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Part 2 in my series of Civilization V strategies is intended to help you dominate the world with your Brazilian Carnivals!

Brazil was established as a colony of Portugal during the era of European colonization. It was officially named "The Land of the Holy Cross", but traders often referred to it as "The Land of Brazil", after the "brazilwood" tree that provided dye and dense wood that were the most popular and profitable exports from the region. After Napoleon of France invaded Portugal in 1807, the capital of that country was temporarily re-located from Lisbon to Rio De Janeiro in Brazil. The bulk of the country is tropical and contains the majority of the Amazon rain forest and Amazon river basin. Brazil is a relatively new nation, gaining its independence from Portugal in 1822 and eventually becoming the Federative Republic of Brazil later in the twentieth century. It is the largest country in South America (in terms of both land area and population) and is the largest country which retains Portuguese as its official language. Its culture is made up of unions between primarily-Catholic Western European culture and native tribal cultures of the Pre-Columbian era.

Pedro "the Magnanimous" II ruled the Empire of Brazil for 58 years. He took a country on the verge of dissolving and turned it into an economic, cultural, and educational powerhouse in the western hemisphere. He was incredibly popular due to his vigorous support of freedom of speech, abolition of slavery, and public education, and he presided over the armies of Brazil to victory in all three wars that the nation was involved with during his reign. He was eventually overthrown by a military coup despite being overwhelmingly popular both domestically and internationally. He accepted European exile due to his advanced age and disinterest in maintaining the constitutional monarchy. The country then went through a period of political and economic instability before re-emerging in the late 20th century.

Brazil is a top tourist destination in the world due to its vast swaths of unspoiled lands and natural beauty. Rio De Janeiro is a particularly popular hotspot for tourism due to its festive lifestyle and the presence of the Christo Redentor ("Christ the Redeemer") statue, which is widely regarded as one of the man-made wonders of the modern world. Tourism and culture, is thus, the focus of Brazil's play-style in Civilization V: Brave New World.

Civilization V Brave New World - Pedro II of Brazil

Brazillian uniques in Civilization V: Brave New World

Civilization V Brave New World - Brazilian flag

Brazil has a mixture of uniques that can be taken advantage of during the course of the entire game, but they are mostly a late-bloomer.

Carnival

Pedro II - portrait

"Tourism output is +100% during their Golden Ages. Earn Great Artists, Musicians, and Writers 50% faster during their Golden Ages."

Pedro's unique ability is primarily geared towards assisting with a cultural victory; however, high tourism does have many late-game benefits that will help with other victory types as well. It allows you to impose your ideology on the rest of the world, which can force your rivals into submission and help you to achieve a diplomatic or military victory. In order to maximize the benefit of this ability, you will want to put high focus on wonders and great works. Keep your Artist's Guild in particular full of specialists, as the Artists will both give you great works of art and can be spent to trigger golden ages.

 

Brazilwood Camp

Brazilwood Camp

Game Info: "Brazilwood is a tropical hardwood whose bark produces a bright crimson and deep purple extract used in dyes. Its wood is dense, and is prized for crafting stringed instruments (especially the bows) and cabinetry. The harvesting of brazilwood did not cease until 1875, by which time synthetic dyes dominated the textile industry and other hardwoods had been found to be better for musical instruments.

A Brazilwood Camp can only be built on a Jungle tile, and will also generate +2 culture Culture once Acoustics is researched."

Requirements: Machinery technology, and must be constructed on a jungle tile.

Effects: +2 gold. +2 Culture after researching Acoustics.

Unlike Indonesia's "Spice Islands", Brazil's unique "resource" isn't actually a resource in the game; it is depicted as a unique improvement that can be constructed on a jungle. The Brazilwood camp is the only unique improvement that can be constructed on jungles, and it provides a good chunk of gold, as well as culture after Acoustics is researched. This means that Brazil thrives in jungles, and you'll actually be working you jungle tiles throughout most of the game! Since jungles don't provide any chop production, cutting them down is a total waste of time for other civs, but Brazil doesn't have to worry about cutting its jungles down and can save valuable worker time.

The Brazilwood camp synergizes well with Universities (adding beakers to jungles) and with the "Sacred Path" pantheon belief (+1 culture on jungle tiles), but it conflicts somewhat with the "Free Thought" social policy, since you'll be building Brazilwood camps over your jungles and won't be taking advantage of +1 beaker that "Free Thought" adds to Trading Posts. Hotels, Airports, and the National Visitor Center will convert the Brazilwood camp's culture into tourism.

Since the Brazilwood camp can only be built on jungles, your ability to use this improvement effectively will depend on the map. Brazil benefits from wetter maps with lots of equatorial landmass.

Pracinha

Pracinha infantry

Requirements: Plastics technology, and 1 gold per turn maintenance.

Obsoleted: Mobile Tactics technology (same as Infantry)

Cost: 375 Production / 750 Faith / 1090 Gold [Standard speed] (same as Infantry).

Attack Type: Melee, Combat Class: Gunpowder, Strength: 70.

Movement Speed: 2.

Bonuses: Starts with the "Golden Age From Victories" promotion, which adds points towards a Golden Age (or "Carnival", for Brazil) whenever the unit kills an enemy.

Game Info: "Modern Era infantry unit that earns points toward a Golden Age when it defeats an enemy. May only be built by Brazil."

Civilopedia Strategy:"This melee unit earns points toward starting the next Carnival for Brazil when it defeats an enemy. Use them to fight wars in foreign lands to push Brazil toward a Culture victory."

Golden Age From Victories promotion

The Brazillian Pracinha does not receive any combat modifiers above and beyond the normal infantry. It's only bonus effect is that it generates Golden Age points when it kills a unit. The "defeats an enemy" text is a little misleading. The Pracinha only generates Golden Age points if it kills an enemy unit. Simply damaging an enemy unit, or dealing more damage to an enemy than the Pracinha receives does not count. So it is prone to all the same annoyances that are associated with other abilities that trigger when a unit kills an enemy. If you fail to kill the enemy unit (for whatever reason), you get no reward. So if you bring the enemy down to 1 HP but can't finish it off with a Pracinha, and it Insta-Heals, runs away into a city or otherwise out of your reach, or you have to finish it off with a different unit, then you gain nothing.

A few points to consider about this ability:

  1. You do not get Golden Age pts from capturing or killing civilians (including great people, even generals).
  2. You also do not get Golden Age points by capturing cities.
  3. You do earn Golden Age points if you kill an enemy naval unit by defending while embarked.
  4. You do earn Golden Age points if you shoot down an enemy aircraft that targets you with an Air Strike.
  5. You do get Golden Age pts from killing barbarians.

This unit feels pretty weak considering that the American Minuteman receives the same "Golden Age From Victories" promotion (as of the fall patch), on top of the "Ignore Terrain Cost" and free "Drill I" promo that they also receive. The Minuteman is also available much earlier (in the Renaissance), and its promotions carry over after upgrade, so a Minuteman upgraded to an Infantry is strictly superior to Brazil's Pracinhas. Plus, the American Minuteman gives America this benefit earlier, and so it is useful for the entire second half of the game; whereas, Brazil's Pracinhas is not available until much later, so its window of usefulness is much smaller.

Pedro is a party animal

Carnivals are the name of the game for Brazil. Pretty much the entire civilization is geared around its unique Golden Ages and tourism boosts. As such, Brazil is primarily a culture victory contender. However, the significant boost to tourism output during carnivals can also be used to provide a small edge towards diplomatic and military victories. You'll want to focus on generating Happiness and on social policies and wonders that provide Happiness and/or buff Golden Ages.

Civilization V: Brave new World - Brazilian carnival musician
This musician was born during Carnival. His Concert Tour strength is based on the doubled Tourism output.

A subtle, but significant, point is to remember that Brazil's Carnival doubles all sources of tourism! This means that the tourism generated by a Great Musician's "Concert Tour" is doubled if the Musician was spawned during a Carnival! So try to delay generating Musicians until you're in Carnival. The doubled concert tour strength is retained even if the actual concert tour is performed outside of Carnival.

Civilization V: Brave new World - concert tour after carnival
This musician was born during Carnival. His Concert Tour strength does not change when Carnival ends.

The Brazilwood Camp also offers additional gold and culture. This provides bonus defense against your rivals' tourism, as well as giving you additional fuel for social policies (of which Aesthetics should probably be your primary focus). The bonus gold can allow you to support more Happiness buildings, as well as providing cash for bribing city states or buying luxuries from other civs. Keeping healthy relationship with other civs will mean you can sign Open Borders treaties later in the game, which will further boost your tourism.

Rough start; late pay-off

Brazil's jungle start bias can make them a challenge to play. Hills covered by jungles do not produce any production, chopping jungles does not provide production, and jungle areas tend to have plantation resources that don't generate production. On top of that, you have to go further into the tech tree in order to chop the jungles and improve underlying resources or to farm or mine the terrain. If you're lucky, you'll have some stone, gold, or gems nearby to boost your production or gold, but don't count on it. The lack of production may make you feel like you are playing catch up from the very beginning of the game, as it's harder to build an effective army, develop your cities, and compete for early-game wonders. If you are struggling with low production, try cutting down jungles that are on hills and mine the hills for added production. But keep any flatland jungles intact, as they will pay off in dividends!

To make up for the lack of production, you can focus more on gold. Get your Caravans and/or Cargo Ships up and running quickly (Sailing might be worth researching for the extra trade route, even if you're not on the coast). Being surrounded by jungles gives you a good defensive advantage (except against Aztecs or Iroquois), so you can also try building a handful of units and using them to pillage the lands of a nearby civ or city state in order to earn some extra gold and steal some workers (sparing you from having to spend the production / time to build your own). As long as you don't capture any cities, you shouldn't have any issues with "warmonger" penalties. You can then spend this gold on Libraries, Markets, Workshops, or Workers (depending on your specific needs). Liberty and the Pyramids can also be a good investment, since the A.I. rarely prioritizes it, and the bonus workers, improvement speed, and Engineer point can come in handy in the long term.

Civilization V: Brave new World - antagonistic Brazil
Since my cities are protected by a wall of jungle, I didn't need to keep as many units to defend. Instead, I used those units to threaten nearby city states, pillage nearby civs, and steal workers.
These low-risk wars gave me a chance to hear Brazil's awesome war theme! It sounds like music from a Bond movie.

Even though Happiness should be your primary focus long-term, don't be afraid to expand somewhat aggressively early. You don't want your first Carnival to occur too early, since you want to wait until you have some Great Works. So go ahead and expand to three or four cities as quickly as you want, even if it means keeping your Happiness low (or even going a few points of negative when a new city is founded). But make sure that you'll have enough unique luxury resources to support those cities once you stop expanding and start growing your population.

If possible, try to found a city in the middle of dense jungle (assuming your capital isn't already), and also next to a mountain and river (or lake) if possible. You can pump food and production into this city with trade routes and build the Artist Guild (and other guilds if you want), Monument, National Epic, Granary (especially if bananas are nearby), Watermill, Garden, Market, Library, National College, University, Observatory, and Oxford. And since you're next to a mountain, try going for Machu Pichu as well. By the Renaissance, this city will be a cultural, scientific, and economic juggernaut that will be popping out Great People left and right. You'll easily be able to afford using your trade routes to generate production to offset the lack of production in the terrain.

Worship your jungles!

Although not necessary for Brazil, there are a few pantheon / religious beliefs that synergize well with Brazil's uniques and gameplay style.

If you're absolutely overwhelmed with jungles, then Sacred Path is a great option, and since you'll be building Brazilwood camps instead of chopping your jungles, this pantheon is even sweeter! Sacred Path will turn your Brazilwood camps into tiles that generate 2 food, and 2 gold, and 3 culture, (after Acoustics), and also 2 science after you build a University. Just be warned that if the Aztecs are in the game, you'll have to compete with them for this particular pantheon.

Civilization V: Brave new World - buffed Brazilwood camps
Brazilwood camps generate 2 food, 2 gold, 3 culture, and 2 science when buffed with Sacred Path, Acoustics, and University! If they're along a river, they'll be further buffed with 1 production with a Hydro Plant.

Your jungle bias means that you'll likely have a lot of plantation resources, so Oral Tradition can be a good fall-back pantheon if Sacred Path is off the board. If you start out with lots of bananas and citrus, then Sun God can also be a great pantheon. It will give you more food on those resources, which will allow you to support more Artists and Writers. Goddess of Love is a good Happiness-generating pantheon, so it will also make a good fall-back choice if the map generator screwed you out of having enough jungles for Sacred Path to be useful. You can also try God of Craftsman as a fall-back option, as it will help offset the lack of production that is usually inherent in a jungle start.

If you manage to found a religion, then you can look forward to taking one of the Happiness-generating founder beliefs such as Ceremonial Burial or Peace Loving. You might want to watch out for Peace Loving though, since it may partially neutralize your unique unit later in the game. Any of the religious buildings are good to take for your follower belief (Pagodas offer the most Happiness, but Cathedrals have the benefit of an extra Art slot), and Asceticism can make a good back-up option, and so can Peace Gardens if you have a lot of rivers.

Lastly, if you take Piety and get a reformation belief, then Sacred Sites and To the Glory of God are great options to take. Sacred Sites will give you tourism from the unique religious buildings (Monastery, Cathedral, Mosque, and Pagoda). So if you take any of these follower beliefs (or a rival civ gives you access to them), you can generate a lot of extra tourism! Glory of God will let you spend your late-game faith reserves on more Great Artists, but assuming that you finish the Aesthetics tree, then you'll already be able to buy Artists, Musicians, and Writers with faith anyway (which is all you need). Reliquary can be a good enhancer belief, since you'll be generating a lot of Artists, Writers, and Musicians. That will give you even more faith, which you can then use to buy more Artists if you took Glory of God or finish Aesthetics!

There's a lot of good options in the religions, so trying to found your own can be a huge boost! In addition to providing your empire with powerful bonuses that synergize well with your uniques, having a common religion will also increase your tourism modifiers with other civs.

Technology zig-zagger

Your strategy should probably focus on accumulating as much Happiness and Artists as possible so that you can keep your empire in a near-constant state of Carnivals. Once you have the techs to unlock the improvements needed for your local luxuries, you should go for Drama to unlock the Writer's Guild. Once that is done, focus on the bottom half of the tech tree, as it will have buildings and wonders that will best synergize with Carnival. Most of the Happiness buildings are on the lower half of the tech tree, as is the Artist's Guild. Construction, Civil Service, and Guilds should probably be your top priorities for early-game techs. Construction will give you access to Colosseums, and Guilds will give you Artist's Guild, as well as being on the way to Machinery (which unlocks your unique Brazilwood camp). Since you should already have Drama, be sure to take Civil Service ASAP so you can build the Chichen Itza. Make sure you fill any Art slots before you start spending your artists on Golden Ages though, since you need to have some base tourism to double.

Civilization V: Brave new World - Brazil tech priorities
Early tech priorities should be: Drama and Poetry, Construction, Civil Service, and Machinery. Then go for Education and Acoustics to completely buff your Brazilwood jungles.

Once you have Civil Service and Machinery, you're free to tech as you see fit. Education and Acoustics should be high on your list of mid-game priorities in order to further buff your Brazilwood jungles. You should also consider staying on the bottom half of the tree in order to research Printing Press so that you can build Zoos, the Leaning Tower, and maybe the Globe Theater. At this point, you'll probably want to move to the top half of the tech tree so that you can get Architecture, Archeaology, and eventually Radio, Refrigeration, and Plastics.

Land of Wonders

There are a few Wonders that Brazil should put high priority on building:

  1. Chichen Itza: Increases the length of your Carnivals by half. This is a no-brainer for Brazil and should probably be your top priority, as it will effectively triple your tourism output!
  2. Notre Dame: Happiness is a key component to generating as many Carnivals as possible. Notre Dame will give you 10 free Happiness, not to mention some bonus faith.
  3. Taj Mahal: Especially nice if you already built Chichen Itza. Free extra-long Carnival? Sign me up! It also gives you 4 more Happiness to make future Carnivals more frequent.
  4. Uffizi: You should adopt Aesthetics early in order to maximize your Artist, Musician, and Writer birth rate, so you should definitely go for this wonder. Three more Art slots and a hefty theme bonus will certainly add up during your late-game Carnivals.
  5. Leaning Tower: If you rush to Machinery, you might also have a chance at getting Printing Press early. Doing so will allow you to build the Leaning Tower, which will further speed up your Artist generation!
  6. Eiffel Tower: a few more points of happiness and 12 raw tourism!
  7. Parthenon: Finishing the Parthenon gives you a free work of art. If you can finish this wonder before your first Carnival, you'll get off to a nice head start, and might be halfway to a Culture victory by the time Ideologies are even unlocked!
  8. Broadway: Save the Great Musician (and any others that may be standing around already) until you reach the Modern Era. That way, you're more likely to be able to create three Modern Musical works and achieve the theme bonus.

The Mausoleum of Halicarnasus can be a good backup wonder even if you don't have stone or marble. Since you'll be generating lots of Great Artists anyway, why not get a good chunk of extra cash on the side? The Great Library can also be helpful if you can fill out its theme bonus, but since you're probably going to be focusing on Artists instead of Writers, it might be better to go for the Parthenon instead, as it provides the free Great Work and will have you generating tourism out of the gate. On higher difficulties, the Great Library is virtually impossible to build anyway, so if you're playing above Prince level, it's probably not worth the effort. Spend that production on units, Colosseums, and Settlers instead!

If you decide to adopt Exploration, then the Louvre becomes an obvious high priority. Going for Exploration and Archaeologists can give you artifacts to fill up your museums, which will free up your Artists to spam Carnivals. If you decide to take the Freedom ideology later in the game, you might also want to consider the Statue of Liberty. This way, all those Artists, Writers, and Musicians will help boost your production! The Cristo Redentor is also a good option to further boost your Social Policy / Ideological Tenent accumulation.

Opium for the masses

Accumulating a ton of Happiness will ensure that you spend most of the late-game in Carnival (or a Carnival hangover). As I've already mentioned, your Brazilwood camps will give you extra gold that you can use to bribe city states and buy luxuries from rival civs. Mercantile city states should probably be your highest priority. Militaristic city states can also be a good option to help you keep a respectable defensive military, since you probably focused your production on wonders and cultural buildings. The patronage tree and its Cultural Diplomacy policy will give you a large boost to happiness from the luxuries that CSs give you. Commerce's Protectionism policy will provide a similar buff to the happiness you generate from your own luxuries.

Since you're trying to keep Happiness as high as possible, you may be keeping your number of cities relatively low (may be even more important than with Gandhi). Expansion should be almost exclusively for the purpose of acquiring new luxuries. Unlike with other civs, you should go out of your way to include as many jungle tiles in your borders as possible, so when you do found new cities, try to position them to make the best use of the real estate possible.

But, what do I do with my Pracinhas?

Civilization V: Brave new World - Foreign Legion upgraded to Pracinha
Foreign Legions upgraded to Pracinhas can be good Barbarian-hunters if any camps remain.

Most of this strategy has been focused on cultural and economic playstyles. Warmonger is strongly not recommended with Brazil, since their unique unit has no combat advantages. So, what the heck should you do with your Pracinhas? Should you even build them? The answer is: maybe. If you already have Carnivals rolling nearly constantly, then you may not need the Pracinhas at all, since they can't add to your Golden Age points when you're already in Carnival. If there are still significant gaps between Carnivals, then your Pracinhas can be very valuable.

Try going for the Freedom ideology. In addition to having lots of tenents that buff culture, tourism, and great people, it also contains the Volunteer Army tenent. You can use this to get six free Foreign Legions, which you can then upgrade to Pracinhas using the crazy amounts of money that you should be generating from your Brazilwood camps and Carnivals.

Once you have a small army of Pracinhas, you don't really want to be a traditional warmonger. You don't want to upset too many other players (at least not until you've dominated them with your tourism). So the first thing you can do is use your Pracinhas to pick off any straggling barbarians that may be wandering around the un-developed areas of the world. Don't disperse the camps if you don't have to, so that they can continue to spawn barbarians, and you can farm Golden Ages. Landlocked encampments are best, since they won't generate naval barbarians that your Pracinhas can't effectively engage. If you have a spare Worker, you can even bring that along to use as bait to try to draw a barbarian out of the encampment. Once he captures the worker, surround him with your Pracinhas to kill him and recapture the Worker. The encampment will still be in tact, and should spawn more barbarians after a few turns.

Civilization V - Brazilian Pracinha attacking barbarian with foreign land bonus Civilization V - Brazilian Pracinha earning Golden Age points from barbarian
[LEFT] The Foreign Lands bonus is good for fighting barbs, since they always spawn in neutral territory.
[RIGHT] Killing barbs will earn points towards a Carnival (if not already in Carnival).

Of course, it's very likely that there won't be any place for barbarians to spawn this late in the game, so you need some alternative ways to use your Pracinhas. If you're already culturally influential with another civ, you can consider going go war with them, especially if doing so will help your relations with an ally. Don't capture cities; use your Pracinhas to kill units for the Carnival points. If your tourism is strong enough, and other civs have adopted other ideologies, their happiness may fall to a point where their cities start to rebel. If so, you can use your Pracinhas to "help" them take care of the rebels!

But what if I don't start near jungles?

Brazil is one of a handful of civs that can be frustrated by an unfavorable map. Brazil isn't quite as hard-hit as - say, the Iroquois, English, Ottomans, Celts, or Indonesians - if the map is unfavorable. Not starting near large expanses of jungle isn't a killer. It just means you won't be as economically or culturally successful as you could be. Brazilwood camps don't show up until quite a ways into the game, anyway, so that's plenty of time to expand into areas of the map where jungles are more prevalent. If you start on the coast, but don't have easy access to lots of jungle, you can consider focusing on a naval strategy to get to Astronomy early and start colonizing jungle islands or unoccupied continents. You can then send Cargo Ships full of food and/or production to those cities in order to quickly make them productive. An extra Cargo Ship and trade route from the Colossus would be very useful for such a strategy!

Civilization V: Brave new World - antagonistic Brazil
I'm going to need to get some trade routes and prophets to Sweden ASAP.

If, for some reason, jungles are just completely inaccessible to you, then you can still survive without Brazilwood camps. You can still focus on spamming as many Carnivals as possible, and you will still be a tourism powerhouse if you get the wonders and great people that you need. It will be a little slower since you won't have as many social policies, but you'll get there.

International party-pooper: beating Brazil and its Carnivals

Civilization V: Brave new World - Brazil winning World Games
Do NOT propose the World Games if you have control in the World Congress and Brazil is in the game. If Brazil can trigger a Carnival during the World Games, it can put a quick end to the game.

Brazil is a potent cultural powerhouse! If their tourism is left unchecked, they can throw a serious wrench in your best-laid plans, especially if they adopt a competing ideology when the Industrial Era rolls around. Trying to keep them away from the good tourism-generating wonders is key to stopping them from running away with a culture victory. In general, you can try to keep luxury resources out of their hands by refusing to trade your luxuries to them and by trying to stop them from allying with the Mercantile city states. This will at least slow down their Carnivals and give you a chance to compete for tourism.

A jungle bias and disincentives for chopping jungles means that Brazil is very likely to have a lot of rough terrain and an invading force will have very limited visibility. So if you must go to war, then units with Drill promotions are a must. Cover is also useful for fending off multiple city bombardments that you will likely suffer. You may need to bring extra spotters for your ranged units and siege weapons as well. Mounted units with the Sentry promotion can be helpful for this, and if you have access to military units with "Ignore Terrain Cost", then they can be a life-saver too. If you end up in a late-game war with Brazil, make sure you don't let his Pracinhas kill your units. Retreat wounded units and used ranged attacks, aircraft, naval bombardment, and hit-and-run attacks with mobile units to pick off his Pracinhas from a safe distance. The Pracinhas have no inherent combat or defensive advantages, so they aren't hard to deal with.

An excellent way to undermine Brazil is to take a page out of the anti-Hiawatha strategy: use your workers to chop down his jungles! This is especially damning if they also took any pantheon beliefs that benefit jungles. Regardless of whether you chop or not, make sure you pillage those Brazilwood camps if you ever go to war with Brazil! Also remember: capturing Brazilian territory with Brazilwood camps will allow you to work them. So capturing Brazil's cities or using Generals to steal their Brazilwood camped jungles can turn their advantage into your advantage!

Let Pedro's A.I. shoot himself in the foot

In my games, I have rarely seen Brazil be a legitimate threat to my victory plans. His A.I. seems to play pretty passively. He maintains a small (or non-existent) army, doesn't expand much early in the game, and seems to waste a lot of time trying to build wonders that he just doesn't have the production to finish (thanks to his jungle starts). Because of this, I rarely see Pedro's A.I. with more than two or three cities, and if he starts near an aggressive civ (like Zulu, Assyria, Huns, Russia, or Aztecs), then he will likely be conquered fairly early in the game.

If, however, Pedro gets lucky and survives long enough to start building Brazilwood camps or to adopt an ideology, then he may be a bit trickier to deal with. The A.I. bonuses on higher difficulties will make his Brazilwood camps even more potent, since he'll be getting bonuses to gold, culture, and science (remember, the University will add beakers to those jungle tiles), so he can easily push ahead in multiple demographics if left unchecked. His passive playstyle means that he will likely have a coalition of A.I. friends, so a war declaration against him must be carefully and cautiously planned. If you want to avoid a warmonger penalty, you can avoid capturing his cities, and just pillage and plunder him back to the stone age.

Lands as smooth as a Brazilian wax

A human player is going to be a much more legitimate threat to your game than the Pedro A.I., and you may need to take some efforts to counteract him or her.

It can be hard for Brazil to stand up against early wars, since jungle starts tend to give the player relatively low production. If they've focused on culture, science, or gold, then they may have left themselves a sitting duck for your armies.

Try to keep a human player away from theme bonuses. Don't trade your great works to them, and don't give them open borders to allow them to dig for artifacts in your territory. If you happen to beat Brazil to Archaeology, you can even try spamming a bunch of Archaeologists and using them to build Landmarks in Brazil's land. This delays their ability to generate large sums of tourism, since they'll have to wait to get Hotels and Airports before converting the culture to tourism. This can be very difficult to do.

Montezuma: vanilla jungle king and slayer of Pedro!

Civilization V: Brave new World - Aztecs defeat Brazil
Aztecs (along with Iroquios and America) can nullify the defensive benefits of Brazil's jungle bias.

One of the best counter strategies for Brazil is to simply select the Aztecs as your civilization. Brazil's slow start and jungle bias will make it a sitting duck for your Jaguar Warriors at the start of the game. If you didn't select the Aztecs, but find yourself in a game with Brazil, you can try to pit the Aztecs and Brazil against each other and hope that Montezuma uses his Jaguars to destroy Brazil. You can then use any effective anti-Aztec strategy. American Minutemen can also be a good weapon to use against Brazil later on. Stock Minutemen can ignore terrain cost and have the Drill promotion. Of course, if Aztecs or America aren't in the game or don't start close to Brazil, then this isn't a practical solution...

 

Discuss this strategy on Civfanatics:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?
p=12975498#post12975498

or on the official 2K Civilization V forums:
http://forums.2k.com/showthread.php?
410781-A-general-strategy-for-Brazil&p=5569736#post5569736

Listen to the discussion on PolyCast, Episode 190, 16m03s (Jan 11, 2014): http://civcomm.civfanatics.com/polycast/polycast/season8/episode190.mp3

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Comments (2) -

Anthony
Anthony
12/29/2013 04:53:01 #

I'm going to have to try Brazil out now. I've wanting to secure a tourism victory for some time.

Alessandro
Alessandro
02/08/2014 05:09:03 #

Great guide, but my experience with Brazil was somewhat different. I managed to avoid war altogether other than for defensive purposes and that way I managed to keep good relationships with everyone else (well, almost). Luckily I started in an area with lots of jungle, so I researched Acoustics as soon as it was available and I went building Brazilwood Camps like crazy, thus boosting money, science and culture.

As for the ideology, I went for Order and used the production bonuses to build every possible culture-related building and accumulate happiness in order to start a Golden Age as often as possible. The final result was a nice cultural victory, which Brazil is ostensibly laid out for Smile

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