Manor Lords (Early Access) Test – At the beginning everything is missing, see how they carry their burdens, scurrying and fighting, men in tights

Teasers

There's a bit of Stronghold in this building game, plus Banished, Anno and even Total War – but the result is very unique. But for whom is it worth getting started in Early Access?

All screenshots and video scenes come from GamersGlobal

In the building game community Manor Lords eagerly awaited. If you haven't heard the hype: In this title you build a medieval village and develop it into a city. You expand into neighboring lands, where you build additional locations and, on top of that, you also fight detailed real-time strategy battles against robbers or competitors. So there's a lot that comes together. On top of that, Manor Lords, developed with Unreal Engine 4, looks outrageously good, especially when you consider that there is a single solo developer behind developer Slavic Magic.

Manor Lords has now started early access. The developer will continue to work on the game for some time until it reaches its final form. In this early access test, I give an assessment of what buyers can expect at launch and for which types of players it is most worthwhile to get started now. Game scenes in 4K from the PC version (which is included in Game Pass at the early access launch) You can see it in the test video embedded above.

Here you can see a settlement with a lively town center around the church and market square with outsourced quarters for farmers, lumberjacks, shepherds and foresters after around nine hours of play.

At first everything is missing

There is currently only one map without rivers or lakes, which is divided into nine areas. Resources such as berry bushes, clay and ore are distributed randomly – your starting point is also determined by chance, which with a bit of bad luck can lead to significant disadvantages (and thus a restart). You have the choice between a peaceful mode (you win if you have so many residents in a town that it rises to the “Big City” level), a kind of horde scenario in which you have to survive all robber attacks and the default mode Scenario in which you initially build peacefully and only occasionally have to fend off robbers. To win here, you have to control all regions, which amounts to a war with the one competitor on the map.

It will take some time before you expand. You start with nothing but a handful of families (usually consisting of three people, although there are no models of children in the village). You will be the first to build farmsteads so that these starting workers have a roof over their heads and the satisfaction level does not continue to decline due to homelessness. When planning the first farmsteads, there is a big special feature of Manor Lords: Here you are very free in the placement, there is no grid of squares in the background that creates a right-angled settlement. Roads are one of the few building options that you can build for free and that appear immediately. Thanks to the pleasant automatic adaptation of the roads to the surroundings, even natural-looking crooked and crooked paths are no problem. You place many buildings the same way as in other building games, but for houses, fields and the market square you instead mark a building area with four corner points. The area marked in this way also automatically adapts to the street and other buildings. For example, you create trapezoid-shaped farmsteads at a bend in the road.

Creating farms is also a point where new players will notice that the tutorials and help functions are still very rudimentary. For example, it is not emphasized how essential it is to reserve larger areas for courtyards so that there is space for more than just the main building. This sometimes allows for cultivation so that a family can live more on one farm. But above all, a building space in the yard is important. For starters, gardens or chicken coops provide necessary additional food sources. Later you can only use these slots to create craft businesses such as tailor shops, weapon manufacturers and the like.

The fallen must be buried after a skirmish to prevent disease from spreading. You can also have robbers buried in your cemetery, but space seems to be limited. Alternatively, you can build a corpse pit for aggressors.

See how they carry their burdens

Manor Lords draws on many genre colleagues. Clicking on a homestead brings it up Annofactor comes to light. Farmsteads get water from wells and everything they need from the market place: food, clothing, firewood. They also want a church. If all of these needs are met, you can level up the homestead and thus the residents (currently there are only three levels). Level 2 residents bring the region one silver coin every month, but this also adds new demands such as beer from the tavern.

A prosperous city in Manor Lords is not built in a short time. Construction work is carried out by families who have not been assigned a job in a building. Smaller items such as stone are hauled from the camp with carts or bare hands, but the bulky lumber must be transported with oxen. Of course, Manor Lords also simplifies a lot of things in its simulation, simply because there are no carpenters. But objects, animals and people are always comprehensibly in one place and do not teleport across the map – this contributes a lot to the feeling of credibility. If I'm building a building and the last felled logs haven't been dragged to the lumber camp yet, one of the construction workers uses an ox to get the lumber lying around out of the forest. If the crop is still in the field when it rains, some of it may become unusable. And felled trees actually disappear; if you don't reforest them, you'll soon have entire forests cut down. Another beautifully authentic detail: your private assets for mercenaries etc. are separate from the local assets. If you raise taxes, you get a percentage of the local wealth – but ten percent of ten pieces of silver won't get you very far. This creates yet another motivation to not only let your villagers survive, but also thrive. With all these beautiful details, it should also be said: If you are looking for a simulation of the daily routine or characteristics of the villagers like in a colony sim, you have come to the wrong place with Manor Lords and should take a look Farthest Frontier throw.

It's fun to watch new buildings being constructed because the detailed models are put together in many modular steps. Since the “odor filter” isn't working yet, no residents have complained about the tannery across the street.

Scurrying and fighting

A good part of the fun of building Manor Lords is the joy of watching. In that respect, the title reminds me most Stronghold. Although there are no decorative animations to set the mood like the drunks at the tavern in the Firefly classic, I can zoom in really close thanks to the 3D graphics. Stronghold also reminds you that new workers do not spawn directly in new houses, but only a new family moves into the village at the beginning of a month if the satisfaction is over 50 percent (even two at over 75 percent). Clearing the 50 percent hurdle is not so difficult as soon as no one is homeless anymore and the church (which is not dependent on any resources) produces satisfaction.

Also like Stronghold, construction and military are closely linked. Residents bring home weapons, shields and optional other equipment from the camp. If I raise a militia, the more equipment I have produced and stored, the better it will be. A pinch of Total War can be seen in the battles. Squads have a morale value and you can order tactics such as an assault or rearguard action. The effectiveness value is particularly interesting. This decreases, for example, during marches without a break, but also due to environmental factors. This feature is so pronounced that I can still win a battle despite being outnumbered. If a squad engages the enemy in a favorable position and others stab them in the back, the encirclement and disadvantageous terrain massively reduce the effectiveness of the enemy. Raising your militia takes place immediately, but not being prepared and mobilizing your troops at the last second in the event of an impending attack has significant disadvantages: the troops start out already tired and have just been called up, with a penalty on “cohesion”, which increases over time turned into a bonus. Veterans also provide an experience bonus to effectiveness.

The enemy AI does not stand out for its tactical ambitions. In case of doubt, this also saves your nerves, because your militias are actually family members who are currently absent from work until you disband the squad again. So if you burn troops, it hurts like no other strategy game. In my scenario with the competitor, several hours usually passed between the raising of militias. Once I had a better-equipped, full spear militia, a company of archers, and a six-man armed retinue (recruited with personal funds), I could easily use them to route all the bandits on the map. Since I preferred to invest my money in the strong entourage that was permanently available after a one-time payment, I never recruited mercenary companies. They offer a complete unit for about the same amount of cash as one henchman costs, but they regularly demand further payments until they are released.

You can see the morale value, the efficiency and an icon for each squad with the number of units. However, there is no life bar or a permanent arrow to mark the last marching orders.