Need help to grow your village in Manor Lords? Here, you can check out some beginner tips for those new to the game.
Manor Lords give you the freedom to claim territories, build a militia, and expand your settlement. As a strategy game, you will need to plan wisely as you expand; if you get too eager, you may be left with a bunch of unhappy villagers who don't have any food.
In this guide, we are going to take a look at some beginner's tips to help you get started on your Manor Lords journey. These will be especially helpful if you feel a bit overwhelmed at the start of the game, since there are a lot of tasks to accomplish.
Manor Lords is currently in Early Access on Steam and as such, the content is subject to change. We will update these articles as required.
Start Farming Immediately
Finding a food source for your villagers is essential. When you first start, there will be a small supply of food available, but you should start looking for more food resources quickly. A Forager Hut and Hunting Camp are a great way to get more meat and berries, but you will also want to start farming as quickly as possible.
By farming and growing wheat, you will be able to have a steady supply of bread to feed your villagers. When planted at the beginning of the game, your villager will plant wheat, which can then be harvested before Winter sets in.
Create Burgage Plots With Backyard Extensions
Burgage plots are houses that you can lay down in your territory for villagers. When placing these plots, you will notice that they can curve and snap onto existing structures such as nearby plots or roads. If you were to drag the border further, you may even see a little house outline with a hammer inside.
This is the backyard extension; houses with this can have an extra production area. When the plot is still level one, your options will be limited to chicken, vegetables, or goat raising. Once you unlock new development points and upgrade the burgage plots, you can create unique shops like a Blacksmith or Tailor. These are very useful in the creation of clothing and weapons.
Don't Assign All Families To Work
This may sound counter-intuitive, but don't assign all of your families to work in town. When looking at the upper lefthand corner of your screen, you will see two large numbers. The right one is how many families are assigned to work, while the left is the number of families who are unassigned.
Families that are not assigned to work will instead focus on construction. This means that if you place five new burgage lots, the unassigned workers will begin to construct them. This is incredibly helpful if you want to get a building up quickly.
If you only have one family working and several things that need to be built, consider lowering the amount of workers at other locations. From our experience, we unassigned workers from other jobs to build some burgage plots, which then allowed more families to move in and fill the role of the job we removed a family from.
Build A Manor
In a game called Manor Lords, it's only natural that you can build a manor. This building is tucked away in the Administration tab of the construction menu, and can be easy to forget about. With a manor though, you will be able to tax your citizens.
Of course, taxation will bring down overall happiness, but it also means that the money in your treasury will increase. With more money here, you can then use it to hire mercenaries and for diplomatic reasons.
From your manor, you can also set a tithe; this is surplus food that is given to the church in order to raise your influence. Influence is used to claim new territories, making it quite helpful.
Don't Build Your Militia Right Aways
The idea of building up a powerful militia and defeating others may sound appealing, but we suggest holding off on this at the start of the game. Before getting your army set up, ensure that the existing villagers are happy and well-fed, with plenty of resources.
From here, consider crafting new weapons and armor for your army. This can be done by mining iron ore and turning it into bars. Once this is done, you can send it over to a Blacksmith (or Armorer if you have the development point unlocked) in order to make some gear for your troops.
Remember, when you want to rally your troops, you can do so by heading to the Army tab at the bottom of the screen. There are only a certain amount of troops you can have, but you will only be able to have as many as your weapons allow. For example, if you only have 20 bows available, when you create an archer militia, it may say 20/36. To raise this, simply make more bows.
Militia members are existing male villagers. When rallied, they will stop working and head to the rally point.
When your available troops satisfy you, click on them and then click the little flag above the icon; this is the rally action, which lets you set a gathering point. Once rallied, just right-click on where you want your militia to go!
Deal With Bandits Quickly (If You Can)
Bandits aren't aggressive, but they will steal your items. If they happen to steal a few pieces of firewood, it may seem like no big deal, but they can also steal more valuable goods. Once you get a notification saying that bandits are in the area, we suggest dealing with them.
This will take a militia, but you don't have to increase your forces to take on a camp. Typically, a bandit camp only has one attacking group which can be easily handled with the army that you start the game with.
If, for some reason, you don't have the resources to deal with bandits, it's not the end of the world. While you may lose some items, it won't set your village back too far. Once you are able to though, take out those bandits!
Invest In Deep Mining
Deep mining is a development point that allows you to upgrade existing mines to harvest resources indefinitely. This can only be applied to rich iron and clay deposits, which are marked on the map with a star.
Iron is used for armor and weapons, while clay is used to make tiles , which are essential to upgrading burgage plots to the third and final level.
To gain more development points, you will need to upgrade your burgage plots. To check the requirements, hover over the name of your territory at the top of the screen. Here, you will see a checklist of things that need to be done. For example, to reach 'Large Town', you need 30 level one plots, 20 level two plots, and 15 level 3 plots.
When all requirements are met, your village will upgrade, giving you a new development point. In addition to deep mining, we suggest investing in basic armor making, trapping, and the heavy plow.
