paged variable not working for category/custom post archive

I am having trouble getting the pagination to work on category archives for a custom post type.

The number of pages/links is accurate, but clicking on the link 404s. (Only in the category archive, pagination is working elsewhere in the site)

The URL is formatted like so: http://domain.com/projects/category/category_name

The Permalink structure is: /%category%/%postname

My loop is as follows (in the archive-project.php template for the custom post type project)

$paged = (get_query_var(‘paged’)) ? get_query_var(‘paged’) : 1;

    $queryArgs = array(
        'post_type' => 'project',
        'posts_per_page' => 10,
        'paged' => $paged
    );

    if (isset($project_cat)) {
        $queryArgs = array_merge($queryArgs, array(
            'category_name' => $project_cat
        ));
    }
    $projectQuery = new WP_Query($queryArgs);

The second page is generated as http://domain.com/projects/category/category_name/page/2 which returns a 404.

The code for my pagination is as follows (Maybe it’s not the best route, but it works on every other part of the site, after much headache as well)

global $projectQuery;

$total_pages = $projectQuery->max_num_pages;

if ($total_pages > 1){

  $current_page = max(1, get_query_var('paged'));

  echo paginate_links(array(
      'base' => get_pagenum_link(1) . '%_%',
      'show_all' => true,
      'format' => '/page/%#%',
      'prev_next' => false,
      'current' => $current_page,
      'total' => $total_pages,
    ));
}

As mentioned, the page links appear to be accurate, but visiting the Page 2 link gives a 404. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated, I have spent hours on pagination alone, it is a surprisingly complex issue with WordPress.

I’ve managed to narrow it down that the paged variable is not working properly here, (get_query_var('paged')) ? get_query_var('paged') : 1; is always returning 0 although maybe it is due to the formatting of the link.

Additional quick notes:

http://domain.com/projects/page/2 <– Works
http://domain.com/projects/category/category_name <– Works
http://domain.com/projects/category/category_name/page/2 <– 404

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