Manor lords

Ukerric

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I don't think I have seen a game, that I wanted to play, last less than a year in EA. Most seem to be around two years or more. It sounds like this game is in mid alpha phase, at best, so I wouldn't be surprised if its still a year+ before it even gets to classic beta status. Playing a buggy incomplete mess of a game can ruin it for the future and why EA mostly sucks.
As a reminder: this is a one-dev game. There are a few more working on graphics and animations, but don't expect fast progress, even with Hooded Horse behind it now.
 
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Tmac

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No


What this game is not.


-Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor. It's a citybuilder with battles. Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on citybuilding and management.

-It's not a Empire Management style Grand Strategy game either. The map has regions, but you won't be able to conquer the whole Europe, nor have marriages or anything like that. The game is designed to play at a much smaller scale.

-It's not an RPG either. If you played KCD or Mount&Blade, ML is a different type of game. There is a visit mode in Manor Lords which allows you to walk around your town, but it's an experimental, cosmetic bonus feature, the game is really meant to be played from the "bird's eye" perspective, like a strategy game (almost always) should. There won't be any first person gameplay.

-It's not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft. A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric citybuilding rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.

Sounds relaxing.
 
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Arden

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Anyone playing this? Is it playable? Fun? Someone give me a fair but critical review
 

Tarrant

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Anyone playing this? Is it playable? Fun? Someone give me a fair but critical review


I picked it up. It's fun, but its a REALLY slow burn. I find myself playing at x14 a lot. I like the city building, but there's some aspects that could use improving. Building more than one residential area can be hard because you level houses you need to meet criteria like 2 food market stalls within range. While you have control on where matters go, you don't have control on where they will put their stall. More than once I had vendors building stalls across town rather than the one next to their business to supply the houses over there. Stuff like that gets frustrating.

I'm still figuring out the army stuff. The game doesn't hold your hand much so its a lot of figuring shit out, usually too late, and just remembering it the next time playing.

It's missing features currently, one of them is smell. I assume it will impact how residents cope with the smells of their area? I dunno, sounds like it will be annoying lol.

Farming with crop rotations is okay as well, but in more than a few games the areas I'm in have shit fertility. You can get help with that with skill perks, but you don't get many of those and you usually need to spend them on something else.


I'm not upset I spent $30 on it, but I hope they add more to it.
 
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Ukerric

Bearded Ape
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I picked it up. It's fun, but its a REALLY slow burn. I find myself playing at x14 a lot. I like the city building, but there's some aspects that could use improving. Building more than one residential area can be hard because you level houses you need to meet criteria like 2 food market stalls within range. While you have control on where matters go, you don't have control on where they will put their stall. More than once I had vendors building stalls across town rather than the one next to their business to supply the houses over there. Stuff like that gets frustrating.
The solution to that one is small markets. Forget the 25 stall market: create small markets with a dozen stalls only, and add new markets only when it starts getting full.

For the remote stall workers, there's no solution except temporarily removing the family from their work place (if they're not artisans) so that someone else takes over their stall.
It's missing features currently, one of them is smell. I assume it will impact how residents cope with the smells of their area? I dunno, sounds like it will be annoying lol.
It's going to drag down your satisfaction levels, I'm guessing. Probably hard, so it becomes harder to attract new families.
Farming with crop rotations is okay as well, but in more than a few games the areas I'm in have shit fertility. You can get help with that with skill perks, but you don't get many of those and you usually need to spend them on something else.
Spoiler alert: Fertility is the "sixth" resource; you can only have two rich resources in an area: berries, wild game, stone, iron, clay, and fertility. If you see two crowns over deposits on your starting area, you don't need to check with the construction overlays: you'll have shit fertility.

Also, for now, if you have a crown over stone - reroll. That's a wasted "rich", since you need relatively stone.
I'm not upset I spent $30 on it, but I hope they add more to it.
I'm guessing a 4th tier of housing at one point, and presumably "luxuries". My guess is that you'll be able to raise one large town to "burgh" or similar (but only one per map), to make it some kind of capital. There's room for more tech, so I'm assuming those will deal with that (almost certainly the "trade tree"). The 4th tier could preclude some family activities (maybe it locks you into specific works - families in a 4th tier home can't go work the field, hunt or gather berries. Or your home can have an orchard, but not goats).

I wouldn't be surprised to see scenario maps, where you have a fixed start, and slightly different objectives. There's at least one area where I've spotted "destroyed" ruins, so something like "After the black plague" where you arrive in a devastated map, with fallow fields, ruins, and ready-made but abandoned buildings like that. And less starting resources, so you have to actively pick which ruins you destroy to salvage the resources and which you keep for later.

The manor part seems a bit primitive, so I assume it will be a focus for additions.
 
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Tide27

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I can echo the sentiments above. I played it and have enjoyed it as well.

There are many aspects and mechanics that I do not firmly grasp yet, but figuring it out as I go. For $25 and only a single game developer, I am very impressed with what he has accomplished.

I'm sure it will take quite awhile to get all the features in since it's a 1 man show, but I can't complain. Congrats to the dude that made this.
 
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skylan

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It's fun if not a bit janky. I am one of those guys that likes to restart sims and apply my learnings from the previous game to the current one and try to improve things each time and this game seems to be pretty encouraging of that since it doesn't hold your hand or explain things very well. You'll make a lot of mistakes if going into it blind.
 
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Tholan

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Just got my village ravaged because I didnt arm my guys. The army stuff is not really well done (or like Tarrant said, they aren't holding your hand).
It's also quite slow, which I like. It's also gorgeous.
 
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Caliane

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This is also on gamepass, btw.

Smell does seem like an odd choice to implement. presumably it'll be this games version of noise/pollution. But really only tanneries would be a smell issue.

I think the visuals, and layout system really does make this shine. its one of the most "real" looking city builders ever. things look so natural.
 
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Tarrant

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Just got my village ravaged because I didnt arm my guys. The army stuff is not really well done (or like Tarrant said, they aren't holding your hand).
It's also quite slow, which I like. It's also gorgeous.

Yeah, I feel like the armies aren't fleshed out super well yet, but hopefully it gets there.

I will say, I started playing around with trading last night, and the price to unlock trade routes is crazy expensive, as is the importation of livestock.
 
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Ukerric

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Yeah, I feel like the armies aren't fleshed out super well yet, but hopefully it gets there.

I will say, I started playing around with trading last night, and the price to unlock trade routes is crazy expensive, as is the importation of livestock.
Trading was nerfed between press release and early access, I think. Some of the streamers had tens of thousands of regional wealth from trade extremely quickly, producing planks (entirely renewable) and importing everything instead of producing it.

There is a reason there is an entire specialization tree devoted to trading (capping trade route prices, lowering import/export duties, etc...)
 
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Tholan

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Trading was nerfed between press release and early access, I think. Some of the streamers had tens of thousands of regional wealth from trade extremely quickly, producing planks (entirely renewable) and importing everything instead of producing it.

There is a reason there is an entire specialization tree devoted to trading (capping trade route prices, lowering import/export duties, etc...)
I invested early in trading just becaus of the review i read, but it was indeed much less profitable that expected.
I will start over tonight and focus a bit more on basic stuff.
 
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Tarrant

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Trading was nerfed between press release and early access, I think. Some of the streamers had tens of thousands of regional wealth from trade extremely quickly, producing planks (entirely renewable) and importing everything instead of producing it.

There is a reason there is an entire specialization tree devoted to trading (capping trade route prices, lowering import/export duties, etc...)
Well it seems they want too far the other direction if that’s the case.
 
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faille

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have to say I'm more interested in memoria polis, though it needs a better name


Not quite the same sort of game but both city builders. I love how the cities develop semi organically in memoria. It needs a lot of polish and development still though
 

Tholan

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So i've put a few hours in this during the weekend, it is definitely a slow game. It's enjoyable, but it lacks QoL features. I'd say it's a few patches away from being really enjoyable in early access.
If anyone played Caesar 3, it's very similar. Without the glory of Rome though
 
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Tuco

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So i've put a few hours in this during the weekend, it is definitely a slow game. It's enjoyable, but it lacks QoL features. I'd say it's a few patches away from being really enjoyable in early access.
If anyone played Caesar 3, it's very similar. Without the glory of Rome though
I played a ton of Caesar 2 when I was ~12. Was super fun.


PLEBS ARE NEEDED
 
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Tholan

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New patch is out, with corrections to some of the biggest issues and bugs I had, so it's moving in the right direction.
The game is not slow at all once you have more than a village, but it lacks some management features.
Impressive that one guy could do almost everything by himself, but it's time to hire some helpers to get features done, the game is pretty shallow for now.
 
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