| Manor Lords | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Review |
Manor Lords is a historically accurate base-builder strategy game inspired by the late 14th-century Franconia. Read on to learn everything we know about the game, including gameplay and story information.
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Manor Lords Gameplay
City Building
Manor Lords blends classic city-building mechanics with a commitment to historical authenticity, steering clear of common medieval clichés. The game emphasizes organic development, allowing you to construct your settlement without grid constraints, mirroring how real medieval towns grew.
Players can build their medieval towns by planning their layout and constructing residential, commercial, and industrial buildings. City-building will also require players to manage their town's economy and agriculture.
Economic, Social, and Agricultural Simulations
Build outward from a central market, strategically organizing residential, commercial, and industrial zones, each with a respective upkeep cost and specialized role in your settlement’s continued development.
When it comes to farming, mining, and livestock, the terrain itself plays a vital role, with fertile soil being the most ideal for growing crops, wide-open spaces the best for roaming herds, and mineral-rich deposits being prime real estate for mining.
As the lord of your settlement, your responsibilities extend to providing housing, assigning jobs, collecting taxes, and preparing your people for the changing seasons. Guide your villagers through prosperous springs and harsh winters, ensuring their well-being while relying on them for resource collection, crop cultivation, and even defense if conflict arises.
Real-Time Battles
The land is vast, inhabited by other ambitious lords with their own communities and goals. Diplomacy is crucial—alliances can be forged, and rivalries are inevitable. How you engage with these neighboring leaders will shape your relationships and influence your settlement’s future.
War, while undesirable, is sometimes unavoidable. Train your villagers to become effective soldiers or hire mercenaries when needed. However, every soldier represents a valued citizen, and heavy losses in battle will deeply impact your community. Approach warfare strategically to minimize casualties and protect your people’s livelihood.
Customization
Manor Lords lets you approach city-building however you wish through its in-depth customization options, where players can tailor their experience. You can choose to focus solely on managing your settlement and working towards the prosperity of your people through commerce or agriculture, or on the aggressive combat and warfare of the lands.
Players can also adjust individual game parameters, such as character appearance, the shape and scope of your settlement's land plot, the difficulty level, and more. Customizing your Coat of Arms, in particular, can be fine-tuned through thousands of options to best represent your community's identity.
Manor Lords Story
Story
Manor Lords is a strategy game where you play as a medieval lord. Instead of the traditional linear story most games feature, your decisions shape the game’s story. Build and grow your city from the ground up, manage your citizens, and interact with the other lords around you. You may choose to befriend and ally with neighboring lords, or insult them and wage war. The story is all about you as a lord and how you choose to act with the cards you are dealt.
Setting
Manor Lords takes place in a medieval setting inspired by European history, specifically by late 14th-century Franconia, now modern-day Bavaria, Germany. The game sticks to its historical accuracy premise by avoiding common, inaccurate tropes found in similar medieval settings and implementing historically-inspired architecture, farming methods, and combat.
Manor Lords also has a rotating weather and seasonal system that affects how crops are grown and how commerce flows throughout the settlement. Players need to plan for incoming weather and seasons to fully optimize the settlement's growth and take advantage of its effects in combat, such as unit morale, fatigue, and movement speed.
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