Pardon My Manors…

Another look at a computer game. This one is still in Early Access, so not yet a full release but it has attracted a lot of attention from the guys at Gameranx and is apparently punching above its weight when compared with games from Triple-A publishers so I indulged myself to take a look.

The game in question is Manor Lords and, as early access games go, it’s an expensive £35 to buy. It sits in the area of a City Builder Sim but it seems to be a bit more than that as in some scenarios within the game you will probably have to win some skirmishes with adjacent Barons as you would in a Total War game. I have played some city builders before and all to often they become too much of a rinse ‘n’ repeat while trying to keep the inhabitants of your city happy – this was especially true of some of the ones based in the modern era. Although highly regarded, Sim City and City Skylines were both builders that quickly ran out of energy with me. On a more ancient front we have the various games set in the time of early civilisations like the classic Age of Empires and, of course, Civilisation in its many guises. These were less city than empire builder but perhaps that distinction is just an indication of how games have evolved to provide a more detailed, localised, involvement as the processing power of computers has increased.

Manor Lords is set in the Franconian region of Medieval Europe – Roughly around the modern Nuremburg / Würzburg area of Germany. It is not the first game to aim for this time period – Farthest Frontier also chooses this time though the place is less defined. Much of what I have found in my early play with Manor Lords resembles Farthest Frontier though there are many small gameplay differences. So, while I’m looking at Manor Lords here, I’d suggest taking a look at Farthest Frontier too if you’re interested in this sort of game. Ultimately I think that Manor Lords will provide a more rounded experience but it’s still being built, of which more in a while.

I’m playing this in the simplest scenario – building a community from a small villagers camp. As this is a first day of playing, I should warn that I’m just learning as I go along. I set myself a goal based on an early Steam Achievement for the game – Getting through the first winter successfully and I did achieve that before writing this post👍

The game starts with a small camp, some supplies and 5 families…

…from which you have to produce a viable community which can feed itself, has adequate housing and begins to expand. The niceties of finer living will have to wait during that first year! First priority is to find food and fuel sources and also building materials. With game starting in March (don’t they always😅) you have around 8 months to prepare for winter. That achievement I mentioned is about getting the necessary shelter and supplies together so your community can ride out the ice and snow when December comes.

In my area I was lucky to have a good supply of berries and also some game animals which could be hunted. My first priority was to build a Logging camp followed by a Hunter’s camp and a Foragers hut to allow these resources to be harvested. That used up a lot of the building supplies but I soon had sufficient new materials from the logging camp to build some essential protection for our supplies – A storehouse…

…seen above under construction with the logging camp visible beyond. At this early period of the game there’s plenty of labour available because there’s not much else to be done. At the time, as shown on the top left of the bar at the top of the screen I had 3 families available for constructing and two assigned to work – One of which was handling the logging to provide the wood. In the game families not assigned to other duties will carry out construction. This will become a balancing act later as the number of tasks around the village increase. Moving villagers from one task to another became the norm as the year progressed.

After constructing a storehouse for the supplies that existed at the start and for those being newly collected…

…I added a Granary for the perishable items. Next on the agenda was to build burgages (Homes and plots for our families). We want the village to expand too, so we’ll build the five burgages for our initial families. Here’s an early scene from the village after the first two Burgages had been built along with a well….

…Construction work is just starting on building the next Burgage and the Ox is being used to haul timber to the site. Below is our village in mid-May…

…with 5 Burgages built. In the foreground is the logging camp and a newly added woodcutters hut to provide firewood. The Hunters camp is visible in the trees on the right and the Foragers hut and Granary are just visible at the top centre. I’ve marked out a plot for a 6th Burgage next to the 2nd house on the right of the main road in the hope that our approval rating is high enough to encourage a new family to move in but there is a problem – that red hammer tells me that I have no unassigned families to do the construction. Now we start the juggling mentioned earlier! I think I pulled the Woodcutter family off their task to get the new Burgage built.

Having taken a brief look at the early gameplay I think this is an opportune moment to talk about some issues around the game. To be clear, these issues are not game-breaking but rather an obstacle to be overcome by the beginner. It’s a matter of tutorials and missing information. Many things are not clearly documented within the game’s help screens – I only found out by a mix of chance and user demo videos about several things that you can do in the game to improve your village. I didn’t know initially, for example, that the Burgages can have animals or crops in their back yards and I haven’t found where that is documented in the game. That is just one example and there are quite a few more like where is the skill tree hidden (You have to click on the Village name at the top!). Fortunately, the answer to your questions can usually be found online from videos and comments by other gamers who have been there before you 👍

It would be easy to be critical. Sometimes big budget developers deserve all the flack they get for poorly documenting their game and for many other sins surrounding bugs and optimisation. So at this point I must tell you that this game is largely the work of a solo developer! In those circumstances a lot of slack will justly be allowed! The game is still far from complete and will probably continue in early access for a long time yet. But despite that it is very much a working, playable and beautiful game and I haven’t found any bugs yet!

On with our village – I decided that we needed to get into trade, so with a 6th family now in the fold I set about building a Trading Post next to the main road…

…And added a Saw-pit next to the Logging camp. The village needs to grow some more – time to construct more Burgages…

…Albrecht is busy preparing the ground. On the bar at the top you can see we now have 8 families with seven assigned and Albrecht’s available to do construction. My approval rating is going up too which will encourage more families to move in. Also on that bar are indications of employment % and regional wealth which is used to buy things for the community. On the right side of the bar are indicators for the various commodities like wood, food etc. On the far right is my portrait and personal wealth – There is no money as yet because I haven’t built myself a dwelling and tax office! Before I do that there is one major project for the villagers to share the construction of…

…A Church! My hope is that it will be ready for Christmas!

The snow has arrived and we’re now reliant on whatever food and firewood we have stored along with a small amount of game still being caught and some eggs from those burgages that have chickens. At least the villagers can pray to come safely through…

I kept the villagers busy through the winter months opening a pit to quarry iron ore, building a Bloomery to refine it and a Blacksmith’s to make tools to replace those that are becoming worn out. We have also expanded the village and have housing for 13 families with 3 more plots assigned, more construction is underway. It’s March once more and we have survived our first winter together…

That concludes this introduction to Manor Lords. Is it a game worth playing? I have to give it a wholehearted yes! The game is currently available on PC with X Box to come in the future. If you want to know more about the game, check out the Wikipedia entry.