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Manor Lords is finally here and it’s already one of the most promising city-builder/medieval simulators even at its early access stage. As is tradition for city-builders, however, Manor Lords prefers you to learn through baptism by fire. While there are tutorials, it’s easy to accidentally condemn your peasants to death long before your village becomes habitable. That’s why I’ve prepared some tips and tricks to get you started in Manor Lords.
You can also consider this as a Manor Lords beginners guide.
‘Rise to Prosperity’ & ‘Relaxed’ Difficulty are Recommended
As soon as you click “New Game” in Manor Lords, you’ll be presented with a rather thoughtful start where you can pick three different scenarios (or game types). You can also consider these scenario templates as difficulty levels.
- Rise to prosperity – Easiest as it lets you focus on building and growth, with no war or enemies.
- Restoring the Peace – Lets you explore the game at your own pace and declare war at your own pace.
- On the edge – Basically a free-for-all with A.I. dukes and barons, multiple enemies on multiple fronts.
You can also customize the difficulty of each of those scenario templates with Relaxing, Default, and Challenging.
Seeing as it’s everyone’s first time playing this game, one of my most valuable Manor Lords tips is to try out the ‘Rise to prosperity‘ with a ‘Relaxed‘ difficulty. That way, you can practice what works with its city-building so you can get used to it.
Disable Bandits & Raiders
Additionally, each difficulty level and scenario template in Manor Lords has its own toggle and control for Bandits and Raiders. These criminals will steal your resources and if the timing is right, they might just ruin the early stages of your village.
So you’re better off disabling them. Most of the time, they will steal food and construction supplies and might leave your economy too crippled, especially during winter. You might also want to test around with the other difficulty metrics, such as A.I. aggressiveness.
Focus on Food & Fuel
When starting out with your village, you might feel tempted to rush some production buildings that let you build more. But this isn’t that kind of city-builder. The medieval sim elements mean you will also need to take care of your villagers’ food. That should be the priority. Fuel is merely Firewood for keeping warm during winter and it’s not as scarce as Food.
Thankfully, you don’t have to build space-consuming farm setups right away. You can start with hunters and gatherers or foragers (check the image above for those building tabs). Do note that Berries are fleetingly finite and might deplete too fast, so meat or game are the more reliable Food sources. Afterward, you can transition to farming.
Be Picky with Farm Fields & Set Them to a Specific Crop
As expected, you don’t get the luxury of where to set up your fields. The game has a fertility system and every time you place a field, it brings up the fertility overlay– don’t ignore this. Only build fields in areas with green fertility. You want to stock up as much food as possible in preparation for winter (more on that later).
Moreover, once you’ve built your fields and their adjacent Farmhouse, make sure to click on the field and set the crop to Wheat or whichever is the highest yield. By default, newly built fields are set to Fallow as a way to fertilize and repair the soil’s nutrients.
The Game Tells Which Issues to Address, with Limitations
As a rule of thumb, anything red on the user interface (UI) is a cause for concern. That can be anything from the red number on your “Supply” meter to the red icons and notifications under your village’s name. This is the game telling you that there’s something wrong with your economy, production, or governance.
You will need to address those right away, especially notifications about Supply (Food and Fuel). The game will even tell you what’s missing or whether you have no vacant workers to finish a building. It has its limitations, of course. For example, it won’t tell you that you left some production buildings unmanned or which of your facilities aren’t functioning.
Don’t Overassign Families to Buildings
Early in the game, you might find yourself struggling with your workforce since it seems too little. If that’s the case, you might want to check each building as you might have assigned too many families to a single job. You want to make sure you have at least 1-2 unassigned families to keep construction going.
Simply assigning one family to a single job or building early on is enough. Also, put manpower priority on Food and farming early on. Once you have enough Burgage Plots and a consistent stream of new families, only then should you consider assigning more of them to one job or building.
Don’t Worry About Building Symmetry
There’s no grid system here, meaning you’re free to do whatever with your land as long as everything’s efficient and has sufficient space. Roads, for that matter, are up to you. Setting up districts in your village is also a flexible affair. You can plop buildings wherever. Most of them would benefit from road access though, so keep that in mind as far as Manor Lords tips go.
Also, do be aware that the game will tell you the consequences of careless building placements. You don’t want to place your Hunting Camps in animal territory, for example, lest the animals migrate away. Regardless, the game prefers a more organic and natural-looking growth for settlements, which explains the lack of grid building.
Don’t Make Enemies Yet
In case you pick something harder than Relaxed or Rise to Prosperity, or if you choose to have active A.I. players or even Bandits and Raiders, then you’ll want to tread carefully. The game has a politics system where you can engage in back-and-forth letters with the A.I. lords or other factions like Bandits.
You can even insult or spite them in your letters. But you don’t want to do that early on. The A.I. can also talk to other A.I. and decide to denounce you or worse, gang up on you. The same goes for Bandit factions. Your words carry much weight in Manor Lords, even if they’re just written.
Don’t Forget Your Development Points
As soon as your village starts growing in Manor Lords, you might notice a number suddenly appearing beside the village name in the UI– or not. The game’s tutorial isn’t thorough yet since it’s still early access, meaning this list of Manor Lords tips might change. However, this number is essentially a skill point for your village.
If you click on the village name, you’ll see the Development tree and you can spend Development Points to assist in your village’s growth or focus on a growth path. Every time your village grows, you get one Development Point. Meanwhile, you grow your village with population and wealth.
Prepare for Winter
Winter is always right around the corner– and even if it’s not in Manor Lords, you should treat it as though it is. Because during this stage in the game, your Food supply will drop and even your hunters might not bring anything to the table (or perhaps that’s just an early access bug).
In any case, much of your village’s growth and production should be in preparation for each year’s winter if you’re not going to war yet. This is still a medieval sim, after all, and the changing seasons mean it can quickly turn into a survival sim. So don’t neglect your supplies and always prepare for winter, which is paramount among this list of Manor Lords tips.
