Manor Lords: guide for beginners, analysis of all aspects of the game

Welcome to the complete beginner's guide to Manor Lords, where we'll go through each part of the game step-by-step and chapter-by-chapter. This will help you build a healthy and growing medieval city, get to know its economic system and military aspects.

Basics and User Interface

The beauty of Manor Lords is that you don't have to rush. Playing at standard speed 1, you're unlikely to make much of a mistake at any stage unless you don't understand anything at all. But that's what I'm here for, so relax and let's do this together. For the best experience, please keep the game open while you follow this guide, or watch the video at the same time.

In Manor Lords, everything is connected: the game mechanics help you or create obstacles. When starting our little adventure, you don't have much to do. First of all, at the top of the screen is an overview of all your resources, which shows how you are doing at the moment. By hovering over these symbols and numbers, you will get detailed information about each sub-resource in that section. For example, the food tab shows the total amount of food in a region, but hovering over it will show you how much of a specific type of food you have, and the same goes for every other resource group.

The middle part relates to the current region, meaning the information changes depending on where you are. The information in the top right corner displays your personal wealth and power. At the bottom there is information about the action taking place: by opening various windows we can build roads, create our city, form armies when possible, view useful information about different parts of the game and change the game settings.

By zooming in, we can get a close-up look at the world in detail, and by zooming out, we will eventually be taken to the campaign map, where we will have easy access to the entire world to better see the location of various resources, the location of bandit camps and areas of artificial intelligence control. When we eventually increase our influence by eliminating the bandits and brigands, we will be able to claim other regions and begin to create entirely new cities in the conquered regions.

First steps and priorities

Let's say we start with a basic stock of goods, and it will only be a few dozen units of your most basic resources, in fact you start with only 8 units of wood, which is the most important resource at the beginning, since it needs to be used wisely.

The first thing I recommend is building a warehouse and barn, which you will find in the storage section of the construction menu in the bottom corner of the screen. This is because a warehouse allows you to keep goods dry and safe, while a barn does the same for food. This is vitally important because let's say you start the game in the spring, which is the natural time to start the game, and you'll likely be expecting rain for a month or two.

Rain is actually dangerous as it can damage your unprotected supplies that are just lying on the ground, which means these two buildings will protect your current and future goods, especially since both of them can be upgraded to increase storage capacity later. Once they are built, let's assign one family to work in each building to pick up these goods and store them safely.

Of course, now that we've built these two buildings, we have less wood left than we had at the beginning. The big threat to your survival early on is running out of wood, because you need to do two other important things with it. See that little number here? This is approval. You start with 50% approval, which means your people are neither happy nor unhappy. However, to grow and create a great vibrant city, which is what we're here for, we need to increase that approval because it attracts new citizens - as well as affordable housing.

You start out without any houses, but you already have 5 families, making them homeless, and this reduces approval over time. At the same time, the construction of these houses will initially completely paralyze us, since without a sawmill that requires wood for construction, we will not be able to get more wood. In other words, we must build a sawmill, preferably next to a forest and not far from our warehouse. Let's also connect everything with roads that cost nothing to build but are fun to do. Also be sure to assign a family to work in the mill.

С течением времени у нас будет больше древесины, и у нас останется две семьи для работы над строительством и управлением волами, что важно, и вы всегда должны заботиться о наличии одной такой неназначенной доступной семьи для такой работы. Когда древесина поступает, мы можем начать строить дома, столько, сколько позволит древесина, и я бы советовал не строить ничего другого, что требует древесины, пока вы не построите от 5 до 10 домов. Говорю “10”, потому что для привлечения большего числа семей, которые нам отчаянно нужны, вам нужно избыточное жилье, то есть доступное жилое пространство.

10 houses will give you some time to breathe. Notice how we can zoom and drag how many units we need or how big a plot they have at the same time, which is very handy especially since the second house symbol that appears means our unit is getting a plot of land to build on additional workspace, and we'll get to that shortly. Be sure to also place a well nearby so people have access to water.

But if you're about to run out of fuel, which is inevitable, make sure you build a logging camp and place a family there to produce wood. At this point you may run out of food. Now it is very important to look for easily accessible food sources, namely meat and berries, which should be available in every region. So we space them out when we can and connect them with roads. However, we have few workers left, and those who live in houses should have easy access to our goods.

In other words, I would say remove one worker from the barn since it was mainly for emergencies, move them to the berry patch to quickly increase food supplies, and create your first market. In the market, your families will set up stalls that suit their profession and allow your people to easily obtain what they need to satisfy their needs. This means that soon woodcutters will offer fuel, and berry pickers will offer food, and the same will apply to any other resource types from the food, fuel, and clothing groups.

Early trade and development

Indeed, as approval and housing availability increases, more families come and we should place one worker in the hunting camp as it makes things more interesting.

Hunters not only obtain meat, which is an excellent source of food in the early stages of the game, but also hides, which allows them to begin tanning leather. So, when enough families arrive, we must build a tannery, which means we will start getting leather. There are several paths to success in Manor Lords. Success is basically measured in five ways, and it's ideal if you do well in all of them: your city's wealth, excess food, excess fuel, the population's access to these resources, and your own wealth and power. In most cases, the first four aspects lead to the fifth and last, which means it's often smart to start with the belief that your city is thriving.

This is why we are building a tannery, because not only does it have to do with providing your people with clothing, which increases their approval, but it also has to do with trade. Trading is by far the best way to make money, and to be honest, it also goes a long way in feeding your population if you can maintain a positive balance of trade. That's why we should build a merchant as soon as possible and sell our leather, since the leather will bring us a lot of money. However, note that to do this we need to pay in gold to establish a trade route.

We're starting with 50 gold, so make sure you have enough left over to unlock this first route. By the way, you may have noticed that as soon as you built the first five houses, you received a city level and with it a developing point. Evolving points lead to the Manor Lords progression tree, a group of bonuses you can earn over time to help you along your path. There are many paths here, from creating more complex armor to growing apple trees, producing honey and using oxen to plow fields. But the first and most important perk that I highly recommend getting during this time is the Trade Logistics perk.

This is because setting up new trade routes can cost a huge amount of gold in the beginning, but with this perk the price will not exceed 25 gold, saving you a lot of money later on. But more importantly, this perk leads to perhaps the best perk in the game - "Best Deals", which significantly reduces the cost of importing goods, which is currently the only way to make good money if you plan to achieve a positive balance of trade by importing goods . This will become more relevant later, but it's worth knowing about now.

Getting back to our tannery, we can't rely on our hunting camp alone to bring hides to our tanner, it won't work. Remember those areas behind our houses?

They can actually be used to produce more food through gardening or chicken farming, and later, when houses are upgraded, even for more specialized purposes. But right now, if we can afford it, it would be wise to build a goat pen, since goats provide us with passive income from hides, allowing our tannery to produce leather faster. This will allow us to eventually build vegetable gardens or chicken coops when we make money from trading, so that in a couple of weeks our balance will be positive again and we can focus on getting more food.

Home Needs and Approval

So far we've mostly avoided the issues of approval and needs, but you may have noticed that we touched on these topics. If you hover over a home, you can actually see the needs of that home and see if the needs of the families living there are being met. For first-level houses there are also the most basic needs, but their satisfaction makes the family as happy as possible, and allows, if we have the resources, to improve the house to the second level.

These needs include access to water, level of church, availability of fuel, food stores and clothing stores. Note that these requirements have one or two squares next to them, indicating the quantity or level of the requirement needed. For example, for the church level it is necessary to build a base church, preferably not too far away so that the family does not have to walk for a long time to pray. But to supply a food stall, they need two types of food to satisfy, such as berries and meat, unlike the requirements for clothing, where one item is enough, such as leather.

Upgrading a house effectively increases the living space per family and begins to produce one gold per turn for each family in the house. But more than that, upgrading allows you to finally start producing complex items like boots, war bows, swords, spears, beer, heavy armor and so on, so in many ways it's a great advantage. However, keep in mind that aside from the cost of four planks, which is pretty cheap, a second level house will require you to do a lot more to maintain approval, such as a hard resource like beer, the highest church level, meaning you'll need to invest in upgrading your current church , as well as greater variety in food and clothing.

Additionally, if you want to use these complex resources and become artisans, not only will it require you to spend money and other resources to improve and produce these new goods, but the families of this house will be excluded from your wider work population by becoming professional blacksmiths, armorsmiths, archers or shoemakers. This doesn't mean you shouldn't upgrade homes, you definitely should, but I would advise against doing it until you can reliably meet more than half of those needs and are sure you have enough families for one of they could become skilled workers.

Complex goods, oxen, 2nd level houses

If you need stone, although we're technically starting with that, you might want to consider building a mine over a stone deposit in your region, and the same goes for other resource pits like iron or clay that you'll need later. Note that in the context of trade, it may make sense to import a cheap product in order to produce a more complex and expensive product yourself.

For example, importing clay is inexpensive, but exporting roofing tiles, which are made from clay after assigning a family to work in a clay kiln, is expensive, making it easy to gain a trade surplus from this transaction. Combining products in this way is a good strategy, although I would argue that it is often better if you can produce the low-cost downstream product yourself and then export the complex product to maximize cash flow.

Indeed, once we have enough meat, berries and hopefully vegetables or eggs from our backyard farms to meet our other needs, only the church will remain. We start with most of the resources needed to build a church, with the exception of planks, which are different from wood and firewood. The planks require the construction of another building, and this sawmill requires wood to function.

Just like with the tannery, we now have two production buildings that require construction from lower tier resources, and we need to make sure we balance our need for them with the need to maintain a healthy balance of the base commodity to create a healthy ecosystem. Also note that in order to move goods such as wood, planks and stone, which are the basic building blocks for almost any building in the game, you need an available ox that can transport these goods from one place to another.

This is why I recommend placing your sawmill close to your lumber camp, which cuts down on travel time. You can have more oxen, and even assign them specifically to the construction of your chosen building, although this largely prevents them from helping in other places. To get more oxen, we can buy one from the stable, but be careful about the space in the stable, which should be improved before buying more cattle. With our boards we can now build our church and with the church completed we have our basic needs met, our approval is growing and we can upgrade our houses to level 2.

Market and needs

However, note that even if you have a surplus of various goods, not all houses will be able to be upgraded at the same time. This is because not every family has equal access or enough time to pick up their goods from the market, so meeting these needs may not be sustainable, but if you continue to do good work, these needs will be met sooner or later.

Bandits, Recruitment, Weapons Industry

До сих пор мы в основном сосредотачивали внимание на аспектах строительства города в Manor Lords, и следование этому руководству в большинстве случаев гарантирует успешную раннюю игру. Но другая сторона медали Manor – это война, и даже на раннем этапе вы можете обнаружить необходимость собрать своих людей и отправиться на войну. Как было упомянуто, бандиты скитаются по регионам вне вашего контроля и, хотя их оставляют в покое, периодически они приходят и крадут различные ресурсы у вас, что может серьезно затормозить ваш прогресс.

Depending on your settings, bandit raids can happen as early as a year after they start, which means we either need to take the fight to ourselves or prepare. Your army in Manor Lords, also known as your militia, isn't just something you recruit - every man you field is actually taken directly from your adult male population, which limits you to the size of your village to fill your ranks.

Each bandit camp currently contains one group of about 16 people, which means you'll want to have at least 16 or more people in your militia at this early stage. However, you will notice that to create a militia you need not only population, but also equipment. Depending on your setup, you can either get a batch of basic spears and large shields after you reach the first city upgrade level when building 5 houses, which means you can technically equip up to 20 people as spearmen, which is what I recommend doing, so how they can easily defeat the bandits.

However, if you don't get this batch, creating a militia becomes a little more difficult. You will need to produce weapons and armor yourself and create a certified weapons industry, for which you will need a combination of planks, which we already have, and iron. To obtain iron ingots, we will need to mine iron ore found in iron mines.

Как и в случае с камнем и глиной, железные шахты можно строить на месторождениях железа, и когда к работе привлекается семья, она будет производить железную руду. Железную руду затем можно отвезти в доменную печь, где рабочие создадут железные слитки, которые затем будут использоваться вашими кузнецами и бронниками для создания железного оружия и доспехов. Помните, что кузнецы и бронники связаны с вашими домами 2-го уровня и выше, что означает, что они являются специализациями. Если вы хотите создать луки, это можно сделать довольно просто, так как единственный необходимый ресурс – доски. Если же вы хотите создать сложные железные доспехи, вам нужно будет разблокировать привилегии бронника для этого.

Once your equipment is ready, you can go to the army menu and select which type of infantry unit you want to focus on your first militia. In most cases, you should choose the spearman, since this is the equipment that you get for free. If you select more than one type of unit and you have the equipment to do so, your men will be split between them until both are full, meaning that if you don't have enough men to service both units, which is at least 72 adult males, your next unit will take part of the number of the first, so keep that in mind. You can have a maximum of 6 militia units at any time, each with 36 members.

Однако, если вы соберете достаточно древесины, досок и камня, вы также можете построить конечное здание, Усадьбу. В каждом регионе может быть только одна Усадьба, и она позволяет вам вводить налогообложение вашего региона с увеличением на проценты и десятины в церковь, отправляя процент вашей пищи в обмен на влияние. Таким образом, если у вас есть функционирующая региональная экономика через торговлю, вы можете заработать много денег на налогах. Но, пожалуй, самая важная часть Усадьбы – возможность получить вашу личную гвардию и расширить эту гвардию.

Личная гвардия – это ваша элитная группа подразделений, она начинается с 5 человек, увеличивается до 24, если вы расширите вашу усадьбу дорогой башней, и вы можете набирать больше из них, платя за них из своего кармана. Кроме того, вы можете даже купить для них лучшие доспехи у иностранных торговцев или местных ремесленников, но последнее требует, чтобы вы производили этот товар самостоятельно.

Personal Guard are especially great not only because they are elite, but also because you can customize them with different helmets, weapons and shields, as well as change their names and the color of their equipment. The beauty of the Personal Guard is that since you pay for their services yourself in lump sum payments, you don't have to produce weapons or armor for them, so they are somewhat outside of this system unless you have a weapons industry or import weapons .

If you can gain enough influence by destroying bandit camps and defeating raiders, you can even claim new regions on the map, build entirely new cities and establish new manors, each with their own personal guard specific to that region. In other words, you can realistically field up to 5 or 6 personal guards while the other lord remains on the map.

Diplomacy, warfare and tactics in Manor Lords

Diplomacy, warfare and tactics in Manor Lords are quite unique. Rival Lord, by the way, is basically an artificial intelligence, sometimes appearing to fight bandits, which can remain passive, take over neutral regions or even your regions, although the latter happens extremely rarely. There is little to no diplomacy in Manor Lords other than declaring war, and in the early stages you really don't have much to worry about in that regard. So in the early and mid game you won't have to worry about this lord until you want to attack him, then just capture his region with enough influence points and wait for the game to tell you the point on the map where it will take place battle for control of the region.

However, remember that sending people into battle puts their lives at risk, and, moreover, slows down your production and productivity at home, as you are suddenly left with a significantly reduced workforce. It won't ruin your game if you send some militias to get rid of the bandits and if everyone survives, but if you leave them there it can become a big problem. So for your first outing, I recommend gathering your militia, eliminating the bandits, and then raiding their camp, which will give you a choice.

You see, there is gold in the bandit camp, and you can either send this gold to the nearest region or take the money for yourself. For this first raid on the camp, I highly recommend taking the money for yourself, because it will give you over a hundred gold, and it will more than cover a month's salary for a mercenary unit. Once you have your militias back in your region, you can disband them, which won't destroy the unit forever, but will simply return them to society and you can always call them up again.

However, the next time you need to destroy a bandit camp or defend against a raid, you can now open the mercenary menu and pay for the party of your choice, preferably choosing the cheapest option but one that will get the job done. If you destroy a bandit camp with this unit, you'll end up with more money than you started with. Just remember to disband your mercenary unit if you don't want to keep one around, as you're paying not only the initial cost, but also recurring payments that can quickly drain your wallet.

On the other hand, this means that if you focus on trade and make a good profit, for example by opening up trade routes for your weapons industry, and decide to sell weapons instead of using them in war, you can become a true merchant republic or Serene Manor Republic if want, and rely completely on mercenaries. This is a fun way to play because if you really get the arms trade going, you can always use those weapons for yourself later, but since you don't do it now, you can keep your production rate high all the time and keep your people safe from war. But let's talk a little more about how combat actually works.

Considering that much of Manor Lords allows you to take your time and think about your decisions, Manor Lords' battles are the most intense and action-focused part of the game. Despite this instant activity, the game is quite easy to learn, but offers some interesting mechanics that you can use.

As with most games, selecting units is easy - you can simply click, hold Ctrl and click on several, or drag across several at once to select one or more units. Left-clicking somewhere else deselects them, and right-clicking on a place in the world moves them there. Double-clicking makes them run to their destination, but remember that this drains their stamina faster, so this can be risky over time.

Если вы выстроите своих солдат в крутой формации, вы можете удерживать Alt, пока перетаскиваете правой кнопкой мыши, чтобы отправить вашу армию в формации в это место. Однако обратите внимание, что у каждого подразделения также есть команды. Некоторые из них особенные, так для лучников вы можете выбрать стрелять регулярно на большее расстояние или стрелять короче, но с большим уроном. Для некоторых подразделений со щитом вы можете принять формацию “щитовой стены”, которая дает вам гораздо лучшие защитные характеристики при встрече с врагом. Вы также можете приказать вашим подразделениям следовать сбалансированной, оборонительной или агрессивной тактике, каждая из которых предоставляет вам лучший режим боя для любой данной ситуации.

Хотя лучники иногда воздерживаются от стрельбы из-за союзного подразделения, когда это подразделение сражается с врагом вблизи, вы можете использовать их огонь, когда враг находится на некотором расстоянии. Но независимо от того, используете ли вы лучников или нет, часто мудро использовать тактику окружения или “молот и наковальня”, окружая врага и уменьшая его эффективность таким образом. Вы также можете использовать местность для получения преимущества в высоте, и да, удержание высоты — это проверенный победитель.

In other words, if you use formations, positioning and terrain, and field the right units, you will most likely succeed in Manor Lords using your own militia or relying only on mercenaries.

Farming in Manor Lords

That's it for the early stages of Manor Lords up to level 2 buildings, but the game doesn't end there. If you've followed this guide so far, great job, you've successfully mastered the core concepts of Manor Lords, and can move on to the mid and late game, which are pretty much the same at this point, as long as you understand the basics.

Basically, the more challenging mid and late game of Manor Lords is centered around your houses, but also emphasizes farming and trading. Let's start with farming because for many this seems like an intuitive place to start even in the early stages of the game, but here's why I caution you against it. Farming in Manor Lords is a long process, it's not just building a farm and bread will appear instantly. First you need to place the field. But this is not so simple either. An important aspect of Manor Lords is fertility, and each region on the map has varying degrees of it, with some areas of land being more suitable for farming than others.

You want to place your field in greener areas for more yield, but also keep in mind that different soil types are better for different crops, and there are four types of crops in the game - wheat, flax, barley and rye, namely for making bread, beer , flax and bread again. Rye is unlocked through the evolution tree and is stronger than rye, potentially giving better yields, so it's worth considering for the future.

However, we are placing our rye farm because we first and foremost want to reliably feed our population. For optimal early game setup, consider creating a 1-morgen field, which is a reasonable size that most farmers will be able to plow, plant, and then harvest in time for winter. However, this is just the beginning. You will of course need farmers, and farmers work from a farmhouse. Families must again be assigned to a farmhouse to work the fields, but they will only work the fields from March to November inclusive, after which the remaining crops will rot and be lost.

You can see the progress of your farmers and fields in plowing, sowing, harvesting and then harvesting by clicking on the field itself, where, by the way, you can also make improvements - the function is available for a selected group of buildings: barns for more space, trade buildings for more horses, herbalists' huts to be able to use herbs, and indeed fields and farms to do two important things when you unlock them in the development tree.

You see, plowing the fields can take a long time, but by unlocking plowing the field with the help of oxen from the farmhouse, you can do it in a fraction of the time, leaving more time for planting and harvesting. Indeed, on the field, if you have unlocked the development of pastures, you can, after the important import of sheep, allow them to graze on your fields, which restores their fertility much faster. That's one more thing, by the way. After one harvest season, fields lose their fertility and if you want it back, you need to leave the field alone for a season so that it produces its maximum potential the following year.

This means your fields won't work half the time if you're careful to maintain fertility, which is another reason why supplementing your food supply with trade and other sources is so important. This was a bit of a digression, but still important, so let's get back to the bread making process.

Let's say several months have passed and the harvest has been harvested. Your farmers will now take the wheat to the farmhouse where it will be turned into grain. However, the grain will remain there until you build a windmill and hire workers there, where the grain will turn into flour. Now you need a baker's house to finally make bread, with his own workers of course.

As you can see, this is a long process that requires many families to start functioning properly, but the production of bread also often takes about 6 months between sowing and harvesting. In other words, farming should ideally be done on a large scale rather than in a single plot. In my opinion, this is at least the right way to use farming and the investment it requires at the moment, since farming requires both an abundance of people and the availability of other food sources that can sustain you while you wait for the crops to turn into bread. Basically, make sure you diversify your food sources. And to do this effectively, let's talk a little about trading again.

Advanced trading in Manor Lords

We've discussed how trading can be a great way to make money early in the game, but as your city develops, trading becomes critical to not only supplementing your food supply, but also to meet other necessary needs. Everything can be sold, and if you want to upgrade your houses from level 2 to level 3, for example, you'll need the funds to do so, making trading essential.

The classic export product is leather, and in addition to this are shoes, which are relatively expensive and can be mass produced. Even if you don't plan to mobilize your militia, your weapons industry will likely start stockpiling weapons, making them ideal for export.

Оружие, такое как луки, копья, короткое оружие и щиты, со временем принесет много денег, что позволит начать оплачивать импорт. Только помните, что все эти товары высшего уровня считаются требующими крупных торговых путей, что означает необходимость платить за их открытие, что подчеркивает важность привилегии “Лучшие сделки” для снижения этих расходов.

In other words, our export earnings will cover our imports, and imports can be aimed at expanding and diversifying food supplies. This can quickly and reliably increase your food supply much more efficiently than farming, and is essentially the only way I would recommend for developing cities with populations larger than a few hundred people.

However, it is important to note that to avoid going bankrupt or suddenly running out of your export stocks, you need to carefully balance how much surplus of each item you want to have. This means that while you should consider exporting far more goods than importing, you should maintain a basic supply of goods, for example if you wish to mobilize your militia later, having a few dozen spears or shields and bows is very wise.

Over time, this can bring you great wealth, not only for your region, but also for you personally, since with the previously mentioned homestead, we can actually tax our people. And with enough money and time, you too can become richer than you ever imagined.

However, there are a few items that I would recommend importing rather than making yourself, as it is currently nearly impossible to produce enough of them to meet high demands. One such commodity is beer, and since beer takes a long time to produce, it is advisable to import beer or even malt if you can afford it, which will free up space and workers for other projects. The same goes for clothing, because more complex items can be difficult to produce, requiring higher-level resources such as flax or yarn, which require a lengthy production process. So again, at this point, I would recommend importing some of these goods if you have the money to do so.

Upgrading housing and managing the economy in Manor Lords

When it comes to accommodation at Manor Lords, there are a few key points to consider. At the moment, houses can be upgraded to level 3. The most significant improvement occurs at level 2, where houses can not only accommodate an additional family, but also allow residents to become artisans. This transition greatly increases regional wealth, adding one point of wealth per month for each family living there.

However, when it comes to Level 3 homes, they do not bring the same transformational changes. They certainly look impressive and attractive, and now contribute 2 gold per month per household to regional wealth, which can significantly increase your monthly income when you have enough of them.

For a balanced economy that attracts more people, keeps them happy, and most importantly, keeps them fed and warm, it is important to focus on both trade and local farming, develop your region with new technologies, and use top-tier exports to pay for imported goods lower level, primarily food.

Conclusion

And there you have it, basically everything you need to know to succeed in Manor Lords - information I wish I knew when I first started playing.

Have a nice day and enjoy playing Manor Lords!