MANOR LORDS | Beginner's Guide - 6 Major Mistakes to Avoid 

I had two archers fighting each other for 10 minutes with no damage to either side. lmao.

They might not get many kills but they do great morale damage when they flank the enemy.

Up to my fourth run now. But the restart isn't out of frustration, it's just fun applying what I've learned from the beginning.

I did just fine on my first playthrough for seven hours, although I’ve made some mistakes on the way, but… The baron claimed everything and came to claim my region too… And I lost the battle. :(

Had several restarts over the weekend to get familiar with the mechanics. Can't wait to play again and restart after 4 hours. 😆My last playthrough ended with brigands invading, so now I need to learn how to build a huge army.

Oof I thought I was the only one who did that 😅

i thought i was alone LOOL I m literally expanding having fun then restarting it hoping that iwill make better decisions

I think it's part of the fun. I found this game to be quite forgiving. I remember learning banished back when it was launched and that thing was brutal. So many death spirals due to tool shortages. 😅

@Agent_007 My biggest mistake was ignoring the bandits.

@@Redridge07 Mine too, and upgrading too quickly

I spent 6 hours trying to repair the damage already done. Once I got out of it, I had a better handle on the game’s dynamics which made it easier as time progressed.

Same I stayed up till 5am playing.

Yeah. I bought this game last night, for relaxation purposes and I was astonished how soothing the soundtrack is. Really good game so far.

Think that's the hardest thing to learn through faliure because it snowballs so aggressivley from the early game and can't be fixed mid game. Have to be agressive even if your army si weak.

I second this. Push a fletcher shop and get bows. Although my first bandit camp goes to higher mercs to wipe remaining camps then do the coops goats and veggies

Yeah it's such a cool system, and based on history too! Absolutely love the concept and inclusion

This is a common concept in all colony sim/city management game - they teach you the basics, the rest you figure out as you play. Each next run you do a bit better than the previous, then you hit another thing you didn't know and didn't plan for. Start a new run with the new knowledge, rinse and repeat.

@@w1ck3ds1ck great point. :) I do enjoy the process. I may have just watched my village burn to the ground about 30 minutes before leaving that comment. haha.

Agree! I find it's easier to leave the farmers alone and have them tending backyard vegetables when they aren't farming.

Yeah that ended up being a big turn off for the game and the lack of professional soldiers so I was constantly shutting down my economy to deal with bandits

@@RiskyNightsyou can hire mercenaries

AND I FUCKING LUV IT! :D

One fuckin group of bandits that barely do shit. By the time you actually get gold and do taxes you lose.​@@CommonCentzFGC

Same. And a good sign that it’s a great game too cuz restarting is almost more fun each time. Never feels repetitive

Lol thought i was the only one

better to just play an entire run all the way through. that way, you can actually learn from all the mistakes you made, having a wider perspective on how all the systems work together and how they change with upgrading and expanding. we played for a bout 10 hours today and was devastated when we lost the last run. but I learned soooo much from how much I fucked up

Good call hadn't figured that into things. Eggs in one basket and all...

Focusing all your workers into one or two jobs at a time is really useful early game. Things get done way too slow if you have 1 family each doing a separate thing, but if you micromanage a bit like that you can quickly build or gather what you need. For example, I made a good profit selling tools by having 4 families work the mine for a month to gather a good supply of iron, then switched them to the bloomery and smithy to quickly process it all.

How do you disable the artisan production?

I also would like to know plz

@@deuteronomy03 Just "pause" the construction. (as he does at 6:05).

@@ghoststriker6583 wow. Never saw that. Geez, that helps.

The good news is that the baron's troops walk slowly to the destination, but you can rush your militia over and still come out on top!

Yeah, they screwed trade up.

the first trade perk will reduce the cost of all trade routes to just 25.

@@bjornserkr Yeah, I did that. I had all the trade perks, which made it easier, but what I'm saying is that it doesn't matter because the game forces you to have a variety of wares. Which, I guess could be fine because you'll just have to buy raw material and transform it into produce to sell, but that means more families needed which makes the whole process a bit tedious. Meanwhile, the Baron has conquered the entirety of the map, lol.

also when the market value drops super low. it says no foreign export does that mean it literally wont export any?

@@SpaceDad42i dont think its screwed. Just needs work.

This and fact you can’t upgrade/build without actually having the resources…

Yes lol. I ended up selling the crafted goods and buying original materials like planks.

You literally can, just pause the building and they stop. Cheers

@@jaegarbombs7297 Oh awesome!! That sounds like fun! I can't wait to micromanage a hundred buildings for no reason when it could be automatic! Thanks bro!

Buys a realism focused medieval city builder and complains about micromanagement 😬 You probably have 5/10 building to press pause on, stop being a drama pig.​@@danchaplin2911

Found the answer to the marketgoods not finding their way to the outskirts problem. Create a little market plot close to the burger plots with issues. These need room for 3 stalls. Then move one of food, clothes and firewood stalls each from the main market to the small outskirt market. It will take a bitt of time to realign the flow of goods. But once done, your golden.

that's exactly what happening. I can barely make 20 militia spearman till the end of the first year when I'm getting attacked by 18x2 bandits and baron's armies of 5-7x36 already took half of the territories. This game is pure BS.

​@@VYM I think the trick is to hire mercenaries to fight the baron's claims. In my save, I hired two mercenary groups from the funds I got for clearing some bandit camps and beat the baron in a field battle. Also I heard it might be a good idea to build as many level 1 homes so your population grows if you play on a higher difficulty to not get penalized by lowered approval from not meeting housing requirements

@@VYM It may be that you simply suck, but I might be wrong. By the time the brigands attack you should easily be able to have a full retinue of spearmen at 36 or 2x18 spearmen and archers no problem. Send out your army to attack all the bandits as soon as you have some troops. Be careful not to sprint to the location so as to not exhaust them, stay on top of favorable terrain and pick a good formation. Defensive at first, then balanced as the bandits start losing troops. This way you will claim all the money from them, which you should transfer to your regional wealth. This will allow you to buy resources necessary to upgrade both your army and settlement. You just gotta keep expanding fast and claim regions as soon as possible. Make sure to also claim some money from bandits to personal wealth so you can upgrade your retinue once you have the manor built. Second region you should claim is one that has good fertility, because it will support a large population easily and can export all sorts of goods to the original one. It will also allow for full sized retinues to be conscripted.

The Baron uses influence gained from defeating bandits to afford his claims. Try to get a militia ASAP and bandit-hunt aggressively: don't let him get the influence!

Guys the trick is to always kill bandit camps for loot and denying the enemy ai from getting it. You should be able to build a manor in around 1 year. With that you get 5 permenant troops, and with your 20 spearmen you can easily kill bandit camps.

CTRL + SHIFT + Number Key will save a camera angle, and then SHIFT + Number Key will take you back to it!

Ok, I’ve got it myself. Early in the game mercs are better. But when your village grows to over 100 people, you can start taxing it and then it’s better to build and equip your retinue. Also, the baron just buys out all mercs later in the game (not sure if it will be fixed later or not).

I'm wondering the same

@Ricochetil Its not a single person, each "resource" added to a business is actually a family. You can see on the people tab, of that business, what the family members are doing.

So does the one family that has the market stall also pick berries?

@@Wombat89 per the "people tab" under the forager business, yes I think. It appears that one family member will man the stall and the other family members pick berries.

yeah if you remove the familie with market stall it gets abaddon to still get berry on the market you need a granary... i advise to get a storehouse and a granary asap so free you can woodcuter and berry picker in the off season abd when you have more than enought firewood and it is still supplied to the ppl because the granary and storage worker will also create market stalls

I'm not sure if I understand you correctly, but.... If and when you purchase an Ox or Mule or whatever, it has to travel in from the edge of the map. If you scan, you will find it. So it takes awhile to get "home". Furthermore, you CAN assign an ox to a workplace. Click on that workplace and there is an area to check off assigning an ox permanently. But be careful with this option because that is ALL it will do and other areas may suffer.

I noticed all of those. I keep rebuying them all the time

@@tomcoon9038 I understand it has to travel But like I mentioned above it sometimes they dont pop up almost as if I didnt purchase them but it will fill a stable slot almost as if a ghost is present I heard of others having similar bugs

Yeah I’ve seen this bug. My second ox didn’t show up on the Hitching Post list, even though my people are using it.

Yes. You can unassign the livestock too. "Permanent" is too strong of a word. They really should just have "assigned". That would make more sense. The hitching post/small stable/livestock trading post gives a spot for the animal to stay when not in use. The farmhouse, even with its upgrade, doesn't create a slot. I feel like it should..

Nope - not that I've seen with repeated tests!

Because it isnt? Youre just bad?

@@LLMCxDakit’s objectively still all pretty rough. Some stuff is straight up busted and broken. It’s EA for a reason tho.

I'm assuming he'll add that in as part of all the objectives once the manor functions are all complete. It still is a bit bugged. All great fun for whats there tho

Put more workers in storehouse. put storehouse super close to market. Take all workers off firewood and wait until the stall for forewood is set up by the storehouse worker instead , then put whatever workers back on firewood

So many thing which can be wrong here. I suppose you are trying to farm, which I am struggling aswell. 1st. is fertility - the fields are losing their value, the game even suggests for you to let them be every 3rd year and change crops to regain the fertility, so this needs to be managed, luckily the fields offer crop rotation preset. 2. not enough workers - the workers have cca 2 months to plant the fields and cca month to harverst, if they don't manage that in time, you waste resources, so you need alot of them. 3. Infrastruture - the resources have to be transported by the villagers directly, all the way from the fields to farmhouse and then to other buildings, since you are trying to get more food, you want bread, so you better have mill near a farmhouse and the bakery aswel, so the villagers don't spend a huge time traveling. You can also set up a granary for farming only and assign workers there as they will help with trasnportation. A grannary for food itself should be near marketplace so the market gets restocked. This applies other production aswell. In my current game I am trying to better orginize the infrastructure, keeping related buildings close and I have food for a year ahead after harverst, the winter passes before I even use all the grain and flour. Once you get enough money income, you can import food, and support the town. Accesibility seems to be a huge factor in this game.

Same Im curious about this as well. I wonder if it affects happiness.

you need a granary with 1 family asaign to take over the market stall to still distribute the food beside the farm have no goods they need to put on a market stall..... most likely if a farmer has a stall is that his family has a veg garden or chicken coop

There's a pause button when you click on the workshop in the top right of the box next to demolish

Yeah, 3rd one was the charm. 1st one i didnt realize i needed a logging camp and could no longer build anything, 2nd I didn’t fight bandits and got rolled when two groups rolled through, killed all my militia and burned EVERYTHING!!. 😂

i would love that... to be able to assign seasonal work to them so that farmers and foresters and foragers wont be sitting around waiting and will have a second job they do when they cant do their normal job.

​​​​​It would certainly make managing the tasks of your townsfolk a little less tedious. But depending on the developers vision, they may want you to manage those kinds of things! I certainly agree it would be a valuable add. Just an opinion. I like the way you described it. Assign a "Seasonal Job" and like an "Secondary Job" or something. If no seasonal job is applied, then they just default to the Secondary as their main job. Idk what to call it exactly. LUCKILY, this exact thing we're talking about here is one of the most upvoted gameplay-feedback features on the official discord. So maybe we'll see it at some point.

For 1 - you actually need families assigned to your store house to pick the stone up and move it to the storehouse. If I'm understanding you right, that's where the issue lies. Check out the video I linked in the pinned comment - there's a section about hauling goods that should help! For 2 - here I'd recommend watching my Let's Play episode 13 to see how I handled a distant berry bush! Sorry not trying to just push you to my other videos haha, this one's just a bit harder to explain and it's very situational. I like having the granary at a midpoint and letting the granary workers being the food back to a more central location

Assign a person to work the store house and/or Grainery. They can use a cart to transport 10 items where a hunter or forager will only move them one at a time from the building to the storehouse when full.

Also, sometimes building and assigning a dedicated store house works better. In the advanced menu of the store house, un check all the stuff you don’t want stored. I use this for long distance industry so my main store house workers don’t get tied up travelling when they should be stocking the market with firewood instead.

Alright I'll try and dig into that in a video sooner rather than later! Thanks for the suggestion!

Yes, I’ve spent many hours trying to work out the market mechanics. It’s difficult to get 100% housing coverage due to the way stalls only stock just enough of each good. But the store house and granary have a huge surplus. It’s a strange design choice. It’s almost like it’s done on purpose so that outlying burgage plots struggle to upgrade.

@@lateralus6512 the only thing I could find that helps is putting the storage buildings very close to the marketplaces and making sure there are 'enough' families working the storage buildings. But yeah, I dont think this mechanic is well flushed out.

If you're clicked onto the Market as a whole, it'll bring up the goods that are sold there. Hover over each item & it'll light up the houses that are getting said item.