Himiko Queen of Wa Leader Guide for Civ 7

Civilization 7 separates Leaders and Civilizations, allowing players to choose each separately and opening up a variety of new strategies. Each leader, naturally, performs better with certain civilizations and strategies compared to others, so it’s well worth taking the time to experiment and see which leaders work best for your preferred tactics.

Himiko, Queen of Wa, is one of two variants of Himiko found in Civilization 7. The Shamaness-Queen of Yamatai-koku is a Diplomatic Scientific Leader who benefits greatly from forging alliances and taking advantage of endeavors. In this guide we’ll discuss her general gameplay and strategies for achieving victory with her in Civilization 7.

Himiko, Queen of Wa Leader Overview

Himiko, Queen of Wa, offers the Leader Bonus “Friend of Wei.” This provides her with two powerful bonuses, the first of which is the unique endeavor “Friend of Wei.” This Endeavor gives both leaders +25% science while active, making it incredible for quickly gaining momentum in scientific endeavors.

Himiko also receives +4 Science per Age for each leader she is friendly or helpful with, further incentivizing her to make and maintain strong relationships with other leaders. Himiko has no starting biases.

How To Win With Himiko Queen of Wa

Himiko Queen of Wa Leader Strategy & Walkthrough

Best Himiko Queen of Wa Victory Path:

When starting out as Himiko in the Age of Antiquity, there are a few good choices for a starting Civilization. While the game itself recommends Khmer and Mississippian (and both of these are indeed solid options), another fantastic choice is Maya. This guide will be using the Maya Civilization to take advantage of their unique ability and buildings, which can help you get a head start on science (and culture to a lesser extent) right from the beginning. In this guide we progress to Hawaii during the Age of Exploration, aiding in growth during the rapid expansion typical of that age. We finish the run as Meiji Japan, whose Overbuild bonus alone makes them incredibly powerful during the Modern Age and who can further strengthen science output via “Oath of Five Articles.”

Since gold is essential for building up towns and trade routes can be utilized to improve relations with other leaders, you’ll likely find yourself completing some of the objectives along the Economic Legacy Paths as you go. That said, the main focus throughout all three ages will be on the Science Legacy Path for each age, culminating in the manned space mission that achieves your grand victory. With help from “Friend of Wa” Himiko can hit some incredibly high science numbers in each age and easily outpace a lot of other leaders in that field.

I recommend enabling tracking for the Science Legacy Path and the Economic Legacy Path and prioritizing constructing any building that provides Science or Gold in each age. While military isn’t Himiko’s specialty, you should leverage your tech advantage to ensure your main cities are well protected, just in case someone more aggressive decides to start something.

Himiko Queen of Wa Antiquity Age Strategy

For the Age of Antiquity, we recommend choosing Maya as your Civilization. Their unique buildings, especially the K’uh Nah, are excellent for accelerating early science production and will remain useful in later Ages since they are Ageless. With the Maya ability, Skies of Itzamna, you will gain additional science from the palace for adjacent vegetated tiles, which will be easier to take advantage of thanks to the Maya starting bias.

Starting out, you’ll want to research writing as quickly as possible while also obtaining the first two Maya Civics: Rain of Chaac and Lords of Xibalba. These two will give you access to the K’uh Nah and Jalaw, respectively. The former has science adjacency bonuses from vegetated tiles just like the palace, while the latter provides culture adjacency for quarters. Once you’ve got these two, you should prioritize Code of Laws to unlock Merchants as soon as possible, allowing you to start establishing trade routes.

By building both the K’uh Nah and Jalaw on the same tile, you’ll gain the incredibly useful unique quarter “Uwaybil K’uh.” This quarter gives the city production equal to a percentage of the research cost of any research you complete, helping the city to quickly construct buildings and units by taking advantage of your high science gain.

You’ll want to have at least two cities with libraries constructed in them during this age so that you can store the 12 codices needed to complete the Great Library Legacy Path. Libraries are unlocked by the Writing research, another reason you should prioritize it from the start. Once Writing is completed, you should master it by researching Writing II to earn an extra codex and +1 science on science buildings. After that, the other big technologies to work towards are Currency and Mathematics, which will let you build Markets and Academies to earn more gold and science.

This is also a good time to start building up good relations with nearby leaders by establishing trade routes and starting endeavors with them. Establishing an alliance, ideally with someone unlikely to go to war too often, is also important as it allows you to use Himiko’s “Friend of Wa” endeavor to increase your science by 25%. To help fuel your Endeavors, you should build Monuments, Gardens, and Villas in your cities whenever possible, generating influence you can spend to start research collaborations and activate Friend of Wa.

Each leader Himiko is friendly or helpful with will provide +4 science during this first age, further incentivizing you to play peacefully and build positive relations. Ideally, you’ll want Friend of Wa to be active constantly throughout your entire playthrough since that 25% science bonus is incredible and only gets stronger as your civilization grows. Once you’ve completed the Great Library Legacy Path, any remaining time in the age should be spent improving the growth of your towns and cities while improving your gold income.

Enabling tracking for the Silk Roads Legacy Path and following the steps there will help you get your economy going strong, though you’ve likely completed some of it by accident while establishing trade routes and alliances with other Civs.

Himiko Queen of Wa Exploration Age Strategy

Entering the Age of Exploration we’ll be picking Hawaii. The main goal in this Age will be expansion, but we also want to complete the Enlightenment Legacy Path to build towards that Scientific Victory. To help with this, we’ll be taking advantage of the legacy bonuses from the Age of Antiquity shown below:

These bonuses will give us a head start on research, so we should leverage that and start researching towards Education to unlock Universities. Beginning with Astronomy so we can gain access to Observatories is ideal, and it’s worth taking the time to get Shipbuilding as soon as possible, so you can start exploring the ocean and finding new resources.

This is the perfect time to start expanding your Civ and creating settlements in distant lands, taking advantage of treasure fleets to gain gold and progress the economic legacy path, which will come in handy at the start of the Modern Age. You should also be taking full advantage of Specialists in your capital and any other cities you create to maximize your science and gold incomes.

Building up a scientific advantage through Observatories, Universities, and those Golden Age Academies will allow you to advance your technology ahead of your rivals and produce some powerful military units to discourage any piracy. All that extra gold will let you build up your towns and cities more efficiently and quickly create extra military units in a pinch.

Some other ways you can strengthen your Civ during this age include: Getting the Mercantilism Civic to unlock Trade Winds for extra gold and happiness per imported good, Getting the Society II Civic and building the House of Wisdom, unlocking Bureaucracy and slotting Constitution to maintain specialists more easily, unlocking Social Class to slot Enlightenment for extra science, and unlocking Sovereignty to slot Divine Right for extra happiness and influence.

Himiko Queen of Wai Modern Age Strategy

In the Modern Age, we’ll be picking Meiji Japan as our Civilization to take full advantage of their science overbuilding bonus. Meiji Japan also gets access to some very powerful unique Civics, like the Oath of Five Articles. You’ll want to get Oath of Five Articles as quickly as possible for the 50% production boost on science buildings, and then slot the Tradition “O-yatoi Gaikokujin” to receive extra production and science from specialists.

Your first goal in the Modern Age should be unlocking Flight. While this is necessary for our scientific victory, it also provides access to various aerial units, including the Meiji Japan exclusive “Zero.” The best way to speed up your path to Flight is by unlocking Academics first, giving you access to new science buildings and, if you move quickly, allowing you to build Oxford University and get two technologies for free.

Once Flight is achieved, you’ll want to build an Aerodrome and perform the Trans-Oceanic Flight project. While that’s underway, you should research Radio so you can build radio stations, which will help you maintain high happiness and increase your influence. As always, having strong relationships with other civilizations will be crucial, allowing you to activate endeavors to strengthen yourself (especially the ever-powerful “Friend of Wa”) and providing bonus science from each leader you’re friendly or helpful with.

Having a healthy amount of gold will make it easier to build up your civilization and establish a half-decent military to keep yourself safe. Luckily, the unique buildings of Meiji Japan can help us do that while also increasing production, which will make projects like the Trans-Oceanic Flight easier too.

Building Ginkō will hugely improve your gold production if they’re positioned near other gold production buildings (or wonders like Oxford University, for that matter), while Jukogyo improve production (with adjacency bonus from coastal tiles) and increase the settlement’s resource slots. By building both on the same tile, you can create the unique quarter Zaibatsu, which gives additional gold and production to adjacent tiles.

After getting gold and production up to a healthy level, it’s time to continue with that science victory. We’ll need to research Aerodynamics and complete the project “Break the Sound Barrier” to continue. Since this also strengthens our air units a little, it’ll help with defending our cities too.

Once the Sound Barrier has been broken, it’s a quick and easy progression to Rocketry, then launching a satellite, and finally the Manned Space Flight that wins you the game. Manned Space Flight receives 10% bonus production from all scientific legacy points earned in previous ages, so all that hard work we put in in the Ages of Antiquity and Exploration will pay off here.

In this final part of the plan, your greatest threats are other civilizations going to war with you. As such, it’s important to maintain positive relations and put the extra gold you’re generating to work recruiting a military to fend off any troublemakers. The key technologies for a strong economy are along the way to Flight and Aerodynamics, specifically Industrialization and Mass Production. Setting up Train stations and factories will make it much easier to establish a military without taking time away from your progress toward scientific victory, and the extra production will make the necessary projects easier to finish.