Much of your time in Pioneers of Pagonia is spent peacefully setting up your new settlement and deciding which buildings go where. The islands of Pagonia are not safe, however, and you'll find yourself fending off Bandits, Thieves, Spectres, and Werewolves - especially as your settlement grows. You'll need the protection of an army, and as luck would have it you can train one.
This guide will teach you how to defend your settlement in Pioneers of Pagonia. Unless you choose peaceful maps only when starting a new game, you'll need to know how to deal with the nasties of the world. Let's get started.
The Basics
Your military units work out of one of two buildings: Guard Towers and Garrisons. Guard Towers are cheaper and quicker to build, but they can only employ ten units at a time, and have a smaller range of influence. Garrisons can hold up to twenty-five units, and cover more territory. (But, yes, they're more expensive.)
The base military unit is the Guard. You'll start each game with a limited number of Guards, and once you build either a Guard Tower or a Garrison they will run out to defend it. If supplied with Border Stones your Guards will actively expand your territory, within their range of influence; otherwise, they will remain in one area and wait for something bad to come along. Unlike your other Pioneers, Guards will actively attack threats.
Normally Guards will loiter around their Guard Tower or Garrison and wait for something to happen, assuming they aren't expanding your border. You can choose Set Patrol Point by clicking on their building, then choosing a spot on the map, to change the general area they protect. This will allow you to defend choke points, or send Guards to deal with active threats to your settlement.
Recruiting More Units
Your starting allotment of Guards won't even come close to fulfilling your military needs. The fact that you have a limited amount aside, Guards are quite weak, and will usually crumble against opposition. You'll want to not only replace defeated Guards, but supplement their numbers with other, stronger units.
You'll need a number of things to train more military units:
- A steadily-increasing population (check this guide to see how that's done)
- A Military Academy
- An Adventurer's Guild (for more specialized tasks)
- Weapons from a Weaponsmith or Wood Workshop
- Armor from an Armorsmith, Tailor's Shop, or Wood Workshop
- Guard Towers and Garrisons to employ your units
You'll also need resource-gathering operations to supply your units with weapons and armor, particularly Huts that can collect precious metals (Iron, Silver, Copper). Suffice it to say that building up an army can take a while, and you'll have to make do with smaller, weaker forces early on.
Click on your Military Academy or Adventurer's Guild. You'll see a list of units that building can train. Military Academies can churn out Guards and Soldiers, while Adventurer's Guilds churn out Rangers and Fearnaughts. You can also train more advanced versions of these units, which can take on tougher foes, though the equipment cost is higher.
You can train the following units:
- Guards / Veteran Guards - Expands borders and patrols. Must remain within your territory.
- Soldiers / Advanced Soldiers / Veteran Soldiers - Patrols and fights. Can leave your territory.
- Rangers / Skill Ranger - Patrols and identifies Thieves when they walk past. Can leave your territory.
- Fearnaught / Heroic Fearnaught - Patrols and fights. Can attack Spectres without fleeing, and is especially effective against Werewolves.
Click on the arrows next to each unit type to begin the recruitment process. If equipment is needed a Carrier will run off to grab what you need. Otherwise, this will call a Carrier over and convert them into the desired unit. That unit will then look for a Guard Tower / Garrison where they can work. You can select units to create in the future, as well, and the Military Academy / Adventurer's Guild will train the selected unit as soon as the necessary resources are available.
More advanced units should be trained at your own discretion. Lower-tier units like Guards and Soldiers, however, are a good choice for the 'unlimited' option when determining the amount to be trained. As long as you set their gear to also be supplied limitlessly, any units that are defeated in combat will be replenished without any intervention on your part. Pretty handy.
Assigning Units
Whenever you construct a new Guard Tower or Garrison it will automatically attempt to staff itself with the maximum number of Guards (ten or twenty-five, respectively). This isn't ideal, as Guards can't cope with most threats on their own. You'll need to strategically assign your units to your buildings to expand their capabilities.
Click on the building and inspect the menu that pops up on the right. Most of the menu consists of an Orders pane, covered in the faces of the units that you can train. Beside each row of icons is a counter that you can set to change how many of a particular unit you want to operate out of the building. If you wanted to mix Soldiers, Rangers, and Fearnaughts into a Garrison, for example, you would need to adjust their numbers upward.
It's important to note that you must abide by the unit limits while changing the assigned units in a building. Before you can assign anyone else to a building, you must first lower the number of Guards. This will send any Guards loitering by the building elsewhere to find a different assignment, and bring in the replacement units that you'd rather work there.
Generally speaking you want to have a healthy mix of units, and their numbers should fluctuate over time. During the exploration and expansion phase you'll want to tend more towards Guards, changing to Soldiers as your territory grows. Every military checkpoint should have at least one Ranger, if not two or three, and when Werewolves play a role you'll want a few Fearnaughts. Building a specialized, Fearnaught-only Guard Tower for destroying Spectres is also recommended.
Patrolling and Attacking
As mentioned above, you can use the Set Patrol Point command to determine where the units from a particular building will congregate. Click the building, then check the buttons on the right side of the menu that appears for Set Patrol Point. You can choose a patrol point anywhere within the building's sphere of influence. Patrolling is a great way to protect vulnerable spots from Bandits and Thieves.
Patrolling is also an offensive tactic, if used properly. You can Set Patrol Point anywhere within the building's sphere of influence. This also means that you can click outside your settlement's borders. Any Guards you send to patrol will stop at the border, but the rest of your units (Soldiers, Rangers, Fearnaughts) will all head into the wilds. You can use this to issue attack orders on a specific spot, assuming you send everyone to, say, a Bandit Camp. Replacement troops will continue to come to this spot, so make sure you change the Patrol Point after the attack is over.
Mints and Treasuries
Even with advanced units you may still find yourself losing a lot of battles with enemies. A partial solution to this is to set up a Mint and a Treasury. Mints taking Copper and Silver Ore and turn them into Copper and Silver Coins. When placed inside a Treasury, these coins will empower your melee units, making it more likely that they will survive battles.
One warning, however! The Mint requires a lot of raw materials to create its coins, and they're materials that are also handy for making weapons. Make sure you're not in dire need of combatants before you start handing Copper and Silver Ore over to a Mint, or you may find yourself lacking in warriors at a crucial moment.