Manor Lords - medieval city-building with large scale battles

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

Just say no to early access, kids

Remember what you get for preordering:

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

no worries. i'm always protected by my friends skid and row.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

This game sort of interests me in concept, but it seems to lack the detail necessary. If I'm going to be a lord, I want my own manor and servants. I want the politics of lordship. I don't just want Age of Empires meets Cities Skylines. And even if all you have is that, I don't want an unfinished EA mess - whether I pay for it or not.

As it stands, I'd rather just play Crusader Kings.

 

[spectre]

Yeah, having more than one region at any time is just like Korean starcraft tier of micro. There's a lot of things missing from the game that are genre staples (work tab so you don't have to click on each fucking building individually, trade tabs, etc) that would make things easier.

Also you get an arbitrary 5 militia unit limit regardless of how many regions you have, kek.

You can expand the limit to a whooping 6 by building a manor upgrade (forgot which, there's something about increasing retinue in the description).
And you can field more by hiring mercenaries.

I fully agree about the micro. I think you're expected to specialize your provinces just to keep your sanity.
The fact that you need to jump through hoops just to move shit around between them doesn't help.

I've gotten mine from a friend dauphong. Looks good is probably the best thing I can say about it,
although I also admire the autistic attention to detail with stuff like crop rotation.

What gets me wondering is why this got so popular with the youtubers (apart from the obvious incentives).
The game isn't very ADD friendly, shit takes really long to set up, especially with the population bottleneck in the beginning.
Getting to the "good" parts of actually fielding some troops takes forever, and that's counting the free handout of weapons you get.

 

[Alienman]

the two adjacent regions are entirely separate entities, they don't communicate in any way. if you want to move people you can't, and the game actually crashes too. if you want to move goods, you MUST take some other back, rather hard with a just founded new city, rather pointless once the new city can stand on its own. also economies are separate, you can't buy stuff with money earned elsewhere. but, just you wait, now i remember you actually have your own money! you ca- no, you can't spend your own fucking money on whatever you like, that's just for mercenaries, a city won't pay mercenaries to defend itself, you have to tax the city first, piss off its citizens and then only with the money coming from skimming off you can pay mercs.

Many things feel artificial and gamey, which is one of the biggest surprises to me, considering it seems to go hard on the simulation aspect - well, at least from a visual standpoint. The starting indicators should have been a warning, I guess. You always just have one berry location, one hunting area, etc.

 

[Harthwain]

Keep in mind the resource areas could be more randomizeable in the settings in the future. I doubt the game would be playable at the moment, if you were to lack one resource or another and had no one to trade for it with.

 

[motherfucker]

For all the game's flaws, drawing shit with roads never gets old

 

[IDtenT]

Yeah, the snap to road stuff is probably the best I've seen in a city builder. I might finally enjoy a gridless 3D city builder.

 

[JarlFrank]

I got into the city builder mood and bought a few more of the genre that were discounted, and also checked out some older ones I've had in my library for a while now.

And in direct comparison, there are several things that make Manor Lords feel more shallow than its competitors.
There are plenty of things I like about Manor Lords, but right now, one of its biggest issues is that the economy is too simple, and regions are too separate.

There are only three main sources of food: berries, deer, farming. You can supplement that with gardens and chicken coops added to houses, but those are passive income rather than active work for the population.
Honestly, the chicken coops are your best bet at getting sufficient food if your home region doesn't have good farmland.
Pastures, right now, are only for sheep. No cows, no goats, just sheep. And they only give wool, not milk nor meat.

Compared to Farthest Frontier which I've just started playing, that's already a big missing thing: in FF, most animals produce multiple goods. Chickens produce eggs and can be slaughtered for meat. You can set a max population per chicken coop, and if they breed more than that, they'll be auto-slaughtered for meat.
Similarly, goats and cows give milk, and when slaughtered give meat and hide and tallow.
In Manor Lords, deer are so far the only resource that give two products: hide and meat.

When it comes to hunting, Farthest Frontier has deer populations that can migrate away when the player builds too close to their habitat. In Manor Lords, they remain pretty much static.
There are also multiple sources of deer, as well as various wild plants for gathering (berries, nuts, bird nests for eggs, roots and herbs for medicine, mushrooms, etc), all across the map.
The biggest problem Manor Lords has with natural resources is how there's EXACTLY one of EACH resource in EVERY region. You can't rely on hunting or berry gathering unless your deer/berry resource has a higher yield (every region has one or two resources with higher yield, increasing the number of resource units you can harvest from it).
Honestly the way berries and deer work in particular is just completely retarded. There is ONE berry patch and ONE deer population and they both have a maximum number of animals/berries per season. It's incredibly static. Wildlife and vegetation shouldn't be that static.

Manor Lords has a much better combat system than any other city builder I tried (Farthest Frontier, Foundation), and it would be great to have a reason for expanding into other regions to get their resources, but there's no real point to it right now because you have enough at home to set up basic industries, then supplement with trade when you run out.
The second problem is that different regions don't interact. I stopped playing for now after expanding into a region with good soil (my home region had shit soil, making agriculture almost impossible). The plan was to build some farms there and supply my town with bread. But you can't do that effectively, due to how the resource exchange system works. You can barter between regions but it's an exchange of goods from one side to the other, and the amount exchanged is equivalent in value. So you basically have to trade with your own villages instead of just sending resources as needed. This is an interesting system that requires a better balancing of the economy, but in practice it just ends up as tedious micromanagement.

Honestly, ANY other system of expansion is better than having to build a new town from scratch every single time you conquer a province. Hopefully later the game will add other lords that build up their own villages so when you conquer them, you can take over what's already there instead of having to build from scratch again and again and again. This really makes expansion not fun at all.

While the economy is decent, it doesn't quite reach the level of other economy-focused games in the genre. Farthest Frontier is much more complex in amount of resources you can harvest, products you can make from them, and even has a more complex crop rotation system than Manor Lords. Foundation also has more resources and products, and different requirements for harvesting them and producing them, forcing you to diversify your town and add various different economic buildings for all the different production chains.

Right now, Manor Lords feels more complex to me than Banished (which was a pretty simple game overall), but doesn't go far beyond the old Settlers 2 when it comes to production cycles.

There's potential here but it's missing a shitload of content.

 

[spectre]

When it comes to hunting, Farthest Frontier has deer populations that can migrate away when the player builds too close to their habitat. In Manor Lords, they remain pretty much static.

I've had deer migrate once, they moved a few hundred meters. Not sure it was from building too close to them, or cutting down trees.

The biggest problem Manor Lords has with natural resources is how there's EXACTLY one of EACH resource in EVERY region.

That's probably done on purpose so that you don't get an impossible start. More variation would slow down early expansion to a crawl in new provinces,
cause of the setup time required for farming and the fact that meat only comes from wild animals. The game could use some variety here - fowl, fish, pigs, not sure why they're not here.

You can barter between regions but it's an exchange of goods from one side to the other, and the amount exchanged is equivalent in value. So you basically have to trade with your own villages instead of just sending resources as needed. This is an interesting system that requires a better balancing of the economy, but in practice it just ends up as tedious micromanagement.

I agree with this. I think the dev had this idea to prevent you from just dumping everything that's needed on a new colony. Not sure why it's a bad thing - I would be all for skipping all the early setup tedium.

Honestly, ANY other system of expansion is better than having to build a new town from scratch every single time you conquer a province. Hopefully later the game will add other lords that build up their own villages so when you conquer them, you can take over what's already there instead of having to build from scratch again and again and again. This really makes expansion not fun at all.

Hear hear.

Right now, Manor Lords feels more complex to me than Banished (which was a pretty simple game overall), but doesn't go far beyond the old Settlers 2 when it comes to production cycles.
There's potential here but it's missing a shitload of content.

I probably don't have the right vaccinations to dig it, but do we actually need to go beyond Settlers 2 with a much improved combat system? Add siege warfare and
It's selling it a bit short though, given that you have all these little details like crop rotation, citizen needs. Even things unthinkable in 2024, like only males count when you raise militia.

That said, the game can be weird mix, on the one hand really good attention to detail, on the other, certain stuff still happen "magically," like market stalls.
Haven't seen bandits actually come up to steal your shit. Would be so much better if you could get reactive and set up militia patrols, rather than just go and wreck their shit.

 

[Harthwain]

I probably don't have the right vaccinations to dig it, but do we actually need to go beyond Settlers 2 with a much improved combat system?

I played the hell out of Settlers 3. It is not a bad game to aim at.

 

[motherfucker]

The inability to send resources to other villages feels especially absurd when said villages are a 10 minute walk away from each other. I feel like much bigger maps would solve a lot of these problems.

 

[JarlFrank]

Overall I still like it, there's a lot of potential in the game if some core systems are expanded (AI manor lords on the map building actual villages in the other provinces, for example) and more content is added.

But after playing it, I don't get the massive hype that's been drummed up by all these reviewers.
Yes, it's a good city builder with good combat and potential to grow into something truly special.
But there have been claims that it's the MOST REALISTIC and BESTEST economy simulation we've had in years!! This claim clearly comes from a position of ignorance since there are other recent city builders that have the same or even a higher level of complexity in the economy, like Foundation and Farthest Frontier (which has an even better crop rotation system than Manor Lords). Then there's Of Life And Land, which I haven't played yet but which claims to have a complex ecosystem where animal and plant species can overpopulate or go extinct based on your actions (if you over-hunt wolves, deer will grow exponentially for lack of natural predators, etc).

I just wish reviewers would be more objective and make comparisons to other current city builders, other than Banished which is now a decade old but seems to be the only game of the genre these people are familiar with when drawing comparisons.
I want to know how it stacks up to other ancient/medieval city builders, what it does worse and what it does better.

My favorite parts of Manor Lords so far are the combat and the dual use of home plots as small economic buildings, with the ability to build gardens, chicken coops, and later craft workshops etc. It's a great system I haven't seen before (although Ostriv looks like it might have something similar, haven't played it yet, gotta check it out).

I guess my main complaint here is that those "influencers" and game reviewers behind the hype are all genre illiterate and don't know what they're talking about.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

lot of potential

how often did you actually see a game change and grow through early access? i can name "songs of syx". and that's it. but i also have to concede that the content in this game is just so pitifully little it will *be* expanded, even if by accident.

 

[Harthwain]

how often did you actually see a game change and grow through early access? i can name "songs of syx". and that's it.

Battle Brothers, Deep Rock Galactic, Invisible Inc, Prison Architect. And these are games I had contact with. Other people will probably have other names.

 

[JarlFrank]

lot of potential

how often did you actually see a game change and grow through early access? i can name "songs of syx". and that's it. but i also have to concede that the content in this game is just so pitifully little it will *be* expanded, even if by accident.

Often enough to make a difference, as long as the core systems are decent, which they are in this case.
Farthest Frontier for example had plenty of content added to it through the course of EA, too.
Most games in this genre start in EA and then expand their features.

The only worrying thing about Manor Lords is how long it took to develop this little amount of content, so it's probably going to take a long time until we see anything more.

 

[Gerrard]

There's a whole little subgenre of these types of medieval town builders on Steam. Banished, Farthest Frontier, Timberborne, Going Midieval, etc... They are not even good games, but I've still played these turds because it's the best fulfillment of this particular fantasy available. Manor Lords looks miles ahead of all of them. Mainly because it seems to have real gameplay in the combat and economy, not to mention it puts them all to shame visually.

I saw a couple of videos and unfortunately, it seems that this is not the Stronghold spiritual-successor that we deserve

It feels like a "clone" of Farthest Frontier that improves on everything.

LOL

 

[kangaxx]

The only worrying thing about Manor Lords is how long it took to develop this little amount of content, so it's probably going to take a long time until we see anything more.

I'm guessing the guy must have hired some staff with the cash made from EA sales which should speed things up?

 

[Hace El Oso]

lot of potential

how often did you actually see a game change and grow through early access? i can name "songs of syx". and that's it. but i also have to concede that the content in this game is just so pitifully little it will *be* expanded, even if by accident.

Soviet Republic: Workers and Resources has done very well over the course of ‘early access’, though they have the dignity not to call it that.

 

[AN4RCHID]

The only worrying thing about Manor Lords is how long it took to develop this little amount of content, so it's probably going to take a long time until we see anything more.

I'm guessing the guy must have hired some staff with the cash made from EA sales which should speed things up?

Hopefully. The game has a ton of potential but there are many areas where it is obviously unfinished, e.g. many products having no use except trade. Social management is also very underbaked.

 

[deama]

I've played this most of today. The base is good, but it's fairly underdeveloped. The version number says 0.7, but it feels more like a 0.3.
Songs of Syx is a much better one so far, and it's 2D so it'll age better too.

 

[Baron Tahn]

I don't do much early access but isn't this game supposed to have castles and so on? If that isn't in yet I'm not sure how judgement can even be passed. I mean, early access was clearly stupid, but if castle design and so on is a major cornerstone the game isn't even out of alpha yet.

 

[ropetight]

I don't do much early access but isn't this game supposed to have castles and so on? If that isn't in yet I'm not sure how judgement can even be passed. I mean, early access was clearly stupid, but if castle design and so on is a major cornerstone the game isn't even out of alpha yet.

It is probably 2-3 years of EA until something that resembles full release, so who knows.
All this hype for beta alpha testing is sometimes really hard to understand, but we have history of geting riled up based on doctored screenshots.

 

[Andnjord]

we have history of geting riled up based on doctored screenshots.

Cue flashbacks of Chaos Chronicles and That Which Sleeps.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

In our defence, That Which Sleeps was a pretty elaborate con. If the "devs" spent as much time actually making a game as they did writting massive KS updates about fictional playthroughs, they would have surely managed to release something.