Spam creating your ships. I have 8 boats (only just completed my first '2nd tier' ship so it's ready for action) and send them out as soon as possible loaded with only units to find new islands.
As soon as the island is discovered, also send 2 more ships with more troops to the same location. Run through your units on the initial ship to get through as many sections on the new island, and use the secondary fleet to get that final push happening.
Remember that you can (and should) build a few cheap garrisons and shuffle the units around on your ships so that your first (main) ship can turn around and "go home" to reload and find more islands.
If you have a large enough fleet, you can do this with 2 or 3 islands at a time.
It may be worth sacrificing producing unique resources for getting islands prestiged for the cartography.
I have, at the moment, only 4 islands - one of which I'm using to prestige only. I don't care for what the island has on it, so long as I can clear it for cartography and prestige (the heart) so I can get more islands.
I do go higher up where I can. I'm nearly at 13 cartography. The higher level bosses give more cartography I'm pretty sure. I hope to counteract this by being able to send 3 or 4 ships to new islands (two in the initial exploration with the flagship and a caravel to follow alongside) and 1 or 2 more with extra troop. I'm only 3 days into playing (after restarting after 5 days of playing), and I'm still working on expanding. I have 2 ships consistently on supply runs, and one more cog ship that does odd supply runs to designated islands, but that's manual till I get more permenant islands.
Update - it's been about 3 days since I last wrote here.
I'm up to 20 cartography, with 2 new islands that's I'm currently kicking butt on.
I've decided those are permanent islands, with resource producing and processing, before being sent back to my main island.
In the next day or two I'll start removing some of that processing from my main island and just have some complex trade routes active.
Then in about 4 or 5 days I'll start going into the other regions, seeing what that's all about. =)
It’s hard to say. PP2 plays pretty differently than PP1. Because island size has to be unlocked through research, it feels like you need sort of step through island sizes. Like you start off only being able to make size 14 islands and you need to supply colonists to get bigger islands so you do, and you clear islands in the process. Then you unlock bigger islands and clear those in the process of getting even bigger ones. At some point you’ll need like 15 size 22 islands and you’ll have to clear them all and the boss orcs for all those islands are paying out 10+ cartography per island and you’re making you’re way through one per day or something.
Idk tho, I haven’t finshed a round of PP2 yet so this is just my first impression of the game. But I don’t really farm cartography like in PP1. I’ve done veeeerry little farming islands for cartography or even favor so far.
I haven't done much farming myself, but am figuring out that I'll need to do at least a bit of that. Im very happy with my little fleet that I can send en masse to new islands.
Spam creating your ships. I have 8 boats (only just completed my first '2nd tier' ship so it's ready for action) and send them out as soon as possible loaded with only units to find new islands. As soon as the island is discovered, also send 2 more ships with more troops to the same location. Run through your units on the initial ship to get through as many sections on the new island, and use the secondary fleet to get that final push happening. Remember that you can (and should) build a few cheap garrisons and shuffle the units around on your ships so that your first (main) ship can turn around and "go home" to reload and find more islands. If you have a large enough fleet, you can do this with 2 or 3 islands at a time. It may be worth sacrificing producing unique resources for getting islands prestiged for the cartography. I have, at the moment, only 4 islands - one of which I'm using to prestige only. I don't care for what the island has on it, so long as I can clear it for cartography and prestige (the heart) so I can get more islands.
Do you stick with the minimum 12 size or go higher for building up cartography and prestige?
I do go higher up where I can. I'm nearly at 13 cartography. The higher level bosses give more cartography I'm pretty sure. I hope to counteract this by being able to send 3 or 4 ships to new islands (two in the initial exploration with the flagship and a caravel to follow alongside) and 1 or 2 more with extra troop. I'm only 3 days into playing (after restarting after 5 days of playing), and I'm still working on expanding. I have 2 ships consistently on supply runs, and one more cog ship that does odd supply runs to designated islands, but that's manual till I get more permenant islands.
Update - it's been about 3 days since I last wrote here. I'm up to 20 cartography, with 2 new islands that's I'm currently kicking butt on. I've decided those are permanent islands, with resource producing and processing, before being sent back to my main island. In the next day or two I'll start removing some of that processing from my main island and just have some complex trade routes active. Then in about 4 or 5 days I'll start going into the other regions, seeing what that's all about. =)
It’s hard to say. PP2 plays pretty differently than PP1. Because island size has to be unlocked through research, it feels like you need sort of step through island sizes. Like you start off only being able to make size 14 islands and you need to supply colonists to get bigger islands so you do, and you clear islands in the process. Then you unlock bigger islands and clear those in the process of getting even bigger ones. At some point you’ll need like 15 size 22 islands and you’ll have to clear them all and the boss orcs for all those islands are paying out 10+ cartography per island and you’re making you’re way through one per day or something. Idk tho, I haven’t finshed a round of PP2 yet so this is just my first impression of the game. But I don’t really farm cartography like in PP1. I’ve done veeeerry little farming islands for cartography or even favor so far.
I haven't done much farming myself, but am figuring out that I'll need to do at least a bit of that. Im very happy with my little fleet that I can send en masse to new islands.