[h1]Same Conquest Churn, But Upgraded[/h1]
If you played the first game, then [i]Paragon Pioneers 2[/i] is going to feel like much the same. Even the endgame is the same. However, there is more content this time around, and some nice QoL additions and other upgrades. But the same frustrating limit on islands to build on is still here.
You are first presented with your choice of four difficulty levels. The second-most-difficult is the default one, basically the one the original had. Lower levels grant easier battles and an instant battle simulator before sending troops off. There's also a custom option.
Once again, Lord Southburgh is your guide, pointing out the features as they come up. The basic premise is that you are sent to colonize a bunch of islands and create a little empire out of them, making one of them luxurious enough to attract the Paragons of the title, essentially elites or nobles, and constructing a Palace.
You attract five tiers of residents, starting with hardy Pioneers up to the Paragons. You will need to supply them with both needs and luxuries in order to upgrade their homes and gain the next tier. One tier's luxuries becomes the next tier's needs. Each tier unlocks new techs and buildings.
Filling the need for luxuries improves generation rates, mostly for coin. The Pioneer tier is the exception, happily supplying cannon fodder in the form of militia volunteers, which can then be trained up into improved troops.
To expand the island empire, you will need to conquer the starter island and send troops to conquer others. Orc fortresses are your roadblocks here, each with random collections of orc troops.
The orcs are fortunately not aggressive, and won't send troops after you, nor are they ever smart and organized enough to send reinforcements. Every island has at least one boss fort. Bosses have much more HP, and any troop on either side that is not dead is healed up completely for the next time.
Troop types have different abilities. They attack and are attacked in a certain order, mostly left to right. Some types attack early in the round, and others are slow and attack last.
Melee troops are attacked first, protecting the squishier ranged troops. Shield troops take reduced damage and reduce the damage to troops behind them. Cavalry troops have Flanking, which allows them to target the weakest opposing units, generally the ranged troops. Spiky pikemen, when attacked, wound their attackers.
Some troops with large damage potential, such as bosses and some ranged troops, have a Splash damage effect that spills over excess damage to the next unit. That is, if a unit with 60 damage takes down something with 50 HP, the leftover 10 HP is deducted from the next unit.
There is both a limit to how many total troops can be sent to a single battle, as well as the number of troops you can have on the island at any one time. But you can have as many battles active as you have room in the island garrison for, and reinforcements hanging out on ships in the harbor don't count against the garrison limit.
New to the series are supporter units, such as drummers to help send troops into battle faster and field surgeons to patch up units. These have their own per-battle limit separate from the troops limit.
If you struggle to conquer an island, you can hang on to it as long as you like to try again later, or you can hand it over to your Paragon overlords for coin. However, if you hand over a completely conquered island, you also gain a bit of Favor from them, which counts toward the maximum number of islands you can have at any time.
Once you have conquered an island, it is time to start setting up crops and material harvesting and crafting of goods.
To find an island to conquer, you set up a sort of "order" for your ships to find the right island. This takes Cartography points, which are never used up. You can order islands in a certain size, with certain crop fertilities, and certain deposits to harvest.
Deep into the game, once you can comfortably conquer some very large islands, you can fit three or four industries on a single island. However, crop fertilities and deposits are both limited to four each per island.
New to the series are two new zones. The first zone is Temperate, the same basic one as the first game.
The second zone is Tropical. This adds not only new tropic-only crops and some new deposits, but it also adds a couple tiers of Tropical residents to satisfy, more locals than your colonists.
The third zone is the chilly Northern islands. It's too cold for anyone to have a permanent settlement here, but it is good for harvesting ores and gems and hunting whales.
You're never supplied with any real material goods from the mainland, and will have to supply them yourself. You'll need a Shipyard and crank out dozens of ships, for transporting troops and goods.
Each level of Shipyard can produce only two specific ships. One will be smaller and lighter and faster than the other one. Ships can carry up to a certain number of stacks, with a max for each stack. This can be a mix of goods and troops.
You can automate supply with trade routes, but they're more simply cargo routes. The game now has both simple routes, shuttling stuff back and forth, and complex routes, with unlimited stops and more settings. You can assign any number of ships to a route.
Lord Southburgh's wife, Lady Eleanor, introduces a Research feature, new to the series. Every tier, including the two in the Tropical zone, comes up with its own Creativity to spend on research and has its own tech tree to invest in.
Each tier's tech tree is roughly similar, consisting of two concentric rings, with the inner ring being almost exactly the same across tiers. There's also an infinite tech tree that is a limitless version of the inner rings of the resident tiers.
[b]One Huge Problem[/b]
The game is enjoyable, easy to pop in and out. And the generous offline gains (no efficiency penalty, spanning multiple days) makes it feel as if your islanders are thriving.
However, one huge problem slowly creeps in that eventually weighs down that enjoyment for me, and it was the same for the first game.
[i][b]The Favor math doesn't work.[/b][/i]
There are only two ways to gain Favor. The main way is the churn of conquering islands. Slots gained through this quickly run into a steep exponential curve, as the Favor needs for each slot is pretty much DOUBLED. And you'll be needing maybe 60+ islands unless you can consolidate industries onto large islands. And, Favor from conquest maxes out at a mere 32!
The other way to gain this Favor is via a Pantheon shrine built on a held island, which slowly generates Favor based on number of conquered fields. However, this tech doesn't become available until you get Paragon Research.
The other way to open up island slots is through infinite Research, but this, too, runs into an exponential curve.
Meanwhile, the Statistics page lightly teases you, as, if you manage to beat the game, you'll be offered a Custodian to help you with the next run, and a Challenge limitation to earn permanent bonuses. I'm already feeling it's taking too long to make a second run.
What would be better is if this idle game had a more traditional prestige, with gold or Favor earned on a run contributing to bonuses on a second run. Or the Favor curves were far less steep. Or Research upgrades bring down that curve.
Also, the game teases you with the ability to build a Palace for your Tropical residents ... but the tech to finish the multi-stage build is with the Paragon tier.
I like this game. It's pretty, kinda relaxing, and easily a bargain worth a few hundred hours of time. But the limit on islands slowly makes it a slog of conquest churn.
