Manor Lords

The best medieval-ish city builder. I happen to be a historian specialising in the Middle Ages, and games that market themselves as “historically authentic” often leave a lot to be desired as such games often don’t even try to emulate the time period beyond basic aesthetics. Since a lot of the hype around Manor Lords comes from its commitment to historical accuracy, I'll be reviewing it from that perspective. This game, although there is room for improvement, is clearly an earnest attempt to enable players to recreate reasonably authentic medieval towns and villages and gets closer to that goal than any of its rivals. After spending about a dozen hours building a large town, it's very much unfinished but what's there is good.
There is currently one map with some RNG elements, such as your starting location and the starting location of a rival lord who also wants this land and whom you will eventually have to fight. You will build houses which can, as was typical in the Middle Ages, have a productive plot of land to the rear for a vegetable garden or household animals like goats or a chicken coop, and the system for building them is intuitive, flexible, and a joy to use. You’ll have to manage trade with off-map settlements as well as maintain a militia to deal with bandits or the rival lord. On the whole, I really like it.
There are some issues with the mechanics of the game:
1. There is no way (that I can find) to limit the production of certain goods without micromanaging employment. It would be good to say “have a stockpile of 50” like you can in other settlement management games, and like you can with the trading system. I would like to not have to micromanage 14 houses just to regulate what planks are used for. This has now been fixed, great job.
2. Combat is trivial assuming rough parity between the size of the armies. You have to try to lose a battle to lose a battle.
3. Bandit raids on your village happen off screen a lot of the time. Like, you can’t defend your settlement, you just get a notification that you’ve lost goods to bandits. Let us defend ourselves please, or let us have a bailiff to reign in the thieves.
4. Trade is overpowered, you can get to a point where the player can run the whole settlement through trade. Trade has no risks, so the game steers the player toward relying on trade rather than managing their villages. This has been overcorrected and dealt with in the wrong way I think. Trade is now a great way to completely wreck your regional economy because you'll be exporting tools and warbows for 5 gold while bringing in barley at 12 gold a bushel.
5. The rival lord expands far too aggressively, even on its lowest settings. By the time you can claim a single neighboring parcel of land, you’ll be lucky not to have been boxed in completely. The AI takes one parcel a year, there are 8 provinces, and it starts with two while you start with one. This means that by year 5 the AI has the map locked down entirely while you’re still trying to get a decent harvest in. This sucks and is the game’s biggest problem right now. It has been toned down a bit but I still feel unable to compete.
The game has a remarkable ability to enable the player to create authentic medieval town layouts, and you could probably recreate some medieval towns in the game pretty accurately. However, the game seems to be based on central Europe around 1400, so it does tend to lean toward villages and towns from that time and place. While you can emulate, for example, Norman town planning with its focus on commercial high/fore streets, you cannot build a medieval Italian town in this game because plazas are not a thing (yet), while building a village around a central green would be aesthetic rather than the functional heart of the village.
This leads on to an area where the game and its commitment to historical accuracy will hopefully improve as development continues, which is forest and land management. In most medieval-ish town planning games (this one included) you put down a logging hut and they just cut down trees, then a forester plants new trees. This is not how medieval people generally managed their woodland, if only because it’s remarkably inefficient prior to mechanised forestry. Although the villages are historically authentic, the same effort has not been put into those villages’ relationship with the land (yet). Some suggestions:
1. Coppicing. Coppicing was the practise of cutting a tree down to the stump to stimulate the growth of shoots around the stump, essentially tricking one tree into growing many trees. This would result in a large amount of harvestable wood within 7-10 years. However, the shoots were vulnerable to being eaten by deer. It has been used as a means to harvest firewood in Europe for over 1000 years.
2. Pollarding. The same idea as coppicing, but it’s done about 2m up the tree trunk. You get less wood that’s harder to access, but deer won’t eat it.
3. Deeper deer management. Of course, if deer keep eating everything you could just kill all the deer. Deer culling was (and still is) an important part of forestry. Although the game does have deer management it is as simple as “don’t over-hunt”. It would be good to see this expanded to reflect the real world impacts of deer overpopulation or underpopulation.
4. Wolf management. When creating new villages, they often encroached on the habitats of wolves. Wolves don't usually attack people, but if they get used to human contact and become habituated, they do. A mechanic for wolf packs similar to deer migration (except rather than going further away when bothered, they attack) might work well. It would be nice to fight something other than the tropey RNG bandit camp.
It’s got a lot of promise, I’m sure I’ll enjoy sinking hundreds of hours into it over the years, but you might want to wait a year or so until it’s further along development.

It is like Tropico with medieval battles.
And no mustaches.
The real question though is… will Henry come to see us?
Imagine an entire gaming company with the same amount of passion as the guy who made this game. One can dream… This game, made by one single person, is more fun, more complete, and has a more clear vision than most triple A garbage. Example: Ubisoft.
This game is Stronghold+Banished +Total War and I love all 3 of them and all 3 of them had something missing in them, and that was the other two games. Now someone made a fusion of all 3 games and it is awesome. Strongold lacked battle tactics and deeper survival aspects.
Banished lacked anything military.
Total War lacked anything city building and micro managing your town. It's like the perfect answer to when you’re playing Crusader Kings 3 and you really wish you could just jump right into one of the cities on the map! I was very much ready for this game.
Firstly though, are you the kind of person who will be upset about bugs, missing content, unbalanced game mechanics, and slow updates? If yes to any of these then wait for the game to develop further first. It's a single person making the game so you should be expecting updates to be slow and there are plenty of issues that need to be fixed.
Are you ok with all that and enjoy city builder/resource management games? If you're a city builder fan and want to follow along with progression of a potentially phenomenal game then give it a try. Even with the current state of the game there is plenty of fun to be had. It looks great, runs great, and is a really solid foundation for the dev to continue building on. It says a lot about a game where it's not close to a final state yet is so addictive. As long as you have realistic expectations of an Early Access game being developed by a single person then buy it and have fun with it.
There’s a lot of comparison to Banished but I think Manor Lords is more impressive. The atmosphere is amazing. Just the wilderness and the music and the way the peasants interact with the environment, really nails it. The framework of additional gameplay is there and I can’t wait for more to be added. Diplomacy and the need to expand into other territory and defend it is exciting. Manor Lords systems are simple, but it’s a system of systems. Balancing everything is where the challenge comes. Personally this game scratches an itch I have to set up a town and manage it. I find fun in the tinkering. Somehow I don't need a story or reason. It's just living life. I don't want to conquer or fight anyone. I want more people to move into my town and I like to watch it prosper. I have consoles and PC and many games, but all I want to do is manage my burgages. 
It is so fun, it feels oddly satisfying to see your city grow, the buildings improve, the economy stabilising especially if you set up a trading post and start exporting and importing goods, etc. The combat is also surprisingly enjoyable, not because it is that complicated, but more because it is a people and army that you create. It’s a settlement management game like with RTS elements. Just don't expect full Total War levels for the RTS part. Your townsfolk are also your militia, so they will be farming and blacksmithing one day and then marching off to war the next. Any combat losses actually affect your workforce, because they are one in the same. You’ve got to gather the resources and craft (or trade for) your weapons and armor, so if your economy fails, so does your “war machine”. Their morale in battle is directly affected by their happiness as townsfolk etc. It’s all pretty clever and well-done.
You can make the AI really agressive and when you do I think it’s more enjoyable than Total War. Sure there are only a few unit types right now but that will change and honestly the battles are more satisfying. Having to arm all your men yourself makes you more invested. I’m honestly surprised so many people don’t mention the combat side of the game much, I think most people play on the default easy mode and never challenged the baron or tried to raid bandit camps. I’m willing to admit the combat side of the game needs a lot more but I think what’s aleady there is still immensely satisfying.
This is a single Dev so I was happy to throw him $30 out of support! He's been at it for years, and just now getting some return for his work, I don't see any reason for him to stop now, especially with some fresh capital to work with. He's got a great start and could turn this into a classic for the ages. I highly recommend buying it, but understand wanting to wait for a more complete version. It has its problems and if you are one of those people that gets frustrated when things don't work you might want to take a pass for now. I'm addicted to the game and love it bugs and all and I can see myself playing it for years and years to come.
Long story short it's a buy, but will drastically improve as time goes on so don't feel pressured to buy today, however a good buy nonetheless. It's an awesome game, if you are a true fan of the medieval era and if you are a contemplative gamer don’t hesitate on giving it a try!
9/10

To the devs. If you're reading this, do NOT give up on this game. Bought it for myself as a Christmas gift and now I can't put it down. It feels like a real game, it feels fun, and you can feel the passion that went into it.

A very chill medieval city builder. Beautiful graphics, good gameplay, and a single motivated dev who should now take his millions and hire some full time devs to finish the game.

The developer Greg is extremely hardworking and attentive. While the game is still in beta, it's the most fun I've had in a long time. Greg really listens to his community. I can't wait for the future of this game. The bugs I had experienced that made me put down the game when it released got fixed within 2/3 weeks. So it's nice knowing if something is affecting all players or a lot of players it will be attended to. Thank you for all you do Greg. You deserve everything that's coming to you. Congrats man

Before you play:
— Set FPS to a multiple of 30 (30, 60, 120, etc).
— Turn off Anti-aliasing on older cards.
— Set V sync to on.
— The game sets graphics to ultra by default, lower them to medium or high to prevent sudden stuttering.
=====Getting Your Feet Wet=====
— Comments are enabled on this review, if you have a question that isn't answered here,
leave a comment and I'll check back and try to answer it for you, then update the guide for future players.
— Play the first free build campaign first.
much of this guide won't make a lot of sense until you get your foot into a campaign and just 'start playing'
follow the in-game tool-tips as best as you can and when you inevitably get stuck, come back to the guide and find the section you need.
— Some resources are seasonal so assign your labor / unassign your labour accordingly, don't have families doing nothing.
— Make sure you move your starting resources into a granary/storehouse before they're damaged by weather.
— Construct your farms + Plots in November - Jan - so they're ready to plant by spring (march)
— Don't be afraid to force-harvest fields (especially larger ones) so the crops aren't ruined by rain.
— when setting up a trading post - you can trade Firewood + Stone without opening a trade route.
— Taxing your citizens doesn't increase your regional wealth (spending cash) it increases your treasury, setting a tax early in the game isn't usually beneficial focus on establishing trade.
— How to make clothes cheaply:
 Burgher plot with goats /hunting camp - > Produces hides - > Tanner - >Level 2 Burgher plot Cobbler/tailor (shoes count as clothes)
— How to make Ale for taverns: 
 Barley field - > Malt house - > Lv2 Burgher plot with Brewery - > Tavern.
— How to farm efficiently:
—Assigning 8 people to one farming home makes little sense, you're better off assigning 2 families to a few farming houses each and giving them each an ox.
— several smaller farming fields are significantly more efficient than one large field.
— Always plant no earlier than march.
— Always Harvest by September (if you haven't got a huge amount of families at the farm, don't be afraid to 
   force an early harvest so the stock isn't ruined by weather)
— Rotate the crops yourself, don't set up a rotation or they'll plant during the wrong months.
— Building a church is an easy increase in approval.
— Building a market is an easy increase in approval.
   (you will need more than one market plot as your houses increase out of range.)
— Building multiple storehouses/granaries is necessary as you expand
— Building a well close to farming plots/houses optimises walking time.
— Assign multiple workers to granaries/Storehouses to have industry stocks/food picked up quicker.
— Try to make your burgher plots into districts and work your industry buildings around them E.G Brewers 
   near a granary, granary near a tavern, Vege farmers near a granary, Blacksmiths near a storehouse etc.
— click on your storehouses and granaries to see what the people are doing via the people tab, if they're all 
   sitting in stalls it might be time to make a new storehouse and granary to keep goods coming in.
— Place industry buildings close to a storehouse for efficiency.
— Place food sources close to a granary for efficiency.
— When trying to optimize what your storehouse and granary collect/store based on the closest goods, go to 
   the advanced tab, and deselect the goods you don't want those storage facilities to collect so they always 
  stay collecting optimal, close-distanced goods.
— Utilise roads - they're free and make Oxen and Handcarts travel quicker.
— Upgrade your hitching post and order an extra ox when you start making Wealth from trading.
— Goods that are in 'generic storage' at their production building or burgher plot are not safe from weather 
  until they are placed in a granary or storehouse.
— Each member of a family can only move 1 item at a time unless they specifically work at storehouse or 
   granary, it is ALWAYS more efficient to have enough granary/store workers to keep up with what your 
   buildings are producing than it is to have your families stop their tasks and have to transport goods 
   because their generic storage is full.
— Build extra hitching posts near logging camps/farms when you have the funds.
— Every 30 days you can order a new ox (provided you have space)
— Many buildings share the ox, so getting several of them should be a priority when you start getting some wealth.
— It is more efficient to have larger homes producing vegetables than farming.
— L-shaped or Triangle Burgher plots for farming have significantly higher yields than square-shaped blocks a lot of the time.
— You can use a Road to provide shape to L or Triangle-shaped plots.
— You can use a field to clear an area of trees if they're in the way/blocking your vision.
— Don't be afraid to delete/destroy empty market stalls so the family members running them return to doing something useful.
— it's perfectly okay to stop production and re-assign workers from other tasks if you aren't using the resources from them 'right now'
— Bandit camps are different from bandit units, you can use your troops to 'claim' bandit camps and you'll get the option of choosing either treasury wealth or regional wealth - treasury wealth increases the funds you can spend on hiring mercenaries, sending the camp goods to your region will give you immediately usable regional wealth.

Early Access Review - July 9th, 2024

First off, I am going to rate this game positively, but I am mainly going to be putting criticism in this review. I am also only going to state what is in the game when posted, and not what it could potentially have. It's a beautiful and fairly well optimized game. Great for relatively casual play. However the game does not last as long or as challenging as I would like, making the price a bit steep for what it is currently.

For me, the game has me a bit perplexed. On one hand, I like how the management is not overwhelming for the individual towns. On the other hand, it means there is often a lot of times where this is very little for the player to do. A lot of people are going to over-optimize their towns, but there is really very little reason to do so as the game naturally solves the problem quite easily. It's basically best to try and build your towns to resemble medieval towns, level 3 houses around the market, level 2 on the outskirts, and level 1 in little hamlets around the region.

The main difficulty is that you are basically forced to make every town completely self-sufficient. It is realistic, but for unless you are in one of the two fertile regions on the map, it is very difficult to make grain crops to have a supply of bread for a whole year, leaving you weirdly more dependent off of vegetables, eggs, berries and hunting than what should be expected. While in theory you are supposed to optimize each village to an industry, the exporting and trade system doesn't really balance out between the regions, making the small exporting towns quite rich, while population centers to be fairly poor, due to the exporting towns not needing goods from larger towns. Due to this, the game somewhat encourages the development of only one region, then has the player just take over all of the rest, which I don't think is intentional at all.

Combat is also far simpler than I would have liked. While arches have been buffed from early access release, they are still underwhelming. The current combat scale is a bit too small to make positional warfare an important strategy, making the simplest strategy to just have spear militia to pin the enemy and retinue charge and break them. Unless you can get silver VERY fast, mercenaries are largely out of the question for the player.

The other thing is that the physical map stays the same, though each time you start the game the resources and fertility are randomized. I would recommend restarting the game until you have a starting region that you are happy with. However, even with this, the game doesn't really encourages me to do a second playthough after fully restoring the peace. I might build another settlement on that playthrough just to try and make a better ale production, though in reality, most likely I will just have to crash the global demand for ale with this new town just to the price is cheaper for all my other towns to import it.

Once again, I did enjoy this game. Most of the enjoyment is from watching your town grow, and walking around. Don't try to meta this game too hard, just try to relax and take your time with it. Other than the occasional bandit raid or claim being pushed on you, it is actually a fairly relaxing game to wind down to once you have the necessities built and families assigned. Further expansion of required goods and services to the towns will likely make it more interesting in the long run, as well as more diplomacy and other AI towns on a larger map. I am willing to see where this game will head in the future, though it will likely be several more years until a more complete vision will be realized.

Also, feel free to ask me any questions on this game in the comments below, and I'll gladly answer them!