Volker Wertich is the creator of the Settlers series and was supposed to be a part of the development of New Allies. Creative differences led to his withdrawal and at the same time to the launch of his own new building strategy game. In our Pioneers of Pagonia tips and tricks, we show you what’s important in this colony sim and how to build flourishing cities.
Table of Contents
1) Play the “Guidance Map” level first
The first thing you’ll notice is that there are no classic campaigns or story missions in Pioneers of Pagonia. That’s not a bad thing, because, in all honesty, the only thing that matters to us in a building strategy game is the endless game. However, to familiarize yourself with the basic mechanics and the building types and production chains, we recommend that you play the “Guidance Map” first.
Although it’s not named as such, it’s basically the tutorial level. Here you will learn the best order in which to construct your buildings and which milestones need to be reached for a successful settlement. There are no enemies on the map, so you can concentrate entirely on the construction part and choose your own pace.
2) Plan your settlement well
One of the highlights in Pioneers of Pagonia is the map generator, which allows you to let off steam creatively. In the late game, large maps create the typical hustle and bustle of the Settlers games. With small maps, on the other hand, it’s extremely important that you roughly plan your city and its road network before you build it. Take into account rough terrain where building isn’t allowed and plan smaller structures such as market stalls or warehouses.
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The supply of resources is at least as important as the layout of your buildings. Especially at the beginning, you’ll mainly need wood and stones. Place lumberjack huts near the trees and build a sawmill to turn the raw material into planks. You’ll also need a forester’s lodge to ensure that no wasteland is created and that the trees you cut down grow back.
3) Expand your boundaries
Over time, you’ll need more than just wood and stone in Pioneers of Pagonia. To get your hands on metals like copper and silver, as well as coal, you’ll need to expand your borders and move into new territory. The first step is to set up an explorer’s post to discover new territory. Next, you’ll build towers that will be manned by guards. The guards will set off and move the boundary stones to expand your territory.
However, the number of boundary stones is limited. To create new ones, you need a quarry near rocks and a stonemason. Both shouldn’t be too far away from each other so that the transport routes are as short as possible.
4) Pioneers of Pagonia tips: Get more people
Each game starts with a fairly manageable crew of ships to colonize your island. To compensate for losses due to enemy attacks, and to grow from a small group of pioneers into a large and powerful nation, your people must multiply. The basic prerequisite for this is residential buildings. These are available in two sizes in the early access phase of Pioneers of Pagonia. More will probably be added before the full version is released.
In addition to housing, you also need happiness for your people to reproduce. To produce this, you must build taverns, market stalls, benches, and wells. However, taverns are useless without food supplies.
If you want to provide your people with bread, for example, you must first cultivate grain fields and process the grain in a mill. The flour will then be transported to a baker, whose products will then be turned into meals by a provisioner.
Another way to increase your population in Pioneers of Pagonia is to interact with other villages. By fulfilling the tasks of new settlements, you can make them your allies and gradually unite all the Pagonians scattered across the island. For a village to join you, you must bring its progress bar up to 200%.
5) Clear the Fog of War
We’ve already talked about expanding your borders in our Pioneers of Pagonia tips and tricks. But let’s take a closer look at explorer posts. There is a mysterious fog around your explored area that your people are afraid to enter. This includes your guards, soldiers, and workers.
Only the explorers can clear the fog so that your boundary stones can be moved. They automatically map the terrain so that you can continue to grow and expand.
6) Secure your buildings
However, you shouldn’t expand too quickly in Pioneers of Pagonia. Any expansion must be well-planned and secure. If you expand your settlement too quickly, you’ll run out of resources. This will lead to bottlenecks in production, which in turn will lead to discontent among your people. Once such a chain reaction has started, it’s very difficult to stop and can slow down the flow of your game enormously.
Especially if you’re at war with other factions, your processes need to be geared towards the production of weapons and armor. Therefore, only construct new buildings when it’s clear that they will benefit your economy and serve a purpose. Especially on high-difficulty maps, resources are scarce and must not be wasted.
7) Tips on enemies and weapons
Pioneers of Pagonia isn’t just a building game. In addition to friendly villages, several types of enemies want to make your life on the island difficult. To be armed against werewolves and bandits, you need to train an army. Each of your combat units requires two different materials to train. As a rule of thumb, the more powerful the unit, the more expensive it is to produce.
For example, if you want to recruit rangers, you’ll need torches and light armor. Torches are made in a woodworking shop, and armor is made with the help of tailors. For the woodworking shop to function, it needs to be supplied with wood. The tailor also needs raw materials. Build hunting lodges to kill animals and tan leather for further processing.
Post guards at the borders of your settlement and secure them with towers. In addition to bandits and werewolves, thieves in disguise and ghosts may appear and you must protect your people from them. Many of your soldiers are available on different levels. A standard unit in Pioneers of Pagonia deals significantly less damage and can take less damage than a veteran. To train the latter, you must meet certain requirements, such as rare resources or complex buildings.
Rangers are all you need to expose thieves. They will blow their cover so that your soldiers can hunt them down. If thieves have already stolen from you, you can recover your goods by locating and destroying their camp. It’s the same with bandit camps: send in a defensive squad to get to the root of the problem. Ghosts and werewolves, on the other hand, target the heathens themselves. They can kidnap your people and scare them into not working.
8) Build a stable road network
One of the best parts of the first two Settlers games was building roads, and there was a huge outcry from the community when this was removed in later installments. The good news is that you can build roads in Pioneers of Pagonia. The bad news is that they can cause traffic jams if not planned properly. Your task is to build a balanced network of main roads and bypasses, taking into account walking routes and distances.
9) Build production buildings close together
Speaking of walking distances: To keep them as short as possible and to avoid wasting time in Pioneers of Pagonia, you should place production buildings that depend on each other close to each other. The stonemason shouldn’t be too far from the quarry, and the woodworking shop is best built near the woodcutters’ huts. The mill should be close to the grain fields, and the bakery should be close to the mill.
Think through the production chains and plan the space needed for secondary and tertiary buildings before you build. Each production facility should have the highest possible utilization and efficiency. You can ensure this by having a constant supply of raw materials coming in so that the craftsmen don’t have to wait for resources.
10) Store surplus resources
Most buildings in Pioneers of Pagonia can only use a maximum of 16 units of a resource at a time. Anything more than that must be outsourced. To avoid overloading and slowing down your production chains, set up storage tents near your production facilities. Excess material can be stored there and picked up when needed.
When planning and setting up your production chains, however, you should be careful not to get caught up in pointless overproduction. The relationship between fields, mills, and bakeries must be designed to produce neither too much grain nor too much flour. All other processes should also be well-balanced. Intermediate products are of no use to you in large quantities and only serve as transit goods for further processing.
Build a thriving settlement with PLITCH!
Volker Wertich’s new game is not just a simple Settlers clone. It’s the new Settlers for fans. With our Pioneers of Pagonia tips and tricks, you’ll be well prepared for city building and know what’s important. PLITCH’s Pioneers of Pagonia cheats will help you make sure your economy doesn’t stumble. Replenish resources for a selected construction site, or refill storage or product resources at the touch of a button to keep your people happy.
Our single-player trainer protects you from shortages so that none of your production chains come to a halt and you can concentrate on building your city.
To learn more about PLITCH and our mods, check out this blog or watch this video to see our Pioneers of Pagonia cheats in-game!
Happy Gaming!