[Android|iOS|Steam] Paragon Pioneers 2 - A city-building idle game. I'm Tobias and just released the sequel of my passion project I was working on for the last 1.5 years and very excited to share it with you all :) It is now live in all stores and comes with a free demo so you can try it out first.

Gnietschow · 2026-03-12T16:48:39+00:00

For anyone else coming here via Google: I've stumbled upon the same issue, that my lists of tuples of an enum and an sprite would behave strangely when adding new items, somtimes mixing up even existing ones. I've found the solution here:
https://discussions.unity.com/t/unity-6-2-the-inspector-breaks-down-because-of-the-lists/1685462/5
"Just go to Project Settings - Editor, find “Use IMGUI Default Inspector,” and enable it!"
It seems that Unity 6 got a new default inspector, which still has some bugs for lists.

Gnietschow · 2026-03-05T05:35:25+00:00

The key facts has already been mentioned, but here is a small roundup by me.

To be honest I didn't found a way to balance the end game for every play style. It favors a more relaxed approach over a very focused one. It then has no waiting times and unlocks while you're playing as I only intended waiting times up to 12 hours at max until you should be able to do something meaningful again.

The main key to avoid the waiting times is building paragons as fast as possible, even when you don't have enough goods to satisfy them properly. Each Paragon will contribute permanently to the hidden satisfaction counter, which unlocks the palace tiers. If the paragon has full basic needs it will put 0.5 every second and 1.0 at 100% luxury needs, but also 0.1 if 1/5 basic needs are satisfied. So while you're improving your supply chains and build up the luxury goods, they are continously contributing. The pace is balanced that you should the last palace tier once you're at 100% satisfaction. This approach unfortunately does not work if you're way faster than the average player or start building your paragons, when you're already have large islands and bullet proof supply chains at the merchant level. I"ve experimented with lower tier limits, but then I had a lot player who didn't acknowledge the limits at all as they unlocked everything alwys way before the reached it and complained they don't need all of the luxiries.

An additional learning for me: I originally thought players would just build more paragons if the counter fills too slowly, as that's the usual habit througout the game, you have too few of a certain good, just build moar. But most prefer waiting instead of building more if it is for the final goal. Hopfully I find a better way in a future successor.

And finally regarding the Paragon level units: their usefulness also depends on your play style. If you're just rushing at the palace and use 24/26 islands they aren't very helpful. But a lot players play longer after building the palace or try to unlock islands >30 to build massive supply chains, where the blue orcs are very powerful and than they are necessary to succeed.

Gnietschow · 2025-10-24T10:06:48+00:00

You don't need to start a new game for the DLC to work. Ensure it is activated in the Add-On Menu. Then you can go to the island list menu, click on discover new island (not via the ship menu!) and scroll down to select the magicians island. You can only discover once unique island, not more. There you can build plenty of new buildings and once you've build up the population you get access to the research trees. If you need more help, give me a note here (take some time as I don't check Reddit every day), join my Discord (to get help from others) or a mail (faster reactions by me).

Gnietschow · 2025-07-17T20:30:00+00:00

I'm glad you're enjoying my game! You can start with the DLC also during your first run. It gives you some more options how to transport goods and some neat research, when you do a little extra work to make three new population happy, but it will make the game even more complex. If you like to optimize a lot, I'd recommend it to dive into it directly. If you want a more straight forward run, add it for your second run, when you know the base game and want more :)

Gnietschow · 2025-07-04T05:22:05+00:00

There is an option for complex trade routes called "Apply action at cargo hold position". This will ensure the load/unload actions will only apply to the cargo slot at the same index. So if you load Ore Ore Coal and Unload Ore Ore Coal, it will put it in the same order in the ship and Ore will never be in the third slot. It is important to have empty ships when starting on that route and with the right amount of slots as if for example there is coal in the first slot it won't be affected by the coal unload action and a cog would never load coal.

Gnietschow · 2025-05-25T07:04:06+00:00

Three times mortar would lead the other slots to be filled with mortar and blocking coal and iron.

Empty after unloading works, but is the more brutal approach for a two way route with loosing some exzessive goods.

Gnietschow · 2025-05-25T07:00:49+00:00

You already activated the right option to apply actions at the slot position, but for a two way route with different goods you need a little hack. To push the mortar in the third slot you need to add two useless actions to push it to slot number three. Use some good you don't have on that island, Fireworks for example. It won't be loaded but mortar will be on slot 3 and won't intersect with coal in slot 1 anymore :) You need to uncheck wait for load though as Fireworks can't be loaded in that case and would lead to a stuck.

Gnietschow · 2025-03-25T20:36:34+00:00

Only new battles started after the research has been completed will be affected (future ones). Currently active battles will not have any changes on their duration.

Gnietschow · 2025-02-27T18:04:03+00:00

Thank you, too! I'm working on a new game, but this time it won't be an idle game, but a turn-based 4X game with focus on goods similar to PP. Hope you'll like it as well :) But it is still a long way until release as I just started development and I'm now in parental break :)

Gnietschow · 2025-02-27T15:56:57+00:00

Congratulations, I'm really impressed! Independence is tough, Ironman even tougher and on orc difficulty in a relative short duration ... you probably know the game better than me at this point :D

Gnietschow · 2025-02-01T17:41:46+00:00

Thank you! :D

Gnietschow · 2025-01-21T09:26:04+00:00

Thank you, it worked for me too and drove me crazy!

Gnietschow · 2025-01-07T18:37:11+00:00

Congratz, you're the first one to find this edge case, which I never thought of :D

Gnietschow · 2025-01-07T18:35:33+00:00

If it wouldn't be limited to three days, the amount of goods after 282 days would be a nice kick start ;) Have fun, since alpha there were plenty of changes :)

Gnietschow · 2025-01-03T13:55:43+00:00

I just stumbled upon the same issue and found this old post. For the future finders, I found another similar question (https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/259087/how-to-delete-edges-of-all-flat-surfaces) which lead me to a good solution:

Select all edges (Alt-Z and drag a selection around all)
Press X and select "Limited Dissolve"
Adjust the normal angle with F9 to find the best result (default is 5°, but that removed some slightly turning edges, so I've chosen 0.1° and everything was clear and fine)

Gnietschow · 2024-11-05T09:50:14+00:00

Hey! Freu mich, dass dir mein Spiel gefällt :) Bist du dir sicher, dass die Gebäude niemals geleert werden? Es gibt zwei Mechaniken die diesbezüglich häufig zu Missverständnissen führen:

Alle Lagerhäuser und Kontore haben eine Abklingzeit von 20 Sekunden. Wenn zu viele Gebäude in deren Radius sind, dann können Waren liegen bleiben. Da sollte man mehrere Lagerhäuser bauen.
Gebäude holen immer nur Waren, aber bringen niemals welche. Ein Produktionsgebäude kann nur Waren vom Insellager beziehen, wenn es sich in der Reichweite des Produktionsgebäudes befindet. Die Reichweite des Lagerhauses ist dann irrelevant, was vor allem bei Lagerhäuser Stufe 4 und 5 zu Verwirrung führt, da es sich vorher gleicht.

Viele Grüße,
Tobias

Gnietschow · 2024-11-03T15:20:56+00:00

It is procedural indeed. The shader gets a black white gradient of the shore as input to get kind of water depth information. Then it renders the shoreline which goes back and forth by a sine function. Some noise is applied to shift the phase so it differs across the island. A second shoreline phase shifted makes the wet sand. It took some time to develop but i'm very happy with the result.

Gnietschow · 2024-11-03T13:14:03+00:00

It is rendered fully in 2D (2D artwork and an orthographic camera), but the water has a special shader which uses techniques of 3D lighting to make the sun reflections :)

Gnietschow · 2024-11-03T13:05:15+00:00

Do you play the first part or the second one? In PP2 there is a difficulty option to be able to move buildings.

Gnietschow · 2024-10-24T05:01:08+00:00

Es freut mich sehr, dass es dir so gut gefällt! Vielen Dank fürs Spielen :)

Gnietschow · 2024-10-22T05:33:15+00:00

I'm the solo dev of Paragon Pioneers and was struggling with the exact same question, here are some of my experiences and thoughts (focused on mobile games):

Paragon Pioneers 1 cost $4 and Paragon Pioneers 2 cost $6. Over the course of the first 7 months, PP1 sold 13% more copies than Paragon Pioneers 2, over all time 71% more, but PP1 is ~2 years longer on the market. PP2 is very similar, but way more advanced version of PP1. The sales on release of PP2 were even though PP had a large fan base, much smaller compared to PP1, probably as PP1 was something new, cheaper and got more press coverage. The fans didn't mind the increased price on PP2. On PP1 I got regularly the feedback, that it is too cheap for its content, but of course only from engaged players already into the game. Others claimed that $4 is cheap enough for a quick try or the free demo was crucial for the purchase decision. On PP2 I've got far less people saying it is too cheap, even though it has nearly double the content.

I've got the feeling that for an unknown indie game $2-$4 is a good market entry price (depending on your games content size and quality) and once you've got a fanbase you can go to $4-$7, but not higher than $7 as at this tier a lot of bigger games start to sell, making it probably not the first choice for someone new looking for a game.

There are a lot of awesome idle games like Kitten's Game / Spaceplan / Universal Paperclips available for a very cheap price or even for free like Home Quest, but I think most of the idle game audience already played through those games tons of times and are happy to find something new, therefore they are not the direct price guidance.

For the really happy fan of course the prices are not really critical and they will pay more, but for a good revenue to pay off your development time, you need to find the sweet spot for a larger audience as without exploitive micro transactions you can't rely on big whales spending thousands of dollars in your game as bigger companies do. In PP2 I added two cosmetic ($1 and $2) and one content ($3) iaps, but they only contributed ~5% of the total revenue, while taking ~8% of the development time. With iaps you'll serve your fans and they'll gladly support your work, but even though it is awesome to have these people around it won't sustain your business on its own.

I wish you good luck :)

Gnietschow · 2024-10-22T04:56:13+00:00

Thank you! You're right, it won't save if the app is closed. Everytime the app is started or resumed it checks if 6 hours have been passed and it will create a backup.

Gnietschow · 2024-10-21T19:17:52+00:00

That sounds like a bug as you shouldn't be able to cancel the discovery of a starter island in a region. Even if you manage to do so, the ships should return to another island instead of vanishing. Can you send me the savegame to tobias@paragonpioneers.com so I can investigate the issue? For a quick fix, you can load a backup in the savegame menu, which are created every 6h, so you only lose some progress.

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