Paragon Pioneers

Slow building production and long boat times severely limit the amount of time you can actually spend [i] playing [/i] the game, which made me quickly lose interest after the first couple islands

[h1]Anno series plus orcs![/h1] This game is strongly reminiscent of the Anno series from the 2000s, only rendered in a tile graphic engine, with relaxing idle gameplay and wait times that aren't frustratingly long, overnight at worst. Oh, and plus orcs. In [i]Paragon Pioneers[/i], you play as an envoy of some (mostly) unspecified nation. Your job is colonize several islands, attract Paragons (elites, lords) to the colony, and build them a Palace. But attracting them means providing an awful lot of needs and luxuries, far too many for your starting island to sustain. That's where the colonization comes in. As you satisfy more needs and luxuries, you'll upgrade your citizen housing from Pioneers to Colonists to Townsmen to Merchants and finally to Paragons. Reaching more of each level of citizen unlocks more buildings globally across all your island colonies. First, you'll set up lumber production for basic building supplies. This means lumberjacks, foresters to help replant trees, and sawmills. Production of most things works like the lumber production, taking batches of raw materials and creating batches of goods. However, production buildings need to be within range of either the building creating the raw materials they need or a warehouse to function. After you gain a supply of lumber, you'll set up pioneer huts. Your hardy first citizens need access to a well, else they will die or simply leave. To make them very happy, they require some yummy fish and some schnapps. [i][b]Potato[/b][/i] schnapps. [i]*shudder*[/i] (The only alcoholic beverage that potatoes belong in is vodka!) If all needs and luxuries are supplied at 100%, then their production rate is maximized. However, the pioneers produce only militia. Think peasants with pitchforks. This is your only source of willing cannon fodder. Don't worry, they can be upgraded to better units. Point is, only the lowliest citzens will be volunteering for military duty. Most everyone else will pay taxes to support the colony. The gold the bulk of your citizens will be paying isn't needed for per-turn expenses. However, it is needed to build advanced buildings or to upgrade the few that have upgrades. It's also needed to train up advanced military units, and for shipbuilding contracts. Gold can also be used to instantly recruit mercenary forces, so long as you've built that unit's production building somewhere among your islands. You'll need to conquer your starting island. The locals are stubborn orcs who don't bother trading. Clearing the island of enemy forces means sending units to fight orcs holed up in small forts, each fort controlling a sector of the island. The armies you send can only number 100 units at max, with nine different unit types eventually made available to you. Unit types are simple melee units on foot, ranged archer and crossbow, a light cavalry and an armored horseman, and a cannoneer. The time it takes to complete a combat is based on both the size and complexity of the armies involved (representing the time it takes to mobilize troops) as well as distance from HQ. Therefore, the limited army size keeps the countdown down to a few hours overnight at worst. You can't send multiple armies at once to fight the same orc fort, but you can send armies simultaneously to as many forts as you see available. Any orc sector bordering your territory becomes visible to you. Combat itself is instantly calculated at the end of the countdown. There are three strike phases per round. Some attack quick on the first strike, others are slow and attack in the last strike. One, the Long Bowman, has a double strike. Melee units soak up the hits first before any ranged units, but the cavalry and cannoneer both have a flanking maneuver and strike the weaker ranged units first. The orcs never reinforce their forts, so you can use the attrition of a zerg rush to whittle down your orc opponent. However, one of the final sectors uncovered will always contain a boss, an Orc Warchief. This unit has thousands of HP. The 100-unit limit on attack forces and the post-battle healing of survivors means that a force of militia alone won't bring down the Warchiefs. Fortunately, your starting island has a couple resources that will help create better units. Ships have cargo space that can be used for either goods or units. Eventually, you'll be able to build eight different types of ships. Some are fast, others have larger cargo spaces. Building ships does not require you to have all supplies on hand, just enough gold to start the job and a production chain for the supplies. Your shipwrights will take the supplies in small batches and build the ship over time. Defeating the local Orc Warchief gains you a point of cartography representing knowledge of the nearby islands. Build a ship, and you then get to scout for new islands. Discovering an island takes four hours, plus a bit of more time for exploration. The fastest ship can cut this down to under an hour. Once you discover an island, trips to and from it take a little over two hours at slowest speed. You get to customize exactly what sort of island you are looking for by spending cartography points. This means size, number of mountains for stone and some deposits, as well as which plants can grow and what deposits might be found. The more cartography points you can spend, the more you can customize an island. New islands will of course be occupied by orcs and have to be cleared. The first island you get will always be yours, but any others you find and conquer can be kept for your use or turned over to the Paragons. Turning over an island that still has orcs on it will earn you some gold, but clearing an island and then turning it over to the Paragons will gain you favor. Favor unlocks more island slots to occupy. Favor is also earned when you finally attract Paragons to your colony. Production buildings don't require a local population base to keep them running. The only islands that require citizen housing are the one you are building up into a great city and any others that you are using to make military units. This simplifies managing needs and luxuries. All other islands can simply send goods to your home base. Graphics are bright and colorful. Icons are fairly self-explanatory for almost everything. Most buildings are of the same basic "house with a picture" style, but their roofs have small variations and are of various logical color choices. Most everything blends together at a distance, but it's reasonably easy to distinguish everything at closer range. Music here has some lovely simple open-source pieces. The game offers a decent amount of info on everything. Rate of production per good is visualized when you click on its entry in storage, with an option in Settings to see the numerical values of production and consumption. You can also watch the citizen consumption numbers and satisfaction levels shift up and down. Countdowns in production buildings have progress bars and clear formulas for production, including badges indicating basic ratios. Simple icons above buildings indicate when problems arise (not enough mats, warehouse full), with a description of what's wrong visible in that building's info screen. The tutorial is very thorough and with a cheery tone. Much of the tutorial screens remain available as help screens, too. What few (and minor) annoyances you may have are mostly addressed in the New Game Plus, where you get to choose a Custodian to help you in the next game. This includes a Scrap Collector that will reclaim some of the resources you sunk into anything you demolish. [i]I pounced on the game as a Curator because I like idle games and some strategy games, especially colony sims. This is a nice mix.[/i]

[h1]Casual Anno mit Orks [/h1] Ich habe das Spiel schon vorm Release über das Kuratorenprogramm[url= https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Drakeschool] meiner Steamgruppe [/url] vom Entwickler erhalten und konnte es ordentlich testen. Bei so einem Idlegame war es schon ziemlich vernünftig, da früh die Werbetrommel zu rühren! Meine Spielzeit ist übrigens nicht meine Idlezeit, überwiegend war ich nur zum Spielen bzw. Verwalten im Spiel und habe es danach wieder geschlossen. [b]Gameplay[/b] “Paragon Pioneers” ist im Grunde ein vereinfachtes [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281630/Anno_1404__History_Edition/]Anno[/url], dass bewusst auf Idlemechaniken setzt. Das Spiel bzw. die Produktion findet also auch statt, wenn das Spiel geschlossen ist. Wir bauen Betriebe auf, verketten Produktionsprozesse und breiten uns auf neuen Insel aus, wobei es hier keine Weltkarte, sondern nur eine Inselkarte gibt. Natürlich werden die Produktionsketten mit der Zeit komplexer und schwieriger zu erfüllen. Tja, und damit haben haben wir quasi ein Casual-Anno, in dem nicht viel schiefgehen kann und wir unser Imperium vergrößern. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2873114274 Der gravierendste Unterschied dürfte wohl die Aushebung von Truppen sein, die bewusst mit einfließen, damit wir damit die Orks bekämpfen können, die „unser“ Land besetzt halten. So schalten wir erst nach und nach neue Gebiete auf den Inseln frei und können auch ganze Inseln für eine Währung abgeben, wenn die Bedingungen sich für uns nicht lohnen. Befreien wir eine Insel, können mit den erhaltenenen Karten, also dieser Währung, größere und fruchtbarere Inseln quasi erkaufen. Das Spiel hat übrigens auch tatsächlich ein Ende: Wenn wir 1000 Paragons (die Adligen sozusagen) haben, dürfen wir einen Palast bauen. Na super, wieder einmal alles für die Reichen…Aber keine Sorge, der Weg dorthin ist weit und beschwerlich. [b]Story[/b] Eine nähere Geschichte gibt es im Spiel nicht, aber lobenswert muss ich hier den Tutorialcharakter erwähnen, der durchaus Witz mitbringt. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2873114266 Aber es wundert mich auch nicht, dass der gut drauf ist…Bei den Mengen an Kartoffelschnnaps, den die Leute permament verlangen. Man kann die Dinger übrigens auch essen, wissen die das überhaupt??? [b]Grafik/Sound[/b] Die Grafik ist ziemlich simpel und da sich viele Gebäude recht ähnlich sehen, verliert man da schon gerne mal den Überblick. Aber das geht bei solchen Aufbauspielen eh immer ganz gut. Die Grafik ist zwar einfach, weil das Spiel ursprünglich für Android/iOs erschien, aber dafür ist sie recht stimmig. Die Musik lässt einen die Sorgen vergessen und schlägt ganz nach der Melodie von [url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1281630/Anno_1404__History_Edition/]Anno 1404[/url]. [b]Fazit[/b] Ich stehe eigentlich nicht so auf Idle-Games wie „Paragon Pioneers“ oder z.B. [url= https://store.steampowered.com/app/1454400/Cookie_Clicker/]Cookie Clicker[/url]. Aber „Paragon Pioneers“ hat mich mit seinem Anno-Charme abgeholt und verknüpft einfach eine gewisse Strategie und Ideen mit seinem Gameplay. Zudem lockt es nicht mit Ingamekäufen und zwingt den Spieler nicht wieder in das Spiel rein, was für ursprüngliches Mobilegame schon eine gute Sache ist. Man hat immer ein Ziel und überlegt sich, wie man sich weiter ausbauen kann. Für mich war das Spiel eine tolle Abwechslung, an der man über längere Zeit seinen Fortschritt merkt. Ich kann es durchaus weiterempfehlen, wenn man mal etwas in der Richtung sucht. Für meinen persönlichen Geschmack vielleicht das beste Idle Game auf Steam, weil es eben nicht einfach so stumpf ist.

This game really isn't for me, but I have to give the dev credit. They seem responsive on the various platforms the game is on, have taken feedback well and implemented feature requests, and probably most important to me if I enjoyed the game play more, as far as I can tell, it isn't a micro-transaction based idle game on any platform. One purchase and you're done, which is rare these days in games with mobile versions. As for the actual game play though, it has the same tropes as the micro-transaction idle games, which is where it quickly lost me unfortunately. You are somewhat forced into a bottleneck early on progression wise where the only solution seems to be waiting, and that just isn't enjoyable or enticing game play wise for me. Past that, I had no issues with the game technically on desktop (Linux) or Steam Deck. If you're looking for a really easy to pick up and put down game for a low price, then this is a good option and why I still give it a recommend. It's just worth knowing beforehand what the game play is like, and whether or not it fits your needs. Thanks for the opportunity to try the game!

Beautiful gem of a game, Anno series meet Idle games the right way. I bought this game on both IOS and Android and then beta tested the Steam version, so I probably have way more hours than the profile says. Definitely recommended.

At first this game seemed like the game "Anno," but after playing it for a while, it is very much different. It's a pleasant game to pay a little bit each day, and let your little guys do idle work for you for when you return. Gather goods, build buildings, train troops, and manage an economy by shipping goods between islands. A good game to try out.

This is far too slow. The time to explore needs to be cut drastically

hay muy pocos juegos a los que les haya invertido tantas horas seguidas de verdad que disfrute demasiado el juego. esto me confirma nuevamente que para que un juego sea bueno o al menos interesante no necesita de gráficos ultra realistas.

Not good

Good game, I have over 30 hours played on IOS. PC could use some better placement comitting like a left click to place and right click to commit. Also desperately needs a 5x 10x speedup function once you master the basics and advanced waiting is a chore