What's your Brazil strategy?

[Peasley]

Brazil is one new civ that's geared toward a very obvious victory path, that being culture. But with the wealth of new options, a few key issues, playing Brazil isn't always straight-forward.

Brazil's main problems are (a) the brutal absence of production that comes with jungle bias and (b) a lack of any uniques in the early game. How are you opening your policies with Brazil?

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I did a GOTM with my mmo guild as Brazil this month. The keys that I emphasized were early pantheon/religion (you HAVE to get Sacred Path), using the GL for Drama and Poetry to get a writer's guild before your first Carnival, and Chichen Itza.

Your hyper-focus on culture can get you by early. I went straight tradition, but it was before I learned the merits of opening honor to spot barb threats to trade routes. Then straight into aesthetics with the exploration opener for the Louvre and it is off to the races. I had three full trees before unlocking my ideology. That led to some definite bonuses over the other civs.

In the end, it is all about the UA. Time your first Carnival when you get both a writer's and artist's guild up and it is a big cultural boon. I REALLY think Brazil should have a constant +25% to cultural GPs, but it is what it is. Brazilwood camps will catch you up in the end. 2 food, gold, and science with 3 culture makes the early delay worth it.

 

[Petiscator]

Brazilwood camps will catch you up in the end. 2 food, gold, and science with 3 culture makes the early delay worth it.

2 3 3 2 12 tourism on a Carnival

(Considering the city in question has a University, Sacred Path, Hotel, Airport and National Visitor's Centre)

 

[Nicasen]

Another thing that makes Brazil extremely powerful is that their Carnival doubles their tourism rather than their tourism % modifier (like the international games does). This will give your musicians double strength if they spawn during carnival and it can very helpful if you're playing against other cultural civs who sometimes push their culture so hard it seems impossible for your tourism to catch up.

 

[ahawk]

I haven't played as Brazil yet, but I'm a big fan of the Aztecs and when I play them, I tend to encounter a ton of jungle in most starts. From that, here's my advice:

1) Get a religion simply to get Religious Community (up to +15% production, 1% per believer). This goes a long ways toward making your few decent production tiles per city really count.

2) Use trade-routes to move production around after you get workshops up. All it takes to get a city in dense jungle off-the-ground is building a workshop and one other production booster (stables for horses, forge for iron, etc.). With trade-routes, if you can dump in so much as an extra +8 production on the city, you can get these up far quicker than usual without having to buy them with gold.

3) Bee-line Bronze Working and steal workers from nearby CSes, then cut some of the jungle. Not ideal, but better than option 4 directly below.

4) Without CSes nearby to steal workers from, or if you don't want to anger CSes in general (as Aztecs, not a biggie, but Brazil is in a position to rely on at least cultural CSes), an absolute last-resort can always be to go Liberty, get the free worker ASAP, bee-line bronze working, and cut some of the jungle that way. Depending on difficulty level, you could even try getting the Pyramids wonder as well.


Now, as to the comment about civs without early uniques:

* Brazil can always get a Writer's Guild up and use Liberty, or even the happiness from staying very small (just capital and one other city, usually) with Tradition to get an early carnival and try getting the boost for at least Great Writers. If you delay using the Liberty free Golden Age for a little bit, you can throw in some of the other guilds. Thus, I wouldn't say there's absolutely no use for uniques in the early-game as Brazil, but I agree that they are a late-bloomer, for sure.

* To tech quickly, stay small (BNW adds 5% penalty to science per city) and focus on getting good food yield, libraries, and the National College up, all as top priorities. You obviously may need to build a handful of units, depending on circumstances, but try to get most of the units through completing quests to ally a militaristic CS to save production. If lucky, you may have enough gold to buy shrines and get a pantheon up to get a faith-yield going and found a religion, which will let you choose Religious Community as I suggest before. All of this better helps to set-up to build/buy universities quickly, too, which will help tech to Acoustics faster after you tech the lower half to get Brazilwood camps.

* Without any early uniques, you're free to be somewhat creative with what you do, and you sometimes have to be creative.

* Because your uniques come into play much later, you can be slightly less worried than usual about how far behind you are. The Pracinhas comes into the game quite late, yet will help keep Carnivals going at a time when you are really hoping to polish off the cultural victory.

---

That's all I've got. I've not played as Brazil yet, so some of this is conjecture, but

a) in terms of dense jungle starts, I have a lot of experience as the Aztecs, and

b) in terms of early-games devoid of uniques, I've played the Ottomans (only the UA is even remotely helpful early on) enough to know what it's like.

Hope some of this helps!

 

[Nickel_lion]

I haven't played as Brazil yet, but I'm a big fan of the Aztecs and when I play them, I tend to encounter a ton of jungle in most starts. From that, here's my advice:

1) Get a religion simply to get Religious Community (up to +15% production, 1% per believer). This goes a long ways toward making your few decent production tiles per city really count.

2) Use trade-routes to move production around after you get workshops up. All it takes to get a city in dense jungle off-the-ground is building a workshop and one other production booster (stables for horses, forge for iron, etc.). With trade-routes, if you can dump in so much as an extra +8 production on the city, you can get these up far quicker than usual without having to buy them with gold.

3) Bee-line Bronze Working and steal workers from nearby CSes, then cut some of the jungle. Not ideal, but better than option 4 directly below.

4) Without CSes nearby to steal workers from, or if you don't want to anger CSes in general (as Aztecs, not a biggie, but Brazil is in a position to rely on at least cultural CSes), an absolute last-resort can always be to go Liberty, get the free worker ASAP, bee-line bronze working, and cut some of the jungle that way. Depending on difficulty level, you could even try getting the Pyramids wonder as well.


Now, as to the comment about civs without early uniques:

* Brazil can always get a Writer's Guild up and use Liberty, or even the happiness from staying very small (just capital and one other city, usually) with Tradition to get an early carnival and try getting the boost for at least Great Writers. If you delay using the Liberty free Golden Age for a little bit, you can throw in some of the other guilds. Thus, I wouldn't say there's absolutely no use for uniques in the early-game as Brazil, but I agree that they are a late-bloomer, for sure.

* To tech quickly, stay small (BNW adds 5% penalty to science per city) and focus on getting good food yield, libraries, and the National College up, all as top priorities. You obviously may need to build a handful of units, depending on circumstances, but try to get most of the units through completing quests to ally a militaristic CS to save production. If lucky, you may have enough gold to buy shrines and get a pantheon up to get a faith-yield going and found a religion, which will let you choose Religious Community as I suggest before. All of this better helps to set-up to build/buy universities quickly, too, which will help tech to Acoustics faster after you tech the lower half to get Brazilwood camps.

* Without any early uniques, you're free to be somewhat creative with what you do, and you sometimes have to be creative.

* Because your uniques come into play much later, you can be slightly less worried than usual about how far behind you are. The Pracinhas comes into the game quite late, yet will help keep Carnivals going at a time when you are really hoping to polish off the cultural victory.

---

That's all I've got. I've not played as Brazil yet, so some of this is conjecture, but

a) in terms of dense jungle starts, I have a lot of experience as the Aztecs, and

b) in terms of early-games devoid of uniques, I've played the Ottomans (only the UA is even remotely helpful early on) enough to know what it's like.

Hope some of this helps!

Thanks, buddy. This is a great estrategy...

 

[Rainbow_Lizard]

Don't play like the AI. Since you're very cultural, make as few cities as possible. The AI has a high expansion score and is very uncompetetive for wonders, another good source of culture and tourism most of the time. He's almost never afraid of large armies, which is unadvisable for such a production-lacking and peace-focused nation. He's also likely to protect city-states rather than make friends with them. This increases influence slightly, but can lead you to unwanted warfare, especially damaging with smaller nations.

 

[TheGrandWazoo]

My strategy was to take sacred path, build economy so you can buy in your jungle cities.

Then it was just a general culture game.

Also win the international games, start a carnival and laugh your way to culture victory!

 

[Poopin Thelift]

If you are lucky to get two buildings with your religion, sacred sites is another option to go with brasil.

 

[e3do]

One thing that worked for me in my only game as Brazil was finishing the liberty tree very late (after I had picked all the other policies/tenants that I had wanted). The free golden age late game is great, and using the finisher to get another late game musician probably shaved a good 10-15 turns for me.

 

[Tachii]

A lot of good points in this thread. Another thing is, that due to Carnival being as awesome as it is, it's only very early in the game that you really have an interest in creating great works with artists. Later on you want to keep the golden age rolling to the end. Don't fear to be wasteful of them. A single turn in a golden age gives more tourism than a great work will give you back before the end of the game.

In my last Brazil game with internet and Carnival my tourism was around 900.

I'd start popping golden ages when you got that Freedom policy that increases GAs by 50%.

Getting Chichen Itza is a bit unrealistic though. Then again I play on Immortal. But even some Emperor games, CI just get made way too fast.


Also, from some of the comments I'm reading so far, I honestly don't think Sacred Path does that much. In a culture game, you want to stay tall so the +6/+8 tourism from Sacred Path, while decent, means you'll be finished Aesthetics much later, it also mean you probably isn't going to get that Liberty policy, or have some policies to spend into Rationalism/Patronage and so on. And seriously, Piety's tree is pretty bad. Especially that second Pantheon one...

 

[metatheory]

Getting Chichen Itza is a bit unrealistic though. Then again I play on Immortal. But even some Emperor games, CI just get made way too fast.

Another reason to go Liberty and pop a GE.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I'm playing my first Brazil game right now. I got Sacred Path and my strategy is to try to get all the jungle in my region under my control by the time Hotels roll around.

I went straight into Piety, and I feel like it was a mistake. There aren't many short term benefits to culture and economy in that tree. It's not till after you get your religion improved that you can start churning out Faith buildings or whatever. So I was pretty stagnant until the Medieval Era.

Meanwhile Indonesia is a surprise runaway. Fortunately they built all kinds of Wonders in their capital just down the coast from me. I'll be taking that when my economy is strong enough to support an offensive army.

My Goal is to ignore wonders for the most part, I don't have the production to make them anyway, and to stuff my museums with artifacts. I'll try burning GWAMs instead of making Great Works and rely on Carnival and Brazilwood Camps along with Artifacts for my Tourism.

My irk with Brazil is that they have no early advantages. So you just loiter in the back of the pack until BW Camps come along. It's frustrating.

 

[AbTupinikim]

In my games with the Brazil I rush to take the sacred sites. If you go to do a wide empire, take sacred path + pagodas +cathedral, when you get sacred sites you can get 4 tourism per city in a early game....

I start taking the setler from liberty, go to piety three, take the openner from tradition and finish the liberty,

Try get eternal Carnivals, using great artists to get more turns, great writers to boost the policies in aesthics and the musicians to rush tourism in the most culutral oponent ...

 

[homegrown]

omg, stay out of Piety completely and away from sacred sites reformation. It's just not worth it as brazil. but.. but.. 4 tourism per city per turn! people, that's not even a single brazilwood camp, and you're gonna have a billion of them if you are deep in the jungle.

If you *were* to go down Piety for a reformation belief, I'd pick either Jesuit Education or For the Glory of God. FtGoG is only really awesome when you're swimming in faith though, and I'm not sure where you will get that as brazil, on a normal jungle-biased start, without a faith natural wonder (aka luck).

You don't need a religion as brazil, you just want the sacred paths (+1 from jungle) pantheon. if you do get a religion, religious settlements will give you more useful stuff (because you'll be able to build it yourself) than a couple of pagodas.

I also don't understand why you would want to go wide with Liberty as brazil. Wide play just eats faces. And you're never going to get to build Pyramids in a typical jungle start without sacrificing a lot of infrastructure/defense.

You want to play Brazil small and tall (4 city tradition). Tech Pottery, (AH), Mining, BW so you can start clearing the jungle from whatever hills you might have. Caravans (or cargo ships!) hauling hammers (cuz hopefully, you have lots of bananas for your growth). Save all your faith for Engineers from the Tradition finisher. Get 2 or 3 of the "necessary" wonders (Globe, Uffizi, Louvre). Those, with themed Oxford and Hermitage are enough. Chitzen Itza and Pisa would also be nice but are a little harder to get w/o a GE. Spam brazilwood camps.

 

[kb27787]

1) Survive early game.
2) stay happy, expanding too much is not good since you want to stay happy.
3) keep everyone else from winning by other means.
4) build brazilwoods
5) get hotels, airports then internet
6) auto-win.

I won easily on Emperor twice this way already in my first 3 plays on BNW the other time I was too dominant and won diplomatically before my tourism kicked in (not sure if this works on immortal) without piety and sacred sites. (as long as you have garden + leaning tower of Pisa + the guilds in your capitol, and then avant garde from the freedom idealogy you don't need to sweat to much if you miss some wonders; you will get your share of great works)

 

[homegrown]

An interesting experiment would be to see if brazilwoods can completely negate the need for any of the WWs. You'd still have Oxford (2 Writing) and Hermitage (3 Art) slots. Amphitheater slots for more Writers. You save all the rest of your Artists for GAs. Opera Houses and Broadcast Towers stay empty. You don't build the Musician's Guild until you have airports, then you use the really quick first 2 or 3 for Rock Concerts after you have NVC and Internet. If you can time International Games, Internet, and GAs with those Musicians spawning, it should be an easy win.

 

[joncnunn]

Brazil is one new civ that's geared toward a very obvious victory path, that being culture. But with the wealth of new options, a few key issues, playing Brazil isn't always straight-forward.

Brazil's main problems are (a) the brutal absence of production that comes with jungle bias and (b) a lack of any uniques in the early game. How are you opening your policies with Brazil?

Yes, Brazil appears intended for Cultural victory. But there's also a "Vote for Pedro" achievement which requires a Diplomatic victory as Brazil.

There is a non standard gambit you could try:
You can go to advanced start and turn off starting civ bias for that game. Of course this could also result in you not being to use your UI.

Sorry, I have no advice on policies for Brazil though; I haven't quite gotten to them yet.

 

[Antarion]

An interesting experiment would be to see if brazilwoods can completely negate the need for any of the WWs. You'd still have Oxford (2 Writing) and Hermitage (3 Art) slots. Amphitheater slots for more Writers. You save all the rest of your Artists for GAs. Opera Houses and Broadcast Towers stay empty. You don't build the Musician's Guild until you have airports, then you use the really quick first 2 or 3 for Rock Concerts after you have NVC and Internet. If you can time International Games, Internet, and GAs with those Musicians spawning, it should be an easy win.

my first sucess with brasil was with liberty start, total ignoring tradition. the reason was, there was no jungle near my capital except 2-3 tiles. so i decided to plant more cities in the jungle.


in comparison to france u get no bonus if u stay small for tourism. go wide and grab any tourism u can get. more jungle? perfect! more landmarks after hotels? perfect! carnival gives the bonus to all tourism u earn.

if u wanna play a really tall culture game rather go for france. i had the uffizi as brasil but i coulndt fill in the slots. hermitage and oxford should be the only stuff you should fill in, later ofc some museums but landmarks after hotels are rdy are even better.

important tree ofc is aesthetics and you have to know how to manage the world with you culture dominance. i went for order and forced the whole world to follow me because i had already 30% influence when i took my ideology.

 

[Antarion]

An interesting experiment would be to see if brazilwoods can completely negate the need for any of the WWs. You'd still have Oxford (2 Writing) and Hermitage (3 Art) slots. Amphitheater slots for more Writers. You save all the rest of your Artists for GAs. Opera Houses and Broadcast Towers stay empty. You don't build the Musician's Guild until you have airports, then you use the really quick first 2 or 3 for Rock Concerts after you have NVC and Internet. If you can time International Games, Internet, and GAs with those Musicians spawning, it should be an easy win.

i dont know why ppl emphasize to w8 with the musicians. normally you should have maxed out aesthetics and then you should be able to get 1-2 musicians atleast with faith in late game, thats how i do it.