Hey everyone!
For those who do not follow the game on other social media - apologies for the long silence. The development is going strong. A more thorough video update is in the works, but I keep delaying it cause the game changes so fast! And I keep saying, let me just finish this other thing, so that the video is not outdated by the time it comes out. And so like, 8 months have passed from the last video. That's crazy.
Really appreciate all the patience and support.
One of the users on Manor Lords Discord asked the community to prepare this short FAQ, some of the questions were really interesting to answer, possibly a point of debate, so I decided it would be a good idea to also post it here on Steam.
By the way, you can see the term 'testers' used from time to time. This is a group of around 20 long time supporters and friends, however, there will be an opportunity to join the closed testing later this year. A special bot ("Alpha-bot") will handle all the applications through the Discord server.
Population related questions
Do peasants have their own “profile” with traits, job and info?
Currently peasants have a name, a home and a workplace. If they are not assigned to a workplace they help with random jobs. There are no traits, since the scale of the game is larger than a typical colony simulation, you lose track of individual peasants and micromanaging them would quickly become tedious. At the town level you can convert townhouses to artisan workshops. This converts peasants to artisans and removes them from the peasant worker pool permanently. Potentially this leaves space for future artisan family specialization/traits in the future.
How do peasants spawn?
They just spawn, Stronghold style. If they come from the edge of the map, the game would be very unbalanced, as Lords in the center would have to wait much longer for peasants to cross the whole map to reach them. If peasants were born and grew up, you'd have to wait far too long for a child to grow into a productive peasant based on the games time mechanics.
Will peasants die of old age?
Currently no. There are several reasons for this which I'll try to summarize. If it's a proper mechanic, it's hard to control and manage. You can't directly influence it as a player. There are no gameplay elements involved, such as enacting social policies to promote reproduction to try to manage an ageing population. The years go on slowly, meaning you'd have to play for hours and hours before actually seeing someone age. Currently, peasants growing old and dying would be weird and confusing as the player avatar doesn't age. If your peasants age while the player doesn’t, I can see this creating dissonance. I can already hear the inevitable cries of people asking for family tree mechanics. This is not only overly ambitious but takes away from the core of the game. Instead of building, managing and interacting with the world you’ve created, you’ll be forced to sit in the UI and compare modifiers of future wives. So, as you see, ageing creates lot of problems, lots of work and little to no reward.
Is there a population cap?
Not really, but there will be. Currently the unit hardware cap is about 16384, but at this point, your CPU will probably explode. We'll figure out what reasonable limits to set with future testing.
How many people can live in a house?
For now, peasant houses can sustain 1 family (male + female, to be expanded), and townhouses 2 families. There are some changes being done as to how it's counted, and how it works. Previously, I just counted the male peasants as workforce since only they could be drafted to the military. For now, I’ve switched the description to 'family', and I'll try to make it so that the women and children help with the job assigned to that family.
Can you execute people?
Not at the moment.
Are rebellions going to be a thing?
Yes, a basic rebellion system is already implemented. After Loyalty in a Region drops to -100, a number of villagers turn to bandits, loot and burn houses. After a while, they will run off to the edge of the map with the loot they stole.
War related questions
Will there be generic mercenaries? e.g., plain halberdiers/crossbowmen/macemen etc.?
This is currently undecided. The cool thing about using mercenary ideas from Discord/Reddit was that you need to adapt your playstyle to what's available in the recruitment pool, and that each company has its own quirks.
Can you pillage and burn buildings?
Currently, when fighting the enemy, you can only occupy their territory. Although, as rebellions & looting are already implemented, it'll probably be added sooner or later.
Preview of the WIP Fire System on Manor Lords Twitter
Will there be guns and cannons?
I wanted to add them from the beginning, but not everyone is a fan. For me the handgonne is a cool underrepresented medieval weapon. However, as there are portion of fans who want a game with no gunpowder weapons, it tempts me to leave them out for now.
Does terrain affect combat?
Yes, soldiers run slower uphill and faster downhill with the charge strength impacted by this. When fighting in lines it also gets added as a bonus. Forests are not factored in yet, but they will be eventually.
Is there fog of war (FOW) in the game?
For the time being there is no fog of war. It was in one iteration of the game, and it caused a lot of chaotic 1v1 skirmishing, and sudden surprise cramped fights in the villages (Check PVP Ancestors: Legacy for a good reference). There were no battles and very little tactics involved. I wanted to provoke more “official” battles in the style of the ones you see in the trailers e.g., Total War style, and removing fog of war helped.
After hiding the landscape in fog, it didn't look as good as it did in the trailers. You had this beautiful realistic landscape which was all darkened making it look a little off. The sky, which typically in most RTS you don't even see, didn't darken though. People don’t often think about these additional problems caused by FOW.
Having no FOW would also give more strategic significance to the forests, since they would be a great opportunity to set up ambushes.
In summary, no FOW. Seeing the enemy army marching ahead worked better and looked better during my tests.
Are scouts going to be a thing?
This is a good question, and it's very much connected. FOW means exploration mechanics like micromanaging, discovering, exploring. No FOW = no scouting, less micro, more focus on the building and long-term planning. I went with no FOW for now, so no scouts.
How will soldiers gain experience? Do they get better with experience?
There is no experience (exp) mechanics yet, it’s still being decided. For now, they just have a “melee training” and “archery training” status when they finish their training. The problem with exp is the slightly more realistic depiction of militias in the game. After your people finish fighting, they go back home, disband and go back to their jobs and families. Forming the same unit again with the same people of a particular exp level is a bit tricky to solve in the UI, more when you want to increase or decrease the unit troop size. It gets complicated quickly and it usually means a worry for me later.
Game mechanics questions
Will there be a law system like In Frostpunk, with advantages and disadvantages?
At the moment there is a Loyalty stat, that acts like a happiness meter which is calculated per region. Besides food and firewood, peasants demand particular goods to maintain loyalty such as candles, shoes and clothes. There is a law/policy mechanic, but it is very work in progress and requires a rework to make it better. An example of a policy was “Hardship”, which decreased food consumption while also decreasing loyalty in the region. Another was “Hunting grounds” which increased wild animal reproduction rate at the cost of damaging crops.
Will it be possible to build multiple manors and under which conditions? How many units of retainers can we have and are they tied to each individual manor? How many units per manor?
Manors are currently limited to 1 per region. The number of retinues you get varies from version to version, and it will be reworked yet again, because of a new Manor progression. Generally, it's still up to debate, but the current plan is to use Manor extensions as garrisons for the retinue. You'll probably get 30 with a base level tower and 60 with an upgraded one. Not final.
Is there a disease system in the game? Will there be one?
There was a disease system that was unsatisfactory, so it is being redone. Previously, a peasant could become sick during the winter if he didn't have any firewood, or after consuming uncooked food also generally from a lack of firewood. The food cooking was very unclear for the testers, so I removed it. The way to cure an illness was to gather herbs with an herbalist building. Unfortunately, building a couple of herbalists early on basically solved the disease problem for the whole playthrough removing any future disease challenges. Hence the system is undergoing changes, with herbs being more limited, and peasants being able to heal on their own, just slower. A stronger immunity because of a balanced diet is planned for the future, as a reward for having food variety in the Region. Plague events would be nice to have too, but I haven't had time to implement them yet.
Do you have to upgrade buildings manually through a pop up?
Yes, in the current version you have to press the upgrade button. The players get points for upgrading buildings. Without having to click an upgrade button, players don't always understand how they got the additional points in the first place. However, to counter spamming upgrades, there is a wealth distribution system. It ensures organic growth of the town with the wealth propagating from the market, outwards. To upgrade, wealth must accumulate in a particular building. This ensures that players don't upgrade the whole town to the max level and allows towns to look more natural, with a gradual evolution outwards the center of town. Also, it's currently a bit confusing, even if the region has 10 silver and you need 5 to upgrade, you can't upgrade if the silver is accumulated elsewhere. I'm not 100% sure yet if it's going to remain that way.
What is the role of the King? Will he appear in game? And possibly fight you? Can you overthrow him?
It's being debated, including the possibility to fight a final battle against the King to take over the crown. But since the map is smaller than a Kingdom, the King would come to you. Right now, he is not a character yet and just grants points for which you can claim territories. It has been requested though for future consideration.
Do resources ever rot?
Yes, sadly it's based on probability rather than a timer. The reason is that if you say get 10k grain, I don't want to store each individual grain separately in the memory and cycle through them each day to change their date, it will use a ton of CPU and RAM. Instead, the chance to rot is based on the amount stored and where it's stored. For now, it just means you must move food to a granary and keep meat in a larder.
Will there be landfills and their potential disposal (like in Stronghold 2 and Going Medieval)?
Not planned at the moment.
Do seasons affect gameplay?
Yes. It works probably as you’d expect. Harvests happen in the late summer, ploughing either in November or as soon as the ground unfreezes. Firewood is needed in the winter, and peasants walk slower in the snow.
Do armour and weapons get teleported like food or do militiamen have to grab it from somewhere?
They grab weapons and armour from wherever it's stored. There is an armoury building planned which will be implemented as a part of the new Manor system.
Do other lords start out the same level as you?
Yes.
How complex is the field and work management?
The management got easier after initial testing. Earlier you'd have to assign individual peasants to individual fields, both to plough, sow and harvest. This compounded quickly and with a couple of regions became a nightmare to manage. Now you just assign them to a central farm building where the workers then just split off and attend to everything automatically. For fields, each has a crop type, priority and fertility where you can also rotate crop types for extra benefits.
Will it be possible to influence other lords economically?
The work in progress system forced travelling merchants to go to places that sell more goods with cheapest prices. The price is dependent on availability of goods, so if you made 1k of something it would sell cheaper, eventually making your Market Attractiveness stat higher. It was possible to make the merchants only go to your town to trade, starving the enemy for money. Sadly, the AI has not been worked on since mid 2020 and this needs to all be revisited after the economy is finally locked in. I've previously spent too much time working on the AI system only to change the rules and make it useless again. I need that economy locked first!
Will there be any restrictions on the construction of the city/village?
None that I can think of, except for maybe some hardcore slopes for non-castle buildings and the 1 manor per region limit.
Will there be any mechanics for creating your own state on the world map?
No, this is not currently planned.
Will it be possible to build your own castle and other defensive structures?
Yes, but most probably only after the early access launches.
Miscellaneous questions
How many animal species will be in the game?
It's undecided. For now, we have sheep, chickens, goats and oxen. More will probably come, but I want them to be different and not just clones of the same mechanic with a different name. I add the animals very carefully.
How many regions are there on the map?
The region sizes were increased multiple times during the development. Because of this most regions were merged/removed and we're now down to 11. However, these 11 are not the whole map because the map is unfinished. We'll probably have around 18 or 20 for the early access. This was a decision we made during the testing. We decided on less regions, but bigger. It might change yet.
Why not just many regions, super big? Because your PC will die, that's why. I already have around 70 000 trees on the map and even with spatialization, think about how many calculations it is for 100 lumberjacks calculating to find the nearest tree to chop. The calculations grow exponentially, and I must fight to protect optimization. It might be possible in the future to make larger maps, but I won't push it now, since there are many more important things to do.
Will the lord have a family crest? Is it customizable?
Each lord has a crest/logo/coat that consists of a symbol/pattern and two colors (displayed above is an example with the green-black players and two random patterns). These are kept in a rather minimalistic style of the UI so that they can work well displayed on the shields, banners, UI and so on. We discussed it a couple of times, but it seems like we couldn't decide on what the community really wants, so I assume for now it's fine.
Which place in Europe is the game set in?
At the beginning it was just generic imaginary country in northwestern Europe. Lately, together with my trusty advisor Jakob, we started to unify the architecture style to fit late XIV century Franconia, and we're pushing the characters into that direction too. So, by chance it seems we ended up with Southern Germany, at least for the early access release. But I still want to keep the region names imaginary, so that it doesn't provoke historic inaccuracies of who was ruling what, and what creek was where. I'll soon adjust the region names and character names to fit the new setting.
What is the time period of Manor Lords?
The end of XIV century. I changed it during the development as some of you know. The version from the announcement trailer was inspired by XI-XV centuries and included a crude version of tech progression. However, this led to Vikings or Norman style soldiers with kite shields battling plated knights. After being involved in historical discussions more and more, it started to seem really awkward to me, especially with the realistic art direction I'm taking. Narrowing down the timeframe increased the realism, accuracy and lessened the scope of the project.
Can you peek inside buildings?
No, it would increase the amount of work, and resources consumed to be worth doing. I tried interior combat in towers in the prototype but scrapped it because it was quite janky. Very tight, no control, no room to maneuver, no tactics, and just begging the pathfinding to bug out. It was smarter to cut it out.
Will there be stone roads?
Maybe, but dirt roads seem to be more accurate for the period.
Will there be other cultures and historical periods in the game?
Possibly in future DLC's, but it's too early to know.
Will there be a custom map editor and SDK available?
It's quite possible that there will be a package for modding/map creation, which can be used via Unreal Engine 4.
Thanks for reading and respect if you got to the very end!
Ps. For tiny frequent updates and debates please visit:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/LordsManor
Discord: https://discord.gg/RRD55RZdB7
Huge thanks to all the people who Wishlisted Manor Lords, and to the Patreon supporters who make it way easier for me to work on the game full time.
Talk to you soon, cheers!
Slavic Magic