Manor Lords - Medieval city-building game with real-time-tactics battles

[Flatline]

Farthest Frontier is still in EA and it's phenomenal.

Have you played Ostriv?

 

[Overpriced Gaming Chair]

One tip I ran into: You start with only one oxcart. They are needed to haul stuff. Get more oxcarts, and stuff starts actually moving.

 

[Harammurabe]

Volound, slayer of Total War shills, has made pretty damning (if true) YouTube community post about Manor Lords and how it's marketed.

Quite a wall of text, but this one paragraph might serve as a decent TL;DR:

As you all know, I didn't get sent a key for it.

This is the real tl;dr version of it, glad it was at the beginning of his post so the rest can be ignored.

 

[Romeo]

One tip I ran into: You start with only one oxcart. They are needed to haul stuff. Get more oxcarts, and stuff starts actually moving.

Another tip I would mention is if you have a large village and also tons of farms, you need to set your farms to "harvest early" around June-July. The peasantry take a long ass time to collect the wheat from the farms so just only one month of harvesting is not going to do it before your farms reset for the year. I finally got a huge surplus of wheat for the year, so I finally found the fix to satisfy my peasants' hunger almost permanently. Getting 4/5 of the wheat from an early harvest is better than just only getting a 1/3 from the harvest month.

 

[Pattern Juggler]

Have you played Ostriv?

No, hadn't heard of it. Crazy how many indie releases there are nowadays.

 

[Overpriced Gaming Chair]

This is the real tl;dr version of it, glad it was at the beginning of his post so the rest can be ignored.

It is true that his shtick of "publisher vetted everyone for being a shill before sending them a key, They messed up with some non-English speaking creators who are much more critical of the game" sounds a bit conspiratorial. His main "evidence" is that many content creators much smaller than him were given a key. If they had given Volound a key, I would've considered it a show of confidence on their product. While it is hard to proof that he was excluded specifically, to me personally this possibility has been the leading red flag stopping my purchase.

Additional context: his Homeworld 3 video full of scathing critique and comparisons to the original games. One positive I remember him pointing out is that the 1v1 arena made of wreckage could actually be a good idea (chokepoints and cover instead of just open space) but that isn't nearly enough to salvage the game, due to near-complete lack of properly working fundamental elements.

Also he has made this video where he argues that Games Workshop actively catered to neo-Nazis until someone entered a tournament in Spain wearing Nazi uniform, with the name "Austrian painter" and won by default because everyone matched with him refused to play. All the while acting polite and insisting he isn't breaking any rules, and that if the tournament managers try to kick him out, he'll call police for discrimination or something.

This supposedly made Games Workshop turn 180 degrees on a dime and put out the infamous "Warhammer is for everyone" -statement. With a line that went something like "Imperium is driven by hate. Games Workshop isn't."

If Volound is somehow correct on that one, this meme should be an accurate description on how GW went woke:

I'm probably putting too much faith on this guy...

 

[The Gene Genie]

I really enjoy this game. It's a breath of fresh air in a genre (city/colony builders) that are all basically Banished, Cities Skylines/SimCity, or Anno clones. The way the plotting works for the burgages is genius and one of the best things about it. I have some issues with the way that the AI functions, especially with the marketplaces and how a burgage just right down the road won't have those stalls "registered" so the people who live there won't go and get firewood. The combat frankly isn't anything special to me and I didn't buy the game for the combat mechanics. To me this is a city builder. I didn't really follow the hype so I don't know if the whole "Total War Killer" was just some meme that got out of control or if the developer tried to market it like that, but it definitely isn't going to kill Total War.

Volound is still mad that Total War sucks and I can't tell if he's more mad that he didn't get a developer key or if he was expecting it to be a Total War-style game and it just isn't. He's also a whinging Communist Jock faggot.

 

[Smashed & Slamed]

Also he has made this video where he argues that Games Workshop actively catered to neo-Nazis until someone entered a tournament in Spain wearing Nazi uniform, with the name "Austrian painter" and won by default because everyone matched with him refused to play. All the while acting polite and insisting he isn't breaking any rules, and that if the tournament managers try to kick him out, he'll call police for discrimination or something.

Volound is a low IQ commie paddy living of welfare who has his own thread. Do not take anything he says remotely seriously.

 

[Ughubughughughughughghlug]

If they put city walls and siege mechanics in at some point I will get it.

At that point it would be like a better (decent UI, modern design sensibilities) Stronghold Crusader as well.

 

[Romeo]

I just encountered a game-breaking bug at the endgame. Once your settlement reaches the Large Town status (by building 15 level 3 houses), you technically win the game and get a somewhat lame victory cinematic with the victory screen containing the stats of your playthrough. However, if you decide to continue playing the region you're in by pressing sandbox mode and not ending the game and going back to the main menu, you get an endless loop of the victory cinematic and the victory screen all over again, making the region unplayable.

Apparently, I'm not the only one who encountered this:

• Endless Victory Screen: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/2/4355619963544226169/
• bug: never-ending loop of success until game freezes: https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4355619963546102251/
• Can't continue to play in sandbox mode is it a bug? https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4355620138222950430/
• Victory screen keep popping up cannot go into sandbox: https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1ceizh5/victory_screen_keep_popping_up_cannot_go_into/

I can't return to playing Manor Lords until this bug is fixed since I want to continue buying up more regions and build up towns in the same playthrough (or if I do continue playing, I would just go to my auto-save and just not build the last level 3 houses). It's kind of funny how the early-game is well polished, then the mid-game have growing flaws, and then the late to end game is just either broken or just has literally no content. I could imagine how this all plays out in the developer's head:

1. I just finished everything to set up the village that took up 3 years. Now to start the mid-game.... crap...
2. (Three years later) Oh God, my bills are unpaid, my publisher is knocking on my door, and from the current pace I'm working at, I'll be finishing the game by 2077. I need to hire more people, I just got to. This is not a 1-man-job.
3. Screw the mid-game, time to make the endgame screen. Endgame screen done? Put it to early-release!

I haven't watch any game reviews by YouTubers just so I can surprise myself, but my gut is telling me they all somehow intentionally missed this bug and shilled the game anyway.

 

[My beans are augmented]

I think the authenticity of this game is really refreshing but I hope this isn't some sort of Valheim Mk.2; I don't want to be waiting years for slight updates.

 

[#1 Hot Sauce of Kiwi Farm]

So i've been playing the game for awhile and nothing is currently better than simply trading. After trying and failing to make a self sufficient village I have discovered that micro villages are they way to go.

My biggest villager was over 200 villagers and had a focus around farming it was the biggest mistake i've every made. Crop rotation is pointless and does not properly manage your workers. Wheat is a trap it requires a ton of manpower to operate when I could just buy wheat and have a miller and a baker or just buy flour and cut out the miller. Barley I hate producing ale so much you can get honey with a development point yet you cannot make mead or cider with apple trees. Flax is probably the better of the things to farm as you can keep up with the demand on a relatively small farm though again just buying flax is better.

My current biggest gripes with the game are the teleporting bandits stealing my wares at the beginning and the logistic system. I had to have multiple store houses/granaries just to fill my markets with stores so my population can allow me to upgrade. He needs to fix the logistic system as it's hell i'd rather fight off the barons armies every year than deal with the horrible logistic system and the oxens are another annoyance, but at least you can buy more.

Oh I forgot about meat and the complete lack of animal husbandry excluding sheep. No cows, no fishing the goats give you hide, but no meat for some reason the only way to get meat is by hunting or trading almost made me wish I could canalize the bandits for meat as at least it would solve the issue.

Combat is bare bones and makes zero sense to me. Bandits are very strong considering all they have is a club and maybe a gambeson, but they are some how able to stand a chance against my halberdier militia and maxed out retinue if there are enough of them. Terrain matters a lot flanking does not seem to be that effective and worse of all is that you cannot stripe the dead of goods. If I lose a militia all their gear just disappears yes some of it could be broken or damaged, but a lot of it should be salvageable.

Here is my last village where I became a arms dealer very profitable.

 

[Sargon's wife's son]

Seeing how this game was made by 1 drunken slav it's amazing for what a game created by one dude in four years proving once and for all that Eastern European developers still creating better games than the western European counterparts with 20 times the funding
I bought it and it's amazing for what it is I hope this drunken slav greatly improves the game.

 

[Flatline]

worse of all is that you cannot stripe the dead of goods

The dev said this was something he might included in a future patch.

 

[Fungible penis]

90 hours of fun so far.

Farms are late game luxury.

Trade, cheap routes and removing import tariffs via development points is key for me.

A few huge burgage plots with vegetable gardens and space for mother in law cottage will set you up for not starving.

Having small marketplaces (3 plots) interspersed around the settlement works better than one large one, and reduces number of peasants spending their time setting up stalls.

Buying retinue at 50 personal wealth each is cheaper and faster for a fully equipped knight than a regular militia dude. Make use of this. And add the tower to double retinue to 24.

When bandit camps appear, attack them fast before the Baron. Send wealth to personal funds. Bandit camps are the most important resource for personal wealth to buy retinue. The easy fighting tempers your inexperienced army dudes too.

AI in the battles is easily spread out and flanked.

I like this alpha. $30 on sale via GoG and I look forward to, and am invested in, further developments.

I see Slavic Magic is hiring for positions, cool.


Edit!
Was playing on GoG as mentioned, turns out Steam is the only platform getting regular patches, a beta branch etc, so refunded and bought it over there.

Trade got nerfed a little in the meantime but still key.

Editedit:
Always been fond of Gog, and this just cemented why. 90 hours on this game and they refunded almost instantly.