Manor Lords is a recent addition to the city-building game category. In this game, you begin by establishing your own settlement and strive to gain dominance over all territories before another Lord lays claim to them. But the game offers more than just city-building elements. It also allows players to command their armies in real-time, similar to the Total War series, but at a much smaller scale.
This guide will highlight the top 10 beginner tips for Manor Lords to help players understand the game’s mechanics better, ranging from how to maximize your terrain’s resources, how to properly manage and utilize the Families who reside in your settlement, and how you can have an easier time by building Storehouses and Granaries to keep your supplies secure. Let’s begin.
You can check out our preview piece about Manor Lords in KeenGamer through this link.
Manor Lords will be available on Steam for $14.99 as an Early Access Game on April 26, 2024.
Inspect the Terrain
Manor Lords‘ Map has nine different regions that become possible starting regions for your settlement. What makes it unique and less predictable is that each new playthrough will have a different starting region, so there’s a minimal chance that your second campaign begins in the same region as your first one.
This is why, you must pause the game right at the beginning to inspect the terrain given to you, as this is a crucial step into getting a bearing of what resources are available, and check to see if there are any Bandit Camps near your settlement.
For example, if you see that your region has an abundant amount of Berries, then you can proceed to prioritize building Forager Hut over other resource-gathering buildings. The same goes if you notice that there are tons of trees in your vicinity, then you can build woodcutting buildings before venturing into farming necessities.
The Nine Regions.
Map Out Your Roads
The next beginner tip for Manor Lords is to try to map out your roads before you build anything. As you might be aware, building roads in this game is completely free, so there is no downside whatsoever if you want to be creative in making your connected roads.
The main reason why I recommend you to build and map out your roads is because being reactionary is not sustainable in the long run. I’ve played three different playthroughs, and there is a stark difference between mapping out how you want your settlement to look from the get-go and building new areas on the fly: the layout of your settlement becomes clearer and structured if you plan out your roads, while if I didn’t map my roads beforehand, most of my buildings end up scattered around and messy, therefore making your playthrough more headache-inducing as you progress through Manor Lords.
So yes, try to pause the game (using the in-game Pause function, not the Esc button-pause), dedicate several minutes to map out your roads, and then you can proceed to plan out your building placements.
Roads Are the Backbones of Your Settlement.
Build Sufficient Burgage Plots
In Manor Lords, your villagers will require living spaces before they can be a useful resource for your settlement. For that reason, building Burgage Plots early on will be the key to expanding your territory and in turn, allow you to house more villagers and more manpower to keep everything in working order.
Although, indeed, you can’t build that many Burgage Plots in the beginning due to the lack of resources, once you manage to find a steady stream of wood supplies (through building a Logging Camp), it is imperative to build a sustainable amount of Burgage Plots to allow more Families to settle in your village.
My recommendation for the early part of the game is to have at least 15 Burgage Plots, as you will need them for numerous jobs that will become available in your settlement as you progress further down the line. Once you reach the next Settlement Level, immediately build another 15 or 20 Burgage Plots for new families to fill in your villages and give you the much-needed workforce.
Burgage Plots.
Place Families on Work-Based Buildings
Once you get the gist of Burgage Plots, and you finally see that the number of Families who decide to join your settlement rises, it’s time to put them to good use.
Most buildings in Manor Lords will require you to place at least one Family and assign them to a certain building before they can function properly. Therefore, after you successfully construct a resource-gathering building (like a Logging Camp, Hunting Camp, or Forager Hut), or a storage-type building (a Granary or Storehouse), then you need to assign a Family to that building before it can start collecting resources or storing them.
During your early runs, having only one Family per building is more than sufficient as your settlement is still small enough for them to efficiently do their jobs daily, however, as soon as you think that you can afford it, start assigning the second Family to maintain the effectiveness.
A Family Assigned to Logging Camp.
Keep a Spare Family for Construction Jobs
I’ve mentioned before that you will need Families to make sure that most buildings keep their functionality intact. However, assigning all Families you have to do numerous jobs in your settlement is also not optimal, as you will need at the very least, one Family unassigned to help you in constructing the buildings.
This is crucial for your settlement as without any Family to attend to the construction, then you wouldn’t be able to build a new building or upgrade your current ones. It’s imperative that at any given time, leave one Family vacant for this purpose.
A Family for Construction Job.
Build Storehouses and Granaries
The next beginner tip for Manor Lords is to focus on building Storehouses and Granaries as these buildings help store your precious supplies and protect them from any weather, particularly from the rain and snow.
Another major reason why you should rush building Storehouses and Granaries is that as time goes on in Manor Lords, your resources will begin to stockpile and if left alone without any proper care given to them, then those precious resources will decay and your resource-gathering buildings cannot provide you with new resources any longer.
In other words, plot out a small part of your land and dedicate it for your Storehouses and Granaries, because these two storage spaces are two of your most important buildings.
Storehouses and Granaries Are Important.
Prioritize Hunting Camps & Forager Huts Over Farmhouses
The primary advantage of Hunting Camps and Forager Huts is their ability to provide immediate food production. Unlike Farmhouses, which require a significant amount of time to yield crops, Hunting Camps and Forager Huts can start gathering food as soon as they are built.
This is because they rely on the abundant wildlife and natural resources in the game, which are readily available from the start. Therefore, focusing on these buildings early on can ensure a steady food supply for your growing population.
Hunting Camps Are Useful For Fast Food Production.
Utilize Fallow to Increase Your Farms’ Fertility
For the next beginner tip, I will recommend all players (both newcomers and veterans of Manor Lords) to always use Fallow for their Farms for the first two years.
The reasoning behind this recommendation is that most, if not all the time, your starting region will have a tremendously low soil fertility, usually hovering at 30 to 40% fertility rate. This will affect on how much yearly yield you can get, and if you try to rush your Farms to become productive right off the bat, you will do so at the expense of low yield and reduced soil fertility for the next year’s crops.
Instead, planting Fallow for two years straight will increase the fertility by 20 to 30%, thus increasing your yield by the third year. This is indeed slow, however, it’s also the most optimal way to utilize Farms early on.
Fallow Is Important For Your Farms.
Use Your Development Points Wisely
Another point I’d like to point out is that this game has a Skill Tree, or rather, Development Tree, where you can spend Development Points (Gained after you manage to increase your settlement level) and unlock upgrades or new mechanics that will further improve your settlement.
And since this Development Tree requires Development Points, you will rarely ever get to upgrade a node here, especially during your early runs, where even upgrading one Burgage Plot to level 2 seems expensive and meaningless. However, it’s not bleak and boring, per se, as you do get more freedom the longer your session becomes, and the more your settlement increases its level, thus reducing the buffer time between the first upgrade and the second.
Being wise in choosing which upgrades to take first is important, as most Development upgrades here will require you to build a new structure or enhance your current ones; For example, the Apple Orchard upgrade will only take effect if you decide to construct this upgrade in one of your level 2 or higher Burgage Plots. Instead of upgrades like this one, I recommend picking a passive upgrade like Forest Management, which doubles the amount of all Berry Deposits in all regions, or an upgrade that gives you a production building like Beekeeping, which grants you a new building named Apiary that will provide you a passive Honey production for your village.
Development Nodes.
Don’t Think About the Military Early On
The last tip I can provide in this Manor Lords guide is to not think too hard about your military prowess early on in your playthrough, as this process is extensive and will exhaust all your resources if you try to rush it out.
Militia units in Manor Lords are almost always composed of your villagers, and you can purchase additional mercenaries to strengthen your military standing, though you have to pay their monthly salary to keep using their services, which is why you should always try to strive into making your military without being overreliant to mercenaries.
The reason why I say this is because if you select an option before you start a playthrough, then there will be a shipment of weapons directed to your village, which you can use to form a Spearmen unit that is made of 20 villagers. This unit is more than enough to ensure your village’s security and help you win the initial battles, and therefore, it’s better to pool your resources in the first two or three in-game years to essential buildings like Burgage Plots, Fields, and Storehouses.
Your Starting Militia Unit Is More Than Enough.
And that’s all 10 beginner tips to help kickstart your empire in Manor Lords.
