Civ 5 Brazilian Civilization
Civ Bonuses, AI Info, Strategies, Unique Units and Buildings
Updated for Gods and Kings and Brave New World DLCs
Civilization's Leader: Pedro II
Civ Bonus: Carnival
Doubles Tourism output during Golden Ages, while also earning Great Artists, Musicians, and Writers 50% faster during Golden Ages. This means saving some Great Artists for the late-game is important, though you will certainly want a few works of art in your empire to help give some actual Tourism to boost. Thankfully, Archaeology and the Louvre can help make up for this.
Unique Unit: Pracinha
Requires Plastics, Replaces Infantry
Infantry that grants points toward Golden Ages with kills. This will help should you need to go to war with another Civ whose Culture you cannot break - or to simply speed up the process of getting the next Golden Age should you lack other means to start one in the late game.
Unique Terrain Improvement: Brazilwood Camp
Requires Machinery
These can only be constructed in Jungle tiles, but give +2 Gold. When Acoustics is researched, this jumps to include +2 Culture as well. Brazil must preserve many Jungle tiles in the early game to make maximum use of this terrain improvement. The Culture can be converted to Tourism later in the game, but will greatly aid you in adopting new Social Policies.
| Warmonger Hatred | Wonder Compete | Offense Build | Defense Build | City Defense | DoF | Friendly to Civs | Denounce Civs | War w/Civs | Deception Likelihood | CS Comp | CS War | |
| 6 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 5 | 7 | 8 | 6 | 4 | 5 | 5 | 3 | |
| Other Info | Pedro makes a good target for an early Declaration of Friendship. Given the AI tends to do poorly at generating Tourism, he doesn't lead a Civ to be feared. He's likely to play peaceful and stick to that path unless you are a Warmonger or have a very weak military, he is unlikely to engage you in Warfare. | |||||||||||
one of the best Tile Improvements in Civ 5
Strategies/Ideas for playing Brazil:
Early in the game, one must not worry about Golden Ages with Brazil. In fact, it's better to avoid them until you've got some actual Tourism output with your Guilds set up. If you do not start with plenty of Jungle around, you should probably start the map over so that you can take best advantage of Pedro's bonuses. You play this Civ just like any other, only leave nearly all Jungle you can aside from some hills for Mines to provide Production for your Cities. Otherwise, go for Science and any early Wonders you are able to pick up. I didn't find founding a Religion vital with Brazil, but it definitely helped - that way you can pick Founder/Follower Beliefs that focus on Faith Generation and Happiness. The Sacred Path Pantheon will give you +1 Culture from Jungle Tiles, so it's an obvious choice.
Jungle starts can be rough, especially when the bonus does not come immediately as it does with some other Civs, but bear this burden and Brazil can become one of the best Cultural Victory Civs in the game. Brazil functions just fine either tall or wide, but should probably go with just a few Cities and Tradition so long as you have the Jungle you need to really shine later. Get all your Guilds in the Capital and proceed to produce Great Writers and Artists. You want to use these for any Theming Bonuses you can pick up, but do not worry about filling every last slot in your Civ. A lot of Brazil's specials come into play heavily later, so working to keep your Civ on top of Cultural Techs while picking up Brazilwood Camps through Machinery is of high priority as well. If you are playing on a lower difficulty, do get Chichen Itza for it will increase the duration of all Golden Ages by 50% - 15 Turns for a regular Golden Age, 12 for those generated by a Great Artist. This will help immensely, but isn't required for you can get the same bonus by Adopting the Freedom Ideology later - but they do stack to give 20/16 turn Golden Ages (Carnivals).
If you've managed to build Cultural Wonders, do utilize Swap Great Works from the Culture Victory interface to enable you to fill any requirements - trade off Great Works of Writing to get 2 from different Civs/Eras to get Oxford University filled. If you are able to maintain a Scientific lead in Cultural techs beyond that, you will not have any problem producing a respectable Tourism Output with Pedro, at least similar to that of other Civs. During any Golden Ages that come up, be sure to run your Writers/Artists/Musicians heavily to take advantage of the +50% boost that is added along with any others (like the +25% from having a Garden). Getting the Arts Funding World Congress Proposal passed as Brazil will greatly help increase the total number of Artsy types born in your Empire throughout the game.
The Aesthetics Social Policies are very important to Brazil, as is saving up Faith later in the game. This tree boosts your Tourism a lot through Theming Bonuses and increase in Open Borders/Trade Route/Shared Religion modifiers. More importantly, you will be able to purchase Great Artists and Musicians (never buy a Great Writer with Brazil - you should be producing those constantly throughout the game).
After you've got four or five Great Works of Art in your Cities, start saving Great Artists for a late-game boom in Tourism - you can have a 48+ turn Carnival so long as you have 4 Artists saved and either Chichen Itza or the level 2 Freedom Tenet that increases Golden Age length. The same goes for Great Musicians, but those are vastly more important to Brazil later in the game. Use all Great Writers for Great Works of Writing, for these will passively boost your Tourism while the others are more important for other roles once the bare minimum slots have been filled.
The good thing about the Brazilwood Camp is that while it's also an amazing Tile Improvement all by itself and certainly makes Brazil capable of an easy Diplomatic Win, the Culture is converted to Tourism by Hotels and Airports. Each of those add +50% of Culture from Tile Improvements to Tourism, so you can get the full +2 per Brazilwood Camp. This is before Carnival and any other modifiers. In your Capital, you'll be able to get another +100% for +4 Tourism each with a National Visitor's Center, once you have a Hotel in all Cities.
It is worth noting that as of Fall Patch 2013, Brazilwood Camps no longer count as a Trading Post for Free Thought from Rationalism, nor will you get +1 Gold each when you finish the Commerce Social Policies. However, they are still incredible tile improvements. Those boosts were probably considered too powerful.
Once you've got enough Great Musicians to fill out any Theming Bonuses and Great Work of Music slots in your Capital, it's better to back off on producing Great Musicians until during a Carnival where you are producing at least 400+ Tourism. They will get 10x the strength of your Tourism output, and that will greatly boost their strength when using the Perform Concert Tour option. Trouble is, their strength is based on Tourism output during birth - so the trick here is to time their births and purchase them with Faith during your massive Golden Age. Later, you will be able to easily see 9-12k Tourism bombs from these guys if you do it right.
Since you will want to explore the World to meet all City-States, taking a point in Exploration to enable construction of the Louvre is a good idea - it's also quite easy to fill its Theming Bonus when you Swap Great Works. Though I was behind a bit Scientifically in my game, I was still able to build this because no one had taken a point in Exploration. Archaeology is an important tech, anyway, for you want to get those Antiquity Sites extracted with Archaeologists and Museums are prerequisite for Broadcast Towers. I made sure to leave any Ancient/Classical Landmarks as opposed to taking Artifacts, relying on World Congress proposals and Hotel/Airport to convert these to big Tourism later on. Anything else that was newer or out of one of my Cities' workable range went to a Museum.
My personal strategy was to use the above tactics, get the International Games enacted in the World Congress and win first place (this meant devoting all 3 of my non-puppeted Cities to the Games until they were completed). I waited until a bit later in the game to do this so that my Tourism output would be higher. It was enacted just after Hotels. The boost from this, along with a long Carnival helped overtake some lesser Civs, while I waited on the National Visitor Center (Telecommunications) and had Airports in all Cities. This gave the Capital 200% Tourism before Carnival and any Open Borders and Trade Route modifiers.
When you see Tourism is hitting 800-1200 per turn either with International Games or the Internet, start making Great Musicians by having a long Carnival using your Great Artists. It costs 2500 Faith to purchase 2 Great Musicians (1,000 + 1,500) - beyond that, their price grows a bit more unrealistic (2500) but could be greatly helpful in finishing off the last surviving Cultural Civs in the game.
Buying Great Artists with Faith in the Modern+ era is obviously helpful as well, for you will get 12+ Turn Golden Ages. This can be done without Freedom, but it would be harder to guarantee such a long drawn out Golden Age without this or Chichen Itza. Plus, Freedom gives Broadcast Towers a +34% Tourism bonus to each City that has them.
If you're having trouble winning, Research The Internet quickly - it's right after National Visitor Center. This will double (again) your Tourism output and help set you over the top. It is also wise to get a couple of other World Congress proposals passed throughout your game - Great Person Tile Improvements get +2 Culture, while Landmarks get +4 with Historical Monuments. Natural/Cultural Heritage sites will increase Natural Wonders by +5 and World Wonders by +3 Culture respectively - more Tourism with Hotels/Airpots/NVC. It may be wise to expend some Great Prophets on Holy Sites for this reason, as they will also help you afford to purchase Artists after the Industrial Era. To help offset the poor Production of Jungle tiles, I even went with a couple Manufactories in my own game to benefit from this.
While I had no use for the Pracinha because I was already in a long Golden Age and the kills would not add to the total until the Golden Age was over, I was able to hit a high point of nearly 10k Tourism for a Great Musician Concert Tour once the National Visitor Center and Airports were up. This helped me overtake a Wonderwhoring Siam very easily, as they were taking over 1800 Tourism per turn with Open Borders, the Internet, and a Trade Route and each Great Musician caught me up 5 turns. Every Civ in my game either flipped over to Freedom Ideology or suffered from a large amount of Unhappiness. Russia's Empire revolted so badly I was given 2 free Cities (puppeted) throughout the game, leaving holes in their empire with them foolishly fighting off insurgents rather than simply switch Ideologies.
Read the Guide to Winning with Tourism for more information on this Victory Condition. There is also a Steam Achievement to win Diplomatically with Pedro (Vote for Pedro), and that is certainly easy with Jungle Tiles giving Science (with University) and having the +2 Gold per Brazilwood Camp. Overall, this Civ is best suited to a Tourism win, given the vast amount of Tourism they can generate with Great Musicians and their passive generation of this stat each turn while in a Carnival.
Share your own Tips and Strategies for playing Brazil below to help your fellow players.
| Sid Meier's Civ 5 is a deep strategy game. I created these individual Civilization Guides to highlight the strengths of their specials and unique units. If you have an opener or tip for playing this Civ that you would like to share with other readers, please use the comments form below. Some Guides are in need of update and will be improved to a new standard of quality or altered to reflect gameplay changes in G&K and Brave New World. | ||||||
| America | Arabia | Assyria | Austria | Aztec | Babylon | Brazil |
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| Greece | The Huns | Inca | India | Indonesia | Iroquois | Japan |
| Korea | Maya | Mongolia | Morocco | Ottoman | Persia | Poland |
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