Overview of Manor Lords game
Manor Lords is a new medieval strategy game that stands out for its deep city-building mechanics, real-time tactical battles, and complex economic and social systems. As a player, you step into the shoes of a medieval lord, tasked with managing your lands, caring for your people, and adapting to the changing seasons.
Your goal is to preserve your lands and legacy for future generations. This formula has proven to be a success—Manor Lords has been added to over 3 million Steam wishlists, making it one of the most anticipated games in recent months.
So, why has Manor Lords garnered so much attention from players? Let’s dive into what makes it so appealing.
What About the Gameplay?
At its core, Manor Lords follows a familiar gameplay structure for its genre—build, manage, and fight. But it offers enough unique twists to keep things engaging. When you start the game, you first name your lord and choose a portrait. You can also customize your lord’s coat of arms, with a flexible editor that lets you create a unique design.
Currently in early access, the game offers three scenario templates (or modes), each catering to different playstyles:
- Peaceful Mode – This mode is perfect for players who want to focus solely on building without the distractions of battles. There are no raids, no rival lords to fight—just pure construction and management.
- Standard Mode – This is the classic setup, where you build your city, defeat the local baron, capture the entire map, and fend off raiders. This is the mode that I personally started with.
- Survival Mode – This is the most challenging scenario. You start with a small settlement, quickly recruit an army, and fend off waves of raiders. Your goal is to reach the level of a Big City settlement, which is a true test of your management skills and ability to defend your people.
Each scenario can be adjusted for difficulty, allowing players to customize the frequency of raids or the amount of initial resources, creating a personalized experience.
The game kicks off with a small handful of villagers and resources, and you are immediately given hints about the basic elements of survival. Your first tasks are setting up timber harvesting and building farms for your villagers. The game shows a realistic construction process: people drag resources to the construction site, build structures, and hammer in boards. It’s very immersive.
Interestingly, the building mechanics in Manor Lords feel familiar to those who have played The Island, but with a slight twist. For instance, you have to manually build roads, which the villagers will later use. The roads aren’t automatically created or assumed by the game, which adds a layer of responsibility.
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Once you’ve set up the first camp and hired a family to work there, you start to feel the weight of managing your population. Each job, such as woodcutting, can be assigned to families—three families might work in a single woodcutting camp.
It’s crucial to track your workforce and ensure that you have the right people in the right places. As the game progresses, you will need to make tough decisions about where to assign families and when to fire them to free up workers for other tasks, such as building new structures.
One peculiar thing to note is that each family consists of three members: a husband, wife, and son. There’s no mention of daughters, which seems a bit odd from a realism standpoint. It’s unclear whether this is a deliberate game mechanic or just a limitation of the current build.
Perhaps it’s meant to streamline the economy or to simplify the process of mobilizing soldiers, since only sons can be drafted into the army. It will be interesting to see if this feature is refined in future updates, and if other family members, such as daughters or younger children, will be added to the game.
As you gather wood and other resources, you can build homes for the villagers. These houses can be upgraded to higher levels, accommodating more families and improving their living conditions.
As you progress, these homes can be turned into workshops, such as tailor shops or smithies, where the families will produce goods like clothing or weapons. This creates an intricate economy where each building serves a purpose in the broader system.
Visit Mode and the Resource System
Manor Lords also offers a unique “visit mode,” allowing you to walk around your city in a third-person perspective. Though this feature is still experimental and purely cosmetic, it’s a fun way to see the world you’ve created from a more personal viewpoint.
The resource system in the game is both deep and essential to survival. So far, there are only three types of wood: timber, firewood, and boards. Each is important for different production chains.
For example, to make weapons, you need to gather iron ore, smelt it in a forge, and then have blacksmith families turn it into usable items like spears or swords. Likewise, if you need bread, you must grow wheat, process it into flour, and have bakers turn it into loaves.
Resource management plays a huge role in the game’s economy. If you run out of supplies, you can trade with neighboring regions. I ran into this problem during winter when food supplies dwindled, so I sold some stones to buy wheat for bread.
The nearby forest had no berries left, and my gardens had produced little. Even the hunters had nearly wiped out all the deer, leaving me to wait for them to repopulate. This sort of economic puzzle-solving is a key part of Manor Lords’ gameplay.
Enemies and Combat
Bandit camps are another challenge in Manor Lords. They periodically appear on the map and, sooner or later, become a threat to your settlement.
The early access version of the game offers a limited variety of troops, including archers, infantry, halberdiers, and pikemen. There is also a special squad of professional soldiers that you can recruit during the estate’s construction.
The game allows you to customize each soldier’s appearance, including their armor and colors. Each squad starts with five soldiers, and you can add more by hiring them from your treasury for a cost of 50 local coins per soldier. You can also hire mercenaries to bolster your ranks if needed.
The combat mechanics are tactical and resemble the Total War series. Soldiers can take on different attributes based on their equipment, such as armor and shield, which influence their performance in battle.
Morale, fatigue, and efficiency are key factors to monitor. Soldiers can be ordered to fire at enemies only when there is no friendly fire risk.
Units with shields reduce damage from frontal attacks, but their fatigue increases. If a soldier is attacked from behind, they suffer significantly more damage. These mechanics create a dynamic and realistic combat system that requires careful strategy.
What About the Graphics?
Manor Lords is powered by Unreal Engine 4, which helps it achieve impressive visuals. The lighting system, rain effects, and smoke effects are all beautifully executed, adding to the game’s overall immersion.
The human models are well-detailed, and the environment itself is lush and vibrant, with green forests, wide lawns, and dynamic weather changes. Whether it’s sunny, raining, or snowing, the world feels alive and constantly changing.
The sound design is another standout feature, with a range of ambient noises that complement the visuals perfectly. Birds chirp in the forest, villagers go about their daily business in the city, and the armies march with precision.
The soundtrack shifts depending on the season and the mood, from cheerful summer melodies to intense winter compositions. However, I do hope rivers and lakes will be added in future updates to further enrich the environment.
Developer and Future Updates
Manor Lords was originally developed by Grzegorz Styczęń, a solo developer from Poland. The game was announced in 2020, and Styczęń has been very open with the community, regularly seeking feedback and suggestions for future updates. In fact, he’s currently running a poll on social media to find out what players would like to see added to the game this year.
Styczęń is a strong proponent of community involvement, and many of the ideas in the game have been inspired by player suggestions. I personally voted for AI-managed cities, which Styczęń has promised to explore in the future.
Conclusion
Manor Lords is a promising title with a lot of potential. The game looks great, with its deep gameplay mechanics and stunning graphics. However, it’s still in early access, and there are bugs to iron out and content to add.
The economy is a bit rough around the edges, and the game’s current offering is limited. Despite this, Manor Lords is already a very solid foundation for what could become one of the top medieval city-building games out there.
With the potential for modding support and future updates, the game is in a good place for growth. I’m personally excited to see where it goes. For now, I’d rate it an 8 out of 10. Manor Lords is available on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and Xbox One, but has not yet been announced for PS5.
Whether you decide to buy the game now or wait for the full release, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on. I’ve been playing it myself, and despite its roughness, I’m enjoying the experience and eager to see how it develops.