Hawaii Civ Strategies & Tips in Civ 7

Civilization 7 makes several changes to the ways civilizations work, one of the most notable being the separation of leaders and civilizations. This makes the decision of which leader to select and which civilization to play a fair bit more complicated but also opens up all kinds of new strategies that weren’t possible in previous games in the series.

Another major change Civilization 7 makes is separating the playable civilizations by the “age” in which they are playable, forcing players to change into a new civilization at certain points during a playthrough. You retain buildings and traditions from previous civilizations, so your decisions across all three ages remain relevant even once the civilization switches. This guide will discuss strategies for Hawaii, a Cultural/Expansionist Civilization that is available during the Age of Exploration.

Hawaii Civ Overview

Hawaii Abilities, Units, Buildings, Civics, & More

Hawaii is a Cultural/Expansionist Civilization whose unique ability improves its culture and happiness production. Hawaii thrives in coastal areas, making them a fantastic choice if you plan on visiting distant lands and establishing new settlements there.

Hawaii’s unique infantry units generate culture when they defeat enemy units. They also have improved combat strength against infantry and cavalry, making them excellent all-rounders for defending or invading if necessary. Their unique civillian unit encourages them to spread their religion as widely as possible, granting them additional gold whenever they convert a settlement and bolstering their economy.

Hawaii Civ Civics Tree

Hawaii’s Civic tree focuses on improving their culture and (to a much lesser extent) food generation, incentivizing players to settle near locations like volcanoes to take advantage of Mana’s bonus (+2 Culture for every time a Natural Disaster has provided fertility this age) and increasing the yields of their Lo’i Kalo at various points. Making good use of these civics will aid Hawaii’s growth and allow them to progress down the main Civic tree at a much quicker pace.

How To Unlock Hawaii Civ

All Hawaii Civ Unlock Requirements

Unlocking Hawaii in Civ 7 can be accomplished in three different ways. If you’re playing as José Rizal (Who is an excellent leader choice for Hawaii, incidentally) Hawaii will be automatically unlocked when you enter the Age of Exploration. The same is true if you chose Maya as your civilization during the Age of Antiquity.

Other Leaders and Civilizations can unlock Hawaii by having two settlements that are on islands. Islands in Civilization 7 are described as “a landmass with a maximum of 15 tiles,” which can be easy or difficult to find depending on how the map is generated. Since this requirement can sometimes be difficult or even impossible to fulfill, you’ll probably want to pick Jose or Maya during games starting in Antiquity, if you want to play as Hawaii.

Best Hawaii Victory Condition/Legacy Path: Economic

Civ 7 Hawaii General Strategy

Since Hawaii excels at expansion, this is the perfect opportunity to take advantage of Distant Lands. You’ll want to claim Distant Land resources quickly and create Treasure Fleets to secure the Economic Legacy Path advantage. Thanks to Hawaii’s excellent culture generation, they can increase their settlement cap quite quickly while unlocking useful policies like Trade Winds to empower this strategy. Once you’ve started building up your towns and cities in distant lands, Hawaii’s unique ability will hugely expand your culture generation, and the treasure fleets will keep your gold reserves healthy.

Hawaii Starting Tips

You’ll want to send out ships to find prime locations in Distant Lands at your earliest opportunity while researching Cartography. Once Cartography is researched, you’ll be able to send settlers across the ocean to establish a foothold in Distant Lands, though you’ll have to be cautious and choose the shortest possible route across deep oceans.

Deep Ocean tiles deal damage to your units each turn, so you’ll want to take the shortest possible route across them to reach the Distant Lands, and you should be especially cautious of any hostile units (such as independents or hostile civilizations) that could kill your Settlers. While establishing these new settlements, you should also build wharfs in your coastal cities to increase food production and fuel further expansion.

After researching Cartography, your next research goal should be Feudalism, unlocking Inns to help your towns and cities grow while also raising your settlement limit by 1. Since reaching Feudalism requires Astronomy, you can use this opportunity to increase your science gain using Observatories.

In terms of Civics, you should begin by unlocking Economics so you can produce Merchants, and then Mercantilism to get access to the Trade Winds Policy. This Policy will increase gold and happiness per imported resource, making trade routes even more powerful. From here, unlocking Ohana from the Hawaii Civic Tree will allow you to build Lo’i Kalo, which can strengthen the food and production output of your settlements even further.

An important aspect of your strategy early on is establishing trade routes with other civilizations, providing you with extra gold you can spend to expedite your colonization of Distant Lands and quickly construct vital buildings and units as needed. Resources that can increase happiness, production, culture, and gold are all very useful here.

Keeping the Treasure Fleets Coming

Once you’ve established your settlements in the Distant Lands and you’ve started generating treasure fleets, it’s important to keep them well protected. Hostile naval units can cause a lot of trouble for you when attempting to achieve the Treasure Fleet Legacy Path, so having a few fleet commanders with the best naval units you’re able to produce is helpful for discouraging enemies. Ideally, you’ll avoid getting into conflict with any of the other civs, but realistically you’re likely to butt heads at some point for one reason or another.

Castles and Heraldry are both important pieces of research, giving you access to stronger land units, while Shipbuilding will be essential to maintaining and expanding your operations in Distant Lands. Constructing Shipyards is a fantastic way to improve a settlement’s production, giving you another great reason to research Shipbuilding quickly.

You’ll want to pick up Colonialism and Colonialism II/Mastery from the main Civic tree as soon as possible, so you can get the boosts to gold adjacency and production adjacency while also increasing your settlement limit. For similar reasons, unlocking Heʻe nalu from Hawaii’s Civic Tree is important, since it increases the settlement limit and gives you access to Ho’okupu, a hugely useful tradition when you’re founding this many settlements near the coast.

From here, the strategy is essentially: Keep the Fleets Coming, Keep the Gold Flowing, Keep Building and Expanding.

Best Leaders For Hawaii:

Of the many leaders available, four stand out as particularly useful for Hawaii’s expansionist strategy. Jose Rizal is well-suited to growing Hawaii quickly thanks to his bonuses from Narrative Events, and the bonus Narrative Events he receives task him with exploring the new world and meeting other civs. The extra happiness towards celebrations is also helpful as it means you’ll unlock additional Policy Slots faster. It also helps that picking Rizal guarantees that Hawaii will be an option in the exploration age, regardless of your actions in the age of antiquity.

Ibn Battuta’s improved sight range on units, along with his unique endeavor that lets him share the maps of other civilizations, makes him well suited to uncovering and exploring the new world. The free Wildcard Attribute Points are also helpful, allowing you to get an early boost to your chosen strategy (Economic, in this case.)

Isabella is another fantastic choice for leading Hawaii, receiving bonus gold whenever a Natural Wonder is discovered that is boosted if the Wonder is found in Distant Lands. This, paired with reduced maintenance for naval units and +50% gold towards purchasing them, makes it incredibly easy for her to establish a naval advantage.

Finally, Amina can be a strong choice here due to her improved resource capacity in cities, along with the bonus gold from each assigned resource, which can quickly turn a civilization she’s leading into even more of an economic powerhouse if you’re leaning into an economic strategy.