Hello, Greg, team and game community!
My name is Vladislav, and I’m a fan of Manor Lords. I first learned about your game about a year ago. City-building simulators are one of my favorite game genres, and the European Middle Ages is the historical period I find most interesting, so I was immediately drawn to the game. A little later, I was given Manor Lords as a gift on Steam, and I fell in love with it. I had never encountered such a combination of freedom and realism in planning and construction, satisfying complexity in resource gathering and distribution, and a medieval setting all in one game before. Therefore, I sincerely thank you and your team for creating and maintaining such a unique and beautiful project!
I know that the game is in Early Access in order to gather as much feedback and as many suggestions from the player community as possible, and I decided to contribute. I want to describe everything in a single message.
I hope you and the game’s community will like my suggestions. I would also like to point out that I am neither a game developer nor a programmer, and I may easily have overlooked something or simply be unaware of certain details. Therefore, some of my suggestions may already have been implemented, some may be in development, and others may not be technically feasible at all. In addition, I have not worked out the numbers and mechanics in complete detail. My goal was to demonstrate the general principles behind each idea, so the actual values would most likely need to be different during implementation. I believe that most of the ideas presented are feasible and could benefit the game.
I would be very happy to participate, even indirectly, in the Manor Lords community and to become the anonymous author of a few interesting ideas that find their way into one of my favorite games!
I wrote this post about a month ago, and now, following the release of the latest update, it’s become clear to me that a great many of my suggestions are already being planned by the developers for the future of the game; nevertheless, I would like to keep my original post intact, as it conveys my impressions of the game along with some personal wishes. Also, it’s not possible to publish a post longer than 40,000 characters here, so I’ve split it into two parts.
Manor Walls
This is the question that first led me to decide that I wanted to combine my suggestions into a single message. This document was created as a result.
At present, upgraded stone manor walls consist of tall stone fortifications with crenellations on one side and a wooden platform for soldiers on the other. Personally, these walls seem to me like an intermediate option between the thick walls of a true castle and a temporary fortification.
I have always wanted to create a wall with crenellations on both sides – which would make it dangerous even for an enemy who had breached the castle’s inner courtyard – while ensuring that the soldiers’ wooden platform was firmly supported by the wall itself rather than by wooden supports suspended in midair. In short, I wanted a wall that would truly serve as a barrier against the siege engines available in the game, and that would be worthy of being part of the fortifications of a great city or a truly significant stronghold.
Pursuing this goal, I built double walls around settlements: one facing outward and the other facing inward, creating the appearance of a massive wall with a broad platform for archers. And it worked – after all, your game is a wonderful sandbox that truly gives players an enormous variety of architectural options. However, after constructing such a layout, problems almost always arose. Villagers – builders, ox drivers, and others – would get stuck between the two walls, while soldiers often could not move effectively along the wall.
Moreover, ox drivers would start entering the walls together with their animals. Because of the differences in elevation between the wall and the entrance to a tower – where they might otherwise have been able to descend – they could no longer return to the ground and would remain trapped on the wall until I demolished everything.
This ox wants to be an archer too…😢
This also led to a situation in one of my previous games where a large portion of the population became trapped in this way with their animals, causing my entire economy to grind to a halt – nothing was being built or produced.
In this regard, I would like to make the following two suggestions:
1. If possible, it would be worth adding a third upgrade level for manor walls. At this level, a stone wall with crenellations would also appear on the inner side of the fortification, and the entire space beneath the wooden platform would be filled with stone. The wooden platform itself would disappear, leaving only a stone wall with a stone platform for troops. This would create a relatively thick, unified wall in which villagers could no longer get stuck. I would like the wall to have crenellations on both sides, but it may turn out that this would be historically inaccurate or impractical. The upgrade could also be made genuinely expensive – requiring large quantities of stone, rubble, lime, and planks, as well as several units of regional wealth, perhaps representing payment for the work of planners and architects. After all, building a castle or sturdy city walls was not a simple undertaking; it required considerable effort and the mobilization of substantial resources.
2. If technically possible, teach villagers who become trapped in fortifications to temporarily pass through them, as they do with unfinished manor walls; alternatively, have them temporarily teleport outside the manor’s fortifications along their intended path when no normal route is available. Another option would be to teach villagers to avoid areas where they could become trapped in this way altogether. I am making these suggestions as a user, not a developer, so the root of the problem may well be entirely different from what it appears to me.
Roads
It might be worth adding a new type of road – paved or urban roads that look like stone-laid paths. Building them would require cut stone or gravel, and from a gameplay perspective, they could increase the movement speed of residents and merchants by, say, 10% (if that’s possible). This would reflect the realistic difference in walkability between simple packed dirt – which, as far as I understand, is currently the only type of land road – and a durable, relatively level path made of basic stone paving.
Also, it feels very strange to see the exact same paths in the middle of a developed city with many Tier 3 and Tier 4 buildings, including numerous workshops, as you would find in a forest on the outskirts of the region.
Purely from an aesthetic standpoint, roads made of something like gravel or stone pavers would seem much more appropriate in the city center. This would add significant variety to the look of different areas in the region: an urban center with paved roads and the countryside with dirt paths.
A stone road could be built using another icon next to the regular road icon. It could be a separate type of path with its own texture rather than a second tier or an upgrade to an already-built road. I think that would be easier to implement (although I’m not a developer, of course), and, as I mentioned, it would make the region’s design more varied.
Otherwise, the stone road could be built and function just like roads do now, which I already really like.
It would also be worth adding a historical note that isolated mentions of such roads do appear in documents from the period. For example, some sources state that roads could be paved with hard flint or basalt. However, these were more likely isolated cases rather than the norm throughout Franconia. This would emphasize that stone roads were expensive and uncommon for the period and setting, making the presence of only dirt roads in the game entirely historically plausible and well justified.
That said, it might be worth considering adding more visual variety specifically through small elements of the urban environment: stone paving in front of more prosperous farms and workshops, stone driveways leading to estate gates, stone or wooden roads within the castle, stone-paved entrances to residents’ workshops, stone paths through churchyards, and paths inside improved gardens. I’d be very glad if I’ve given you a new idea to consider.
Towers
The game has a very beautiful watchtower that houses the retinue. Unfortunately, only one such tower can be built in an entire region. I think it would be worth adding the ability to build at least three of these towers, while either tying the retinue expansion and mustering mechanics exclusively to the first watchtower, or distributing the retinue-size upgrade points among all such towers. The retinue could then be mustered near the first watchtower or near the manor’s main building.
If this is impossible or would create too many development problems, I would like you to add similar beautiful towers – or structures resembling them – as separate buildings in the manor editor. This would add variety to castle construction and make it possible to divide a castle into zones more effectively. For example, I want to fortify my town with several castles, two of which would serve as the main ones. Accordingly, I would like to place large, beautiful watchtowers inside the main castles, while equipping the remaining castles with ordinary outer towers to emphasize the status and role of each fortification.
Unfortunately, this cannot currently be done in the game. Therefore, I believe that increasing the variety of tower fortifications would significantly expand the range of construction options for any manor or castle.
Manor Building
Looking at a massive castle with towers and gates, it is hard to believe that its center is this relatively small structure, which differs little from a simply upgraded homestead.
I think the manor’s central building could be expanded and made more imposing as it is upgraded – perhaps at the proposed third level. The manor could gain another floor, an enclosed courtyard, a guard dog, an outdoor table, and a designated place where the lord could hold court. A beautiful tree could also grow near the manor – or a tall pole could be erected there and decorated with ribbons in the spring: a maypole (the German Maibaum), a European tradition associated with celebrating spring, fertility, and the renewal of nature.
Manor Maintenance
At present, the game represents ongoing estate maintenance through the accumulation of fuel resources, even though maintaining a feudal lord’s residence – or, especially, an entire castle – was quite expensive in the Middle Ages. Below is an outline of which resources could be consumed for castle maintenance and under what conditions:
1. Food, weapons, and armor – to maintain upgraded retainers, at a rate of 1 unit per person per month;
2. Lumber, tools, and rubble – 2 – 5 units per month to maintain the estate’s main building – the feudal lord’s residence;
3. Stone, lumber, rubble, and lime – to maintain the castle’s developed fortifications; for example, 2 units of each resource per conventional unit of wall length. In other words, the larger the castle, the more expensive it is to maintain;
4. Tools, stone, lumber, weapons, and armor components – to maintain outbuildings attached to the estate, such as those listed and described in the “Estate Outbuildings” section;
5. Silver from the lord’s treasury – to fund the ongoing work of architects, planners, and craftsmen; for example, 20 – 100 units per month.
Initially, I wanted to suggest that a lack of maintenance would affect the castle as follows: after several years without maintenance, fortifications – towers or individual sections of wall – would begin to collapse at random, at a rate of one castle element per year, leaving behind ruins (“Rubble”). Once restored using the appropriate resources, the fortification element could be rebuilt. However, after giving it some thought, I concluded that this would be too harsh: players without an unlimited supply of the necessary resources might never be able to build a sufficiently large castle at all, although that would make sense from an economic standpoint.
Therefore, I suggest the following approach instead: without maintenance, the castle’s defensive and functional characteristics would deteriorate. Walls could no longer be upgraded; without lumber, gates would stop closing; without stone, tools, and rubble, walls would take additional damage from siege engines; without food, weapons, and armor, the mustering speed of retainers and militia would be reduced by half; and so on – without the fortifications themselves collapsing. It could also be interesting if a poorly maintained castle gradually became covered in moss, cobwebs, and vegetation, visually indicating its neglected condition.
It is worth noting that I did not calculate the castle’s maintenance costs in detail with full consideration for game balance or gameplay experience in every situation. Through the example figures and effects, I wanted to illustrate the core idea behind the proposal: building and maintaining a castle should be based on the development of the surrounding region; the size of the castle should be determined by the settlement’s economy; and the castle and its scale should not be disconnected from the settlement’s actual ability to build it. Naturally, the resource costs and the specific effects of maintenance – or the lack thereof – would most likely need further balancing.
In addition, the costs of maintaining a castle would make it feel like a significant achievement for the player and greatly strengthen their emotional connection to the region.
Tavern
In the Middle Ages, a tavern was a multifunctional establishment where locals and travelers could live, spend the night, conduct trade, and leave their draft animals.
A large tavern could provide one or two additional housing slots for families, partially replacing residential housing in this way. After all, in the Middle Ages, taverns were often used as temporary lodging. The families living there could be assigned to any jobs, just like ordinary families, but they would not be able to level up, remaining permanently at level one with the corresponding needs. This would prevent players from building a developed town consisting entirely of taverns. Such a feature would slightly accelerate settlement growth during its early stages and make the tavern more useful.
In addition, traveling merchants could occasionally – or with a certain probability – stay overnight at the tavern, leaving behind a small amount of the region’s wealth, approximately 5 units per merchant. This could diversify the tavern’s gameplay uses and increase its value. It would also synergize with the example law, “Decree on Holding Monthly Fairs,” from the “Laws/Decrees” section: more merchants would mean a higher chance that someone would stay overnight and provide the region with additional income.
Medieval taverns often kept farm animals such as chickens or goats. In the game, a large tavern could also have upgrades such as a chicken coop or livestock pen, but produce the corresponding goods more slowly than a regular farm with an attached structure. For example, a tavern’s chicken coop could produce only two units of chicken meat every three to five months and no eggs, keeping it balanced with a chicken coop belonging to a regular homestead.
The establishment provided not only lodging for people but also feed for horses, which was especially important along busy roads where travelers needed to rest. With this in mind, it might be worth adding one slot for draft animals to the tavern, similar to the slot on a hitching post.
Overall, these suggestions all have the same goal: to make the tavern a local center of settlement life and a truly active and useful gameplay building. It would feel natural for new upgrades to become available as the tavern levels up. If a third development level were added, several upgrades could be combined at once.
Manor House Extensions
In theory, the manor house, being the center of the castle, could have an auxiliary farm such as a garden, vegetable plot, or livestock pen. During the Middle Ages, castles often included similar facilities in their outer bailey, or lists.
To distinguish it gameplay-wise from extensions attached to burgage plots, a manor house extension could combine several types of agricultural facilities – for example, a small vegetable garden with a pig pen beside it. Each individual facility would be less productive than its equivalent attached to a burgage plot. During peacetime, these structures could be maintained by the retinue.
This extension could be relatively expensive during the early stages of the game: 60 units of regional wealth, 10 logs, 20 units of planks, and 30 units of rubble. It might also be worth limiting the types of livestock and vegetables or fruit available in this auxiliary farm, so that a single structure could not immediately satisfy all of the townspeople’s food needs.
For example, such an extension could expand the manor house’s territory by filling it with agricultural buildings and automatically enclosing it with a castle wall.
This could make the castle more resistant to sieges, while also making its role in the lives of medieval inhabitants feel more realistic.
In addition, gardens were sometimes planted in castle courtyards, which I personally find very appealing – I love gardens, especially from an aesthetic standpoint. A castle garden could produce a small amount of two types of fruit at once, such as apples and pears, in the same sequence as ordinary orchards, but it could, for example, take 5 – 6 years to mature. Building such a garden might require, say, 50 units of rubble, 20 units of cut stone, 10 units of timber, and 100 units of regional wealth. Visually, it could be a well-maintained plot enclosed by a stone wall, with rows of trees surrounded by palisades, interspersed with small drainage ditches and benches placed in the corners or elsewhere around the grounds. Naturally, the garden should also include a small shed for tools and a guard’s hut. Such a garden could become an aesthetic jewel of the castle estate, produce a moderate amount of fruit, and perhaps allow nearby soldiers to recover from fatigue more quickly as they took in the beauty of their lord’s domain, if such a mechanic were possible.
A tournament ground could also be added to the estate, where the lord’s retinue could train and gradually improve their skills. After all, castles in the Middle Ages were always centers of military activity – and therefore also training grounds for warriors. Military tournaments could be held there as well, perhaps once a year or every few years, generating a fixed income for the lord’s treasury and increasing the frequency of free merchants’ visits or the rate of migration to the settlement for one month. People would effectively flock to the area for a major event and spectacle that enhanced the settlement’s prestige.
Building the tournament ground would require not only the usual construction materials but also, for example, 5 – 10 units of each type of weapon, as well as 100 units of regional wealth to represent the need to establish a local training arsenal. Visually, it could consist of an enclosed group of military structures – possibly tents – with a fenced arena near the center. Two warriors could be constantly fighting there, either as part of routine training or during a tournament, while others might practice by striking straw or wooden dummies. During wartime or when the retinue was being called up, all fights and training at the tournament ground would cease.
As training and tournaments took place, the retinue’s skill level would steadily increase at a moderate pace, so they would not become unbalanced. Such an addition to the estate would make any castle feel much more alive and atmospheric, while also allowing the player to further develop their heavy infantry before an important war.
Castles were very often used as additional storage facilities for reserve food, building materials, and weapons, and they also had stables for horses. In that sense, it would be perfectly reasonable for an estate to have the option to build an extension that combines the functions of a warehouse, barn, and possibly a hitching area. It could cost 40 gravel, 20 planks, 10 logs, and 100 regional wealth, providing the castle with 2,000 storage slots for food and supplies, as well as, say, 5 stable slots. This extension could take the form of a two-story warehouse or barn enclosed by a stone wall, with several hitching posts along the side and a small open area for carts and workers. Workers could bring animals here and store goods – the animations for these actions are already in the game.
The functional buildings listed in this section could be made available through the castle editor or the estate interaction menu. However, the first option seems preferable to me, since it would allow the extensions to be built not only directly next to the estate building, but anywhere throughout the region. This would make it possible to design, for example, a much more organically laid-out town. As for whether multiple extensions of this type should be allowed for a single castle, perhaps access to them could be tied to the castle’s size. At the “Grand” castle level, all of the extensions could become available at once.
Fishermen’s Hut and Ice
In winter, the residents working at the Fishermen’s Hut stop producing goods, but they could instead start harvesting ice from a frozen body of water. This could be implemented through an upgrade to the Fishermen’s Hut called “Ice Cellar,” “Icehouse,” or “Ice Pit.” Ice itself could function as a resource that slows food spoilage in the settlement.
For example, the maximum amount of ice that could be harvested might be 100 units, with each unit slowing spoilage by 2%, up to a maximum reduction of 50%. Alternatively, if there were no harvesting limit, the effect could depend on the amount of ice relative to the amount of food in the region: if there were twice as much ice as food, spoilage would be reduced by 50%; if there were roughly as much ice as food, by 25%; and if there were half as much ice as food, by 10%. Over time, as the seasons change, the ice would begin to melt, leaving almost none by the following winter or by mid-autumn. It would therefore need to be harvested again only after the body of water freezes over once more.
At the same time, trading ice would be impossible within the game’s setting, so this resource would effectively be unavailable to trading posts and independent merchants.
It seems to me that the game already has suitable animations for this: residents working in the quarry and transporting raw and cut stone. They could chip away at the ice along the edge of the body of water, just as they currently quarry stone, pick it up and carry it to the storage area, or load it onto a cart and transport it to the building.
Arsenal Building
The game has storage buildings for materials that can also hold weapons, among other things. However, in the Middle Ages, weapons were usually kept in separate, heavily guarded structures – armories and arsenals. Such facilities were also often part of a castle or a feudal lord’s residence (which relates to the possibility of adding an extension to the manor, as mentioned in the “Manor Extensions” section).
For this reason, I think the game could introduce a new building called an “Arsenal.” It could combine the functions of a storage building exclusively for weapons and armor, with, for example, 1,000 storage slots, while also serving as a small military forge. When not transporting weapons, the worker could use available materials to assemble simple polearms – spears and halberds – but at a slower rate than a blacksmith working at the main homestead forge.
Maintaining the arsenal would consume tools, metal, stone, and planks. Visually, it could be a massive building with a stone foundation and heavy, metal-reinforced doors, along with an attached forge and a small courtyard.
I think introducing such a building would be logical. Weapons were always kept under special protection, and a strategic reserve of expensive swords and armor would hardly have been left sitting in an ordinary rural warehouse. At most, that would have been a temporary solution. This way, ordinary storage buildings could be cleared of weapons, while the equipment itself would be properly accumulated in a secure location.
Source: r/ManorLords · by /u/WladIstNichtWlad