Brazil: Imperial

Setting up Brazil: Imperial involves placing the main game board and choosing a scenario suited for the player count. Each player receives a player board, specific wooden units matching their chosen color, starting resources, and a player marker. Shuffle and place the various tiles, painting cards, gold cards, dispute cards, and time-period cards into their designated market areas and stacks near the board.

Players take on the role of historical monarchs aiming to colonize and develop Brazil into a flourishing empire. The ultimate objective is to accumulate the highest number of victory points through empire-building, exploring territories, constructing buildings and cities, completing secret objectives, and winning conflicts against opponents.

During a turn, players choose one main action from their player board, such as recruiting units, inspiring paintings, building structures, renewing tiles, crafting goods, importing resources, or trading. After completing the main action, players can move their units across the board. Special bonus actions and movement improvements can also be unlocked as you progress through the eras.

Final scoring is calculated by tallying points from several sources: surviving military units, completed goods production tracks, acquired painting cards, fulfilled objective cards, gold cards, exploration tiles, and palaces. Ties are broken in favor of the defender, and the player with the most total points wins.

The game progresses through three distinct time-period eras, signaled by era cards. When a player successfully completes and claims the final card of the third era, the current round is finished, triggering the end of the game and the final scoring phase.