Manor Lords Beginner's Guide

A beginner's guide on the basics of Manor Lords, from user interface to mechanics, and early gameplay/helpful tips!

Gameplay Overview

Manor Lords is a strategy city-building game in which you play as a lord sent by the king to govern a land of great peril and promise. The game features in-depth city-building, real-time tactical battles, and complex economic and social simulations. You must balance resource management, supply and demand, trade, warfare, and take advantage of the seasons to survive through winter.

Will you prove yourself worthy of this honor? Or will you perish at the hands of bandits, and traitorous rival Lords?

This guide will help you understand the basics of the game, from its User Interface to basic operations. It culminates in an overview of how to survive your first year

Your kingdom awaits.

Families

Before we begin - a brief overview of the foundation of the entire game - Families.

Families are the basic population unit of Manor Lords. Each family consists of multiple family members and consumes one food and up to two fuel monthly. Families live in residential buildings called Burgage Plots, and the family level is equal to the level of their housing – Tier 1, Tier 2, or Tier 3 (the current maximum) Each family can be assigned to a specific workplace, and members of the family will go there to work. Some places of work require stalls to be set up in the market to distribute goods, which other family members will run.

If a house gets upgraded to Tier 2 and you decide to construct and Artisan workshop at the house, the family gets removed from the general labor pool and can’t be assigned to other workplaces. It’s important to maintain a mix of housing across the various tiers, as well as Artisan vs. non-artisan families.

Male family members (husbands and sons) can become members of the militia. If these members die in battle, their job will become vacant until the family member is replaced. Remember this when engaging with your enemies, as significant losses could affect your economy.

Camera Controls

Manor Lords has dedicated camera controls, allowing creators and the community to create fantastic time-lapses, dive into close-up shots during combat, or simply take a snapshot of your town without the User Interface.

Camera Controls are as follows:

• ctrl+shift+number - saves camera location
  
• shift+number - loads camera location
  
• ctrl+c - trigger cinematic mode (no UI, smoother controls), use ctrl+c again to exit cinematic mode

Custom Names & Coat of Arms

There are several areas of the game that allow you to customize the game to make it truly your own kingdom. Start by directly bringing your community directly into the game through renaming your towns, villagers, and customizing your retinue units; or import your logo into Manor Lords to make your own coat of arms!

• To rename your town, click on your town name at the center top of your screen, then click on the quill to change its name.
  
• To rename a villager, find the PEOPLE tab by clicking on a house or workplace. Left click on a person’s name, and you will be able to rename them.

Constructing a manor will allow you to create your own retinue, a group of professional soldiers you can use in battle.

• To customize your retinue, select the (1) Army button, then your (2) Retinue unit, and then the (3) Retinue Customization button. This will bring up your current retinue, and allow you to rename the soldier, pay for more retinue soldiers, upgrade their armor, and customize just what they will look like.

Importing your Logo into a Coat of Arms

In order to bring your own logo into a coat of arms, follow these steps:

1. Download the template_custom_coat.png file from the Manor Lords Press Kit [drive.google.com]
   
2. Open in photoshop or other image editing sofware.
   
3. Edit your logo within the white space of the coat of arms shield. Note that anything outside of the white space will not show up in the coat of arms editor screen. When finished, remove the template_custom_coat.png layer.
   
4. Save the file as custom_coat.png to the following file path on your PC:
   C:\Users\Username\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames\
   
5. Launch Manor Lords and start a new game.
   
6. Click on the folder icon and your customized logo will appear as your new coats of arms!
   

The Basics - User Interface

Understanding these top-level elements of Manor Lords is essential to effectively governing. Note that the top bar User Interface provides information tied to the region you are currently in.

1. Population Overview - A glance at various factors affecting a region’s population.
   
   • 1a - Unassigned Families - Families that do not have a specific job assignment. These families are necessary for construction and for guiding oxen in timber transport.
     
   • 1b - Assigned Families - Families that have been assigned jobs. These families will have a primary worker, with other members supporting the primary worker.
     
   • 1c - Living Space - How many families the current Region can support, increased by building or expanding Burgage Plots.
     
   • 1d - Total Population - Your total Region population, broken down by different family levels.
     
   • 1e - Approval - Controls overall Population Growth and the morale of your militia when rallied from the region. Higher approval increases the rate of families joining your settlement as long as there is space.
     
   • 1f - Public Order - Governs the chance of crime, with low public order permanently turning citizens to banditry.
   
   
2. Regional Wealth - The amount of money villagers own from the current region. It can be used to import goods, upgrade artisan spaces, or transfer to your personal treasury via a tax policy.
   
   
3. Livestock - The total space for stable and pasture livestock, with an indication of unassigned livestock in parentheses. Anyone can use unassigned livestock for resource transportation.
   
   
4. Supplies - The months before your food and fuel supplies run out. Specific workplaces require fuel, and home fuel consumption doubles during winter.
   
   
5. Settlement Menu & Notifications - Hovering over your settlement name will bring up a tooltip of the current settlement level and the requirements to level up. Each level provides you with a Development Point that you can use to specialize your town and make it more efficient.
   
   Selecting the settlement name will bring up a menu to use Development Points, enact Policies, and set Production limits. However, some of these are still Work-in-Progress and may not be fully functional until later in the EA period.
   
   
6. Total vs Surplus Goods - Total goods show all goods in the region, while surplus shows you what stock remains after resources have been reserved.
   
   Imagine you have 5 planks, and place a building that costs 5 planks to build. Your total stock remains 5, but your surplus becomes 0 since the planks are now reserved for construction.
   
   
7. Goods Categories - A range of goods filtered into categories. Hover over each category to see a breakdown of each good.
   
   
8. Personal Overview - A glance at your personal stats. Some of these elements may be WIP for the initial early access launch.
   
   • 8a -Legacy - This provides information about yourself, such as personal details, new/active/completed opportunities, etc.
     
   • 8b - Visit Mode - Toggle third-person mode and walk around your settlement.
     
   • 8c Treasury - Your personal money can be used for diplomacy, hiring retinues or mercenaries, and settling a new region.
     
   • 8d - Annual Royal Tax - Amount of tax money owed to your king.
     
   • 8e - Influence - Necessary for diplomacy and pressing claims. Influence is gained by raising the settlement level, enacting policies, conquering bandit camps, and upgrading your churches and manors.
     
   • 8f - Kings Favor - Favor can be used for diplomatic purposes, including pressing and refuting claims.
   
   
9. Seasons & Time - Seasons are deeply connected to your people’s lives and affect different jobs. Hovering over the season icon will give a tooltip explaining when seasons occur and their effect on food and agriculture. Time can be paused or accelerated based on your gameplay style. By default, pressing X accelerates time, while pressing Z decelerates, with the maximum speed currently at x12.
   
   
10. Game Tools - A set of buttons to build and manage your settlement. These buttons all have hotkeys for faster interaction.
    
    • 10a - Roads - construct roads to connect your settlement buildings. Villagers will follow these roads as they travel, depending on their job.
      
    • 10b - Construction - This brings up all your construction options across several building types. Hovering over any building will bring up construction costs and any requirements to unlock it.
      
    • 10c - Army - Shows any retinues you have created, including militia, retinues, and mercenaries.
      
    • 10d - Map - This button brings you to the region map, which gives you visibility over all regions, their ownership, and any resources.
      
    • 10e - Help - The help menu defines various mechanics and terminology throughout the game.
      
    • 10f - Settings - Customize your game to your needs, from graphics and audio to hotkeys and accessibility.

Building Interaction

You will often engage with three building interactions in Manor Lords: Production, Residential, and Storage.

1. Production Buildings - Most production buildings follow these three-tab structures.
   
   • 1a - General - Allows you to assign or remove families from working the selected building and provides an overview of the goods contained within it or any base goods that this building will need to refine into a processed good.
     
   • 1b - People - This shows the location of all family members employed by the building and their current status. You can also see where their homes are relative to the workplace, allowing for some optimization if you want to minimize distance between a family and its work place. To assign a family to a new job, select the cog under the People tab and then select which building you want to them to then work in.
     
   • 1c - Advanced - The options here vary based on the type of building. Some buildings allow you to assign a dedicated Ox, for example, others allow you to define a specific area to be worked on.
   
   
2. Residential Buildings - there are several tiers of residential housing, but the basics of how they operate and what you’re looking out for are what we will cover here.
   
   • 2a - Level 1 House - Every house will need to have various needs met to avoid approval loss, split across “Amenities” and “Market Supply”. In this example of a Level 1 Burgage Plot, you can see the only unmet need is “Church level.” This means no Church has been built at all.
     
     • The household will not be able to upgrade to Level 2 until this need has been met.
       
     • Burgage plots that are large enough can construct a backyard extension, which gives you a few options. In this example, a vegetable garden was built at this house.
   • 2b - Level 2 House - As you upgrade a house to a higher tier, there will be either be an increase of previous requirements or entirely new ones in the Residential panel.
     
     • As you can see in example 2B, this level two house (which has also been designated as a “Blacksmith” Artisan) requires one extra point in Church level, Food Stall supply, and Clothing Stall supply, as well as the new Amenity requirement of “Tavern supply.”
   • 2c - Artisans - As previously mentioned, houses that reach Level 2 can be further specialized into Artisans, removing them from the general labor pool and focusing the entire household on making a specific good. In this case, we have a Blacksmith.
     
     • The General tab will display various information such as whether the production side of things is fueled (separate from the house’s basic fuel requirement), and if applicable you can choose what good the household should focus on making.
       
     • General storage information for all tiers (artisan or otherwise) is also displayed on this tab.
       **Note that the armaments at the bottom of the screen show the equipment your male family members will use when the militia is called into action.
   • There are a few other important things to note about Residential Buildings:
     
     • Water access never changes – as long as there is a well within the region, this need will be met.
       
     • In Amenities, each point means something slightly different depending on the good in question – hover over the diamonds for an explanation of what each requirement means. For example, three diamonds for food means the market needs at least three different types of food available for sale.
       
     • It’s not explicit what effect the size of a burgage plot has on backyard extension output. For things like the vegetable patch, bigger is better however the bigger the garden is, the longer it takes to work.
       
       • For things like Goats (for hides) and Chickens (for Eggs), the plot size has no effect on output.
         
       • Travel time between a dwelling and place of work can affect output, as the more time a family member spends traveling, the less time they have to work the backyard extension before returning to work.
     • If you don’t meet the needs of your residents and approval gets too low, families will start leaving your village.
       
     • Artisan households can still be called up to join the militia, and they generate regional wealth.
   
   
3. Storage Buildings - There are two types of storage buildings. Granaries store food and food-related goods, while storehouses contain non-food-related goods. Storage buildings require workers to collect, store, and distribute these goods. Either a storage worker, or the relevant “goods” worker (for example a firewood worker) will automatically set up stalls at the marketplace, provided one has been established to distribute the stored goods to your burgage plots.
   
   Storage buildings have a capacity, and you can toggle what goods are stored there. Certain goods can degrade during inclement weather, so it is vitally important to have storage buildings throughout the settlement.

Flexible Plots

Several buildings use the Flexible Plot feature, which is noted by a rectangle in the top right corner of the building selector. These buildings require the player to set four points in any non-conflicting space, marking the area it will occupy.

Sometimes there will be other information, such as how large a field is for farms (measured in “Morgens”, where 1 Morgen equals 2 English acres), the number of livestock for pastures, or how many market stalls can fit inside a marketplace area.


Burgage Plots work similarly, and the size of the zone determines a few things:

• How many houses will be placed.
  
• Eligibility for a backyard extension (noted with a small shed icon).
  
• Eligibility for an accommodation extension (noted by a small house with a plus icon). This allows one plot to house two families at once. Note that given a large enough plot, both a backyard and accommodation extensions are possible.

With Burgage Plots, you also have to denote which “side” is the “front” – the front needs to be accessible and unobstructed, but it does not have to be on a road (although there’s no reason not to place it there).

Raw Resource Management

With multiple types of raw resources present on the map, there are several ways of managing them to create a sustainable economy. Note that resources come in two forms – regular deposits, and “rich” deposits, that affect the available quantity there is to harvest.


Limited Work Area - Several raw resource buildings function on a Limited Work Area basis, preventing over-extraction of resources such as wood. The Forester uses the same limited work area mechanic but plants trees instead.


Regenerative Resources - Resources such as berries and wild animals are regenerative, meaning they will not fully deplete. Berries are available to harvest starting in the spring and go dormant during winter. You can limit the harvesting of wild animals in the hunting camp to prevent over-hunting.


Mining- ground-based resources such as clay and iron do not regenerate, cannot be limited in terms of work area, and you cannot cap the amount you mine like you can with deer. If a deposit is a “rich” depost, however, you can build a deep mine which will provide infinite resources. Deep Mining technology is unlocked via the development branch.


Fields - These are where you grow your crops, and they operate on a seasonal cycle. The yield is determined by the fertility rating of the ground the field was built on. The more the fields are used, the less fertile the land becomes, which can be offset by enabling crop rotation and making at least one of the years fallow, thereby regenerating fertility.

Armies And Warfare

Settlement Management will occupy most of your time in the early game, yet warfare is equally important to grasp as a lord protecting his people from traitorous barons and brigands.

Army Troop Types - Your armies consist of 3 types of troops: Militia, Retinues, and Mercenaries.

• 1a - Militia - These are pulled from your male villagers and can be equipped with various weapons and equipment. You will need to source these yourself in order to arm your citizens.
  
• 1b - Retinue - These professional soldiers are bound to the region’s manor. They can be customized, and certain buildings and upgrades will expand the size of your retinue.
  
• 1c - Mercenaries - Mercenaries are groups of wandering soldiers that can be hired monthly, and they come with their own armaments. Available mercenaries rotate, and it’s important to note the AI Baron can also hire mercenaries.

You can create a new militia group by going to the army tab at the bottom of your screen, selecting Create New Units, and choosing the type of troop you want to assemble. With a maximum of 36 people per troop, your militia will begin to fill in the ranks as long as the required weapons are available. While not necessary, providing additional equipment such as helmets, shields, and gambesons will allow your military to perform better on the battlefield.


Rally Your Troops by selecting the unit and clicking the rally button (currently highlighted in yellow) at the top of the army tab. Your men will drop what they are doing, gather their equipment, and assemble as quickly as possible.

WARFARE - The Basics

Manor Lords operates in traditional real-time combat with pause, meaning you can issue orders and react to the world around you in real-time or by pressing space bar to pause.

To move a single or multiple units, hold down left-click and drag across the units you want to select. Once selected, right-click anywhere on the ground to order your troops to that location.

Holding down right-click and dragging across the ground with units selected will allow you to determine the width of each unit, with a shorter width providing more cohesion.

To attack any enemy unit, select your unit(s) and right-click on the enemy unit to initiate a charge or give orders to your archers to fire on the enemy.

Lastly, each unit has various orders and effectiveness when rallied. Look over each unit type to determine what orders you can give and their current Morale/Fatigue levels.

Surviving Your First Year

Surviving your first year may seem daunting, so here are some first steps to ensure solid footing for your settlement.

1. Resource availability - Establish your settlement close to food, water, and forests. These resources will keep your villagers fed and warm during the winter months.
   
2. Early Infrastructure - with these resources in mind, you will want to construct these buildings within the first year:
   
   • Well - Provides your villagers with water; place along underground water near your Burgage Plots.
     
   • Hunting Camp/Forager Hut - Depending on availability, either or both buildings will provide ample food for your villagers. A Granary will store and distribute food so they do not spoil or rot.
     
   • Logging Camp and Woodcutter’s Lodge - Both gather wood, the former for construction and the latter for firewood to keep your villagers warm during the winter. A Storehouse will store and distribute goods so they do not spoil or rot.
     
   • Marketplace - The families of your workers will need a place to sell their goods, and your Burgage Plots satisfy their needs through the marketplace.
     
   • Build your Burgage Plots close to the market, and if you can, optimize where families are working to minimize travel time between workplaces.
3. Assigned Families - Assign families close to their home, including the Granary and Storehouse. Remember, though, that at least one family needs to remain unassigned to construct buildings and pull the ox that transports supplies.
   
4. Bandit Camps - In the first year, you may find a bandit camp near your settlement. Raise a unit of spear militia and experience your first taste of combat as you fight them off and destroy their camp.
   
5. Winter Prep - As winter approaches, add more families to your Woodcutter’s Lodge to produce extra firewood or, if you have excess timber, construct more Burgage Plots to attract people into your settlement.
   
6. Use Your Wealth - If you have the wealth, Level 1 Burgage Plots with enough room for a backyard extension can add a passive production of vegetables, eggs, or hides from goats, further producing excess goods for your settlement to develop.

Consider mining & trading early as well, with refined goods like tiles and tools providing a means to start trading. The incoming wealth provides a means to purchase other goods from merchants, upgrade your backyard extensions, and even upgrade to Level 2 Burgage Plots, beginning your path to artisan families.

By spring of the next year, you should have a solid foundation in settlement operations, and start investing in farming, artisan specialties, and expanding your influence. Lastly, a word of caution - be mindful about expanding too quick, so you do not outpace firewood and food production. Unhappy peasants will leave your settlement, causing job gaps and further unhappiness within your settlement.

However you choose to play, we hope this guide has helped you understand what Manor Lords offers. As you continue to play, you will face more significant challenges in warfare and settlement building, balancing specialized regional logistics, upgrading villages, and constructing complex industrial systems. May you govern well and enjoy your time with Manor Lords.

[robains]

Are there any video tutorials on how to play this game from scratch?

[Awing]

perfect thankss

[schorsch_morsch]

One thing is realy diferent from all the other games the market system.

I build a mine, a kiln and a warehouse, get the warehouse worker to fetch carcoal for the kiln.

Kilnworker takes a long march to get firewood/charcoal from a distant market. so now i build a 1 stal market and move the marketstall that was not build in the market next door from the central market to my minimarket. I hope that is on the to do list.

[ムツ]

Why can't I get to 25 even though I unlocked trade?

[calabacina]

with the 5 initial families how do you manage all those constructions recommended in the last chapter? do you rotate them between jobs? my problem is that I always leave with negative morale and I can't have new families...

[PapaPanthers]

I guess what I am saying the upgrading of the Burgage's in my opinion needs its own section, as I understood things where allowed with each kind of extension veg, eggs, goat... but I was under the impression that the other options would be allowed in other buildings by having those other options made available... just a bit confusing to me. Great game though and will recommend to all.

[PapaPanthers]

families and their work load, needs more attention especially to the different kinds of artisans, the small one paragraph blurb with a quick no longer in service to the town is VERY important

[erick_091]

Hello, I have a problem with recruitment, there comes a point in the game where I want to recruit more militia, but it won't allow me to do so even with the weapons and recruits available, what could be causing the problem? The most I have been able to recruit is one unit of archers and one unit of spearmen per region with their corresponding retinue...

[Bjørn]

@SassyPeach09_ - These are built as backyard extensions in level 2+ residential buildings, explained in point 2 under 'Building Interaction' in this guide.

[CallMePeach]

This guide is great! I'm running into the issue of trying to find the orchard, smelter/blacksmith that I unlocked anywhere to actually place. Anyone else having this issue?