture/tourism to ridiculous levels.

The UA is still useful for generating GW and GA; 50% bonus is no joke; you just need to resist the urge to overexpand as Brazil and keep around 30-40 happiness so you get more GA.

 

[civ54lyfe]

yeah i'm all for more Culture, but a tile that's only giving +2 Culture after Acoustics is underwhelming to me. that said, i can see making these tiles only around the capitol (assuming that's your city with the most city-Culture multipliers)

 

[kamikazees]

The tile also gives tourism once you get hotels/airports. The boost can be very large in a city with several jungle tiles.

 

[Trogdor561]

How much is it cheating to turn off start bias? Because I always do this (with everyone). With even a decent production start, I really love Brazil, everything meshes. I usually put my second city in jungle if I can to take advantage of brazilwood- i can culture-farm there and build the neccesary wonders in my cap

 

[lmaonade200]

you'd want to chop all mines and focus on growing your cities and micromanage when the time comes, I love Brazil also, granted in a lot of my games I get lucky with the start and often get something like desert hills and flood plains with jungles nearby.

However, I am always able to build Chichen because of my huge (not really) tech lead (yes this is Emperor also), more population = more science from your cities, and a trade route never hurts either! I usually have 1 trade route with a different civ going and all other trade routes in food caravans to grow my cities.

I'd love to post a screenshot but I have a bad habit of saving over my previous saves (I like my load games screen clean), maybe I'll do it in my next game!

 

[Gort]

How much is it cheating to turn off start bias? Because I always do this (with everyone). With even a decent production start, I really love Brazil, everything meshes. I usually put my second city in jungle if I can to take advantage of brazilwood- i can culture-farm there and build the neccesary wonders in my cap

You'll have to get lucky and have a jungle nearby to pull this off. I wouldn't plan around that.

 

[EDaddy]

Yay! I was able to beat Brazil finally on Emperor last Wednesday! I started on an island alone. I got Writing from ruins which allowed me to get Great Library. Competition was fierce, especially from Greece (and earlier on England.) Greece even got the first influential culture too although of cousre Greece was going for a diplo victory. But at the end of the game, Greece was no match for my Carnival ability. Brazil is so much fun to play, because you get to show what you are really mad of in the endgame