With almost 50 hours In manor Lords already, this is a review/critique of things I've noticed and would like addressed

[Fletcher]

Beginning Thoughts

First of all, I would like to say that I absolutely ADORE this game. It is quite relaxing while also offering a suitable challenge for managing and expanding a little manor to a bustling town. The fact That I have sunk this many hours into a game I bought less than a week ago is insane. I wholeheartedly support the developer and his vision, and look forward to any update or expansion to the game he works on.

With that said, this is still an early access game. Bugs, oddities, balancing problems and missing features will be present. Even with that knowledge in mind, I still greatly enjoy the game. With this sort of "loving despite its flaws" attitude, I would like to bring up some of the said bugs, problems and balancing issues and would like to know your opinion on them as well as hope some of this information gets addressed by the dev.

Things needing to be addressed/suggestions/already have been and waiting to get fixed:

UI:

-Allow for drop down menus to see where families are assigned and what is consuming fuel/food and at what rate for better micromanagement

-Add better explanation to certain products/items not just stating "This wool. It wools" but where items can be obtained in the wiki, how long or how much is produced per month and other related information.

-Enable an option to highlight buildings and roads at a button press to see items that are surrounded by trees

-A day counter for the months would be a good addition in the bottom right as well. The monthly seasons are nice but I feel like a day counter would be useful as well


Combat:

-The rate of claiming territories should be reduced for the first few years of game play as the ai should presumably be less prepared as well. (This is in specific regards to lower difficulties, not the restoring the peace decision)

-Claiming on territories should be restricted to regions bordering your own to reduce ai tomfeckery and even more disconnected game play

-Archers low damage not comparable to other militia units (please add skirmish mode to them too)

-Units getting the "surrounded" debuff of -80% when fighting in a straight line when a single unit pushes into the line

-retinue fatigue sometimes glitches out when rallying right next to manor house, reducing fatigue to 0 even if they are walking

-Allow for retinue weapon customization (already being worked on by dev)

-Dead bodies tend to randomly disappear after a battle, rendering corpse pits and church assignment useless

-Dynamic sized bandit raids. From what I can tell, bandits will always spawn with their solo type melee unit and have 2 for the first raid, and 4 for the rest of the raids. I feel their size should fluctuate more especially as your town gets bigger as well as allow for a few different types of brigands (Polearm and bow wielding for example)


Buildings:

-Manor defense construction cannot be done incrementally, and requires a large resource drop to build all walls and towers at the same time

-Once multiple trading routes are established, the trading post gets overflowed with merchants even if you are not importing or exporting that item currently. Traders can get bugged and stuck outside the trader, rendering them useless

-Farmhouse building and farm plots require player to micromanage turning fields fallow after a harvest for if they don't villagers will attempt to plow the field and plant after harvesting in fall

-Livestock trader keeps animals ordered through it (ox and horses) in the trader instead of being able to delegate them to hitching posts.

-Tavern building extremely slow at importing ale in storehouses even when located right next to each other, constantly removing the tavern requirement for tier 3 Burgage plots

-No place to store timber except in logging clamp, meaning if you want to store more than 28, you need multiple camps

-Fuel consumption seems a bit higher than what is expected, requiring much larger surpluses than food. Charcoal burners become a necessity for larger places

-More limit options for buildings which use raw materials (dye works and cobbler for an example) for not taking storage stocks below a certain value. For example, if you always wanted to have 10 leather, the cobbler shop wont take the stocks if there is 10 or less.

-Allow Burgage plots with trade upgrades (such as tailor) to disable their output. This does not mean remove the assigned family, but allow them to not constantly produce in case of shortages.


Families and assignment:

-Berry bush pickers are inconsistent when multiple assigned to same bush. Can bug out as villagers do not recognize the bushes as pick-able and reducing their yield

-Importing crops through the Trader is agonizingly slow to export to the farmhouse or storehouse even with max assigned on both sides. It appears they do not recognize the crops as able to be transported.

-Farming yields in general have inconstant values

-Better descriptions for certain places with family interactions (such as the burgage veggie plots) on if unassigned families are required or not

-For apple orchards, families will not send apples to graineries unless if their house storage is full and there is a major surplus, meaning apples will hardly show on the market.


Miscellaneous:

-For bandits taking supplies, while not against this mechanic, it could be less random with actually seeing a few suspicious people entering the storehouse and leaving, and having an attempt to stop them for their thievery.

-Firefighting in case of a lightning strike seems bugged at the moment with villagers not recognizing the fire for up to a few months.

-Burned buildings that are rebuilt (through bandits or lightning) are viewed as destroyed by the villagers and wont be used.

-Please allow for more between province interaction instead of having entirely separate towns. by this I mean allow for certain materials to be freely exchanged instead of needing to buy and sell using the trader. This will allow for more province specific specialization and easier manor management when owning multiple spots.

Concluding Remarks

Of course I am sure there are things I've forgotten as well as bugs or issues I haven't addressed. I would love to hear what other concerns you all have or your thoughts of what I have listed. I am sure I will be playing this game frequently for quite awhile longer still, and all we can do to bring light to problems to be fixed or concerns we have will be useful for the developer in working on the game.

Now if you excuse me, I do believe it's almost harvesting season....

[BasicallyClueless]

Specifically for the note you made about wishing that artisan output could be turned off, it can. There's an extremely small "Pause" button near the top right of the menu when you have the home selected.