GC with Brazil; vanilla 1.03b; normal/normal; no cheats (except badboy), no do-overs.
Goal: to win.
In my dozen or so SP GCs I’ve played Brazil 6 times. Brazil is great for new players; its isolation makes it ideal for learning the game. After role-playing several times, my goal was to win in the last few games, a goal in which I failed. But I learned a lot about the challenges facing third-tier nations like Brazil. I think I have a pretty good grasp of the strategic options available to her, and I’ll try to put what I’ve learned into practice in this AAR.
Regardless of the outcome, this will be my last game with Brazil for some time. Either I win and “graduate,” or I lose and need to move on.
Brazil starts the GC ranked 49th.
Literacy: 8% (29 have at least 50%)
Factories: 0 ( 27 have at least1 and 6 have 10 or more)
Techs researched: 14, Prussia has 28 for example
Population 5,915,000 (20th, but 25% are slaves)
Provinces: 75, same as France (7th)
Brazil has just two things going for it: the large number of provinces generates cash from the RGOs; its isolation, impoverished as it is it can easily dominate its neighbors. But this isolation turns out to be one of its biggest problems. A parochial South American strategy will lose, all things being equal.
In my experience, Brazil has four viable strategies:
1. Warmongering conquest of SA. Let’s call this SA-Fist.
2. Maintain peace in SA and colonize Africa. Let’s call this Chaquita.
3. Small beer warmongering in SA with heavy colonizing and an eye toward Europe. The Coattails strategy.
4. Peace, no wars or colonizing. Sandbox strategy.
Sandbox is good for role-playing only, so of no interest here.
The SA-Fist has much to recommend it. It’s easy to do—an alliance or two then drop then hammer. Plus annexed provinces will soon have POPs with Brazilian culture appear, either through emigration or assimilation (haven’t seen this with annexed European provinces). But it’s really much ado about nothing. For the prestige loss and bb gained, the prize is pretty meager. Although there’s a few tasty provinces in SA (Peru’s sulphur comes to mind), it’s slim pickens—laughably so when compared to European provinces. If you want to face bb wars, it’s much better to rake in some factory-rich Euro provinces.
You may be asking, why can’t you go for SA conquest and colonize too? Brazil barely has enough resources—money, manpower—to conquer SA let alone colonize Africa. In practice I’ve found the SA-Fist strategy denudes options elsewhere.
Oops, this post is getting long. We’ll look at the other strategies and then fire-up Vicky.
BIG EDIT: 7/18 This is my first AAR. Taking advantage of a rare opportunity for an all-day game session, the first 20-25 years were played at a single go. The first 20 or so posts were breathlessly written as events unfolded. Things will inevitably slow. The one problem I had was the online service I registered for took 24 hours to finalize things, and I stupidly failed to take a lot of screen shots yesterday. Things are square now and I’ve added some shots and will take them faithfully as the game progresses. I’ve plenty of saves though.
Goal: to win.
In my dozen or so SP GCs I’ve played Brazil 6 times. Brazil is great for new players; its isolation makes it ideal for learning the game. After role-playing several times, my goal was to win in the last few games, a goal in which I failed. But I learned a lot about the challenges facing third-tier nations like Brazil. I think I have a pretty good grasp of the strategic options available to her, and I’ll try to put what I’ve learned into practice in this AAR.
Regardless of the outcome, this will be my last game with Brazil for some time. Either I win and “graduate,” or I lose and need to move on.
Brazil starts the GC ranked 49th.
Literacy: 8% (29 have at least 50%)
Factories: 0 ( 27 have at least1 and 6 have 10 or more)
Techs researched: 14, Prussia has 28 for example
Population 5,915,000 (20th, but 25% are slaves)
Provinces: 75, same as France (7th)
Brazil has just two things going for it: the large number of provinces generates cash from the RGOs; its isolation, impoverished as it is it can easily dominate its neighbors. But this isolation turns out to be one of its biggest problems. A parochial South American strategy will lose, all things being equal.
In my experience, Brazil has four viable strategies:
1. Warmongering conquest of SA. Let’s call this SA-Fist.
2. Maintain peace in SA and colonize Africa. Let’s call this Chaquita.
3. Small beer warmongering in SA with heavy colonizing and an eye toward Europe. The Coattails strategy.
4. Peace, no wars or colonizing. Sandbox strategy.
Sandbox is good for role-playing only, so of no interest here.
The SA-Fist has much to recommend it. It’s easy to do—an alliance or two then drop then hammer. Plus annexed provinces will soon have POPs with Brazilian culture appear, either through emigration or assimilation (haven’t seen this with annexed European provinces). But it’s really much ado about nothing. For the prestige loss and bb gained, the prize is pretty meager. Although there’s a few tasty provinces in SA (Peru’s sulphur comes to mind), it’s slim pickens—laughably so when compared to European provinces. If you want to face bb wars, it’s much better to rake in some factory-rich Euro provinces.
You may be asking, why can’t you go for SA conquest and colonize too? Brazil barely has enough resources—money, manpower—to conquer SA let alone colonize Africa. In practice I’ve found the SA-Fist strategy denudes options elsewhere.
Oops, this post is getting long. We’ll look at the other strategies and then fire-up Vicky.
BIG EDIT: 7/18 This is my first AAR. Taking advantage of a rare opportunity for an all-day game session, the first 20-25 years were played at a single go. The first 20 or so posts were breathlessly written as events unfolded. Things will inevitably slow. The one problem I had was the online service I registered for took 24 hours to finalize things, and I stupidly failed to take a lot of screen shots yesterday. Things are square now and I’ve added some shots and will take them faithfully as the game progresses. I’ve plenty of saves though.
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