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16 Manor Lords tips and tricks for beginnersBecome the ultimate Manor Lord with our tips for beginners and advanced players alike
Become the ultimate Manor Lord with our tips for beginners and advanced players alike
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Looking for some tips and tricks to help you get started in Manor Lords?It’s quite astonishing, what Slavic Magic - predominantly a one-person dev team - has done in creatingManor Lords. The newestcity-builderon the block does a whole lot of things rather differently to most games in the genre, with a gridless building and roads system and the inclusion of Total War-style combat being the two features players have talked about the most ahead of release.
But as with many city-builders, it can be difficult to understand exactly what needs doing and when. There’s already a lot of content inManor Lords, even in early access, and not much in the way of tutorials that teach you how everything actually works, or the best strategies to employ to build your settlement from nothing to greatness.
In this guide, we offer 16 (well, actually more like 40) of thebest Manor Lords tips and tricksfor both beginners and advanced players alike. We’ll go over everything from family management and road placement to the different seasons, trade, warfare, and much more. So let’s get started!
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1. Hold TAB to view extra information
Hold TAB for extra details! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
At any point in Manor Lords, you canhold the TAB buttonto bring up the additional information overlay. This overlay gives you a lot of extra detail at a glance about all the buildings in your settlement, including where your families are working, the currentApprovalrequirements of your citizens, the rate of growth of your crops, and more.
Every couple of minutes I hold TAB and scan my entire settlement to see how everything is doing. It’s a fantastic and essential feature that helps you quickly spot any potential issues with your growing town.
2. Unoccupied families will build for you
You can’t build anything without jobless families. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
3. Store your starting supplies before it rains
The damaging effects of weather depend on your starting settings, but you should always look to store resources early on regardless. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Weather can be deadly in Manor Lords, andrainfall is common. When you first start a Manor Lords playthrough, you need to quickly move your starting supplies into aStorehouseandGranaryso they are protected from the next rain.
If you don’t do this, then those crucial starting supplies (including your food) could be ruined within the first few days of your playthrough. Make it a priority tostore resourcesthat are out in the open as quickly as possible.
4. Take time to understand the seasons
Farming depends heavily on the seasons. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Seasons are very important in Manor Lords. Not only will Winter prove a more difficult survival challenge thanks todouble Firewood consumptionand the need forClothesto keep everyone warm, but you also need tosynchronise your farmingwith the different seasons. You should aim to do all your harvesting and sowing during the Autumn months (September, October, November), before leaving them to grow over the Spring and Summer months.
You can hover over the current month displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen to get a full breakdown of the different seasons and their effects on your settlement in Manor Lords.
5. Optimise road placement
Roads are free and instantly built, so go crazy with them. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Roads aren’t just fun to place in Manor Lords. They make movement much faster for your populace, and so it’s important whenplacing roadsto give your citizens theshortest, quickest journeybetween where they are and where they’re going. For example - when beginning a new game, make a conscious decision to build a straight road from your Logging camp to the area you’re going to spend most time building, so that your families waste as little time as possible ferrying Timber to and fro.
6. Be very careful with finite resources
The map is full of finite resources, so be careful not to waste them. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Manor Lords is full of finite resources.IronandClaydeposits can disappear over time;Berrieswill only grow at certain times of the year;Wild Animalscan be hunted to extinction; eventrees and forestsare limited resources on the Manor Lords map.
So for each of these resources, you should be very careful not to run yourself out of them entirely. Learn the best ways to prolong these resources. Here’s what we suggest:
7. Work your families as efficiently as possible
Keep track of how far your families have to travel from home to work! |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Families do all the important work in Manor Lords, so to really kickstart your settlement, you should try to maximise their efficiency. This tip is actually two tips in one, but both are related and of equal importance:
Make families work close to their homes.
Click on aBurgage Plotand select the “People” tab, then click the “Show Workplace” button with the cog icon. This shows where that family is working. If they work far from home, click the button next to the cog to “Reassign family to a different workplace”. If you do this regularly, then your entirePopulationwill become much more efficient because far less working time will be wasted on travel.
Keep changing where your families work depending on need.
If you don’t have any construction jobs, then don’t leave any families unassigned: set them to work. If your Berries are depleted for now, unassign the families at the Forager Hut. If you don’t haveAle, then there’s no need for families to work in the Tavern. Move your families around as needed to grow your settlement more quickly.
8. Create Plots with Living Space Extensions
Living Space Extensions are extremely valuable parts of plot placement. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
9. Get another Ox and Hitching Post early on
It’s never too early for another Ox. |Image credit:Slavic Magic
Likely the biggest bottleneck early on in expanding your settlement will be ferrying resources to where they’re needed. This is predominantly the job of yourOxen, but with just one Ox and one Hitching Post, you’ll never get things done in a timely manner.
Spend the25x Regional Wealthearly on to get an additional Ox, and your productivity will soar. Suddenly buildings will get built so much quicker. It’s also a very good idea later on to build additional Hitching Posts and Stables in different areas of your settlement, so that Oxen don’t spend ages travelling to where they’re needed.
10. Build multiple marketplaces across your town
Marketplaces keep your populace happy, so make sure they’re sorted early on. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
11. Set up Trade as soon as you have goods to sell
Learninghow to tradeis an enormous part of any Manor Lords player’s first playthrough. To start trading, build aTrading Postand enter the Trade tab of the building to set various resources to be imported and exported.
There’s no point in building a Trading Post before you have items to sell, but theinstantit feels like you have a good surplus of any item, start exporting. You’ll need all thatRegional Wealthlater when it comes to purchasingweapons and armor, or settling new territories.
12. Export Warbows for big profits
Warbows are easy to make and sell for a lot of Regional Wealth. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Warbows are amazingly easy to make, and each one sells in the Trading Post for5x Regional Wealth. For reference: if you just export the 1 Plank it took to make the Warbow, you’d only gain 2x Regional Wealth. That’s a 150% markup. Business is good.
13. Start small when farming
Don’t go crazy with farm sizes, or you’ll shoot yourself in the foot. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
It may be tempting when you first startfarming in Manor Lordsto just place down one giant farm and say “there, that’s all my food needs for the time being sorted”. Butlarge farms are very tricky. Everything has to be done in accordance with the seasons, so your workers have a limited amount of time to do every part of the farming process.
Therefore, it’s best to start small with your first couple of farms. Farm sizes are measured in “Morgens”, and we’d recommend your first farm stays at around1.0-1.5 Morgens. The bigger farms can come later on.
14. Don’t build more than you need
There’s little point in building something that’s just going to sit abandoned for the next hour or two. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Have you ever stopped to ask yourself why you’re building that Malthouse before you’ve even got Barley? Or why you’ve got a Sheep Farm before you’ve imported anySheep? Most of the buildings in Manor Lords are available to build from the start of the game, which can trick you into thinking you should build them all as soon as possible. You don’t.
Building more than you need is a fantastic way to run yourself out of Timber and stall production of your settlement.Play it slow, and build what you need when you need it, and not before.
15. Get the right Development Points early on
These are our recommendations for where to invest your Development Points first. |Image credit:Rock Paper Shotgun/Hooded Horse
Development Upgradesform the tech tree of Manor Lords, and some of them are very, very powerful. We go over the most important of them in ourbest Development Upgrades guide, so we won’t repeat ourselves here. But remember that, at least when you first start a Manor Lords game, Development Points are rare and precious, and you should invest them where they’re most needed. Having an Ox plough a farm sounds cool (and it is), but it might not be your top priority.
16. Deal with Bandits as they arrive
Dealing with Bandits as quickly as possible is good for two reasons. First: it is the only way to prevent them from stealing your valuable resources.Banditry happens automatically; there’s no stopping it until you destroy the Bandit Camp. And secondly, killing Bandits and plundering their camps is a great way to earnTreasuryandInfluence.
Bonus Manor Lords tips!
Finally, here’s a selection of more specific and advanced Manor Lords tips that we couldn’t fit into any of the sections above. How many do you know?
