Manor Lords – Strategic city-builder Manor Lords clarifies what it is not

In the distant past (in 2020), Slavic “Greg” Magic unveiled his first real game, Manor Lords, a strategic city-builder that he designed alone as an independent developer. The presentation was quite attractive, piqued the curiosity of fans of the genre and the game is now in the “wish list” on Steam of more than two million players – making Manor Lords one of the most anticipated games on the platform of Valve. Development of the game took much longer than expected, but Manor Lords is now expected in early access this April 26. And in anticipation of this pre-launch, Slavic Magic specifies what players can expect from it.

A medieval city builder

As we know, Manor Lords places the player at the head of an encampment intended to become a small medieval town. This village must attract families whose physical and moral well-being must be ensured, but who must also be put to work. Manor Lords nevertheless stands out for its attention to detail and its realism: as in many city-builders, you will have to construct buildings, harvest resources or ensure that your population is fed, but Manor Lords takes on the appearance of a simulation and attaches from importance to historical reality.

The buildings are plentiful, can be positioned completely freely (without a grid on the map), the player can draw roads by defining their orientation or the angle of the turns (and the roads expand when they are used frequently by the population) , we must take into account the enrichment or impoverishment of cultivated soils (and therefore provide fallows to avoid exhausting the fields) and when the player decides to raise an army to chase away bandits or defend his village against mercenaries, it is the workers who are mobilized, and who therefore stop working in the fields or in the workshops – unless you recruit your own mercenaries when you have the necessary finances, the economy is therefore more or less at a standstill for the duration of the war.

And for good measure, Manor Lords displays an isometric top view, but also offers a “man's view” mode, allowing you to walk around your village or watch the villagers sometimes construct buildings, sometimes fight on a battlefield.

What Manor Lords is not

According to Slavic Magic, Manor Lords is therefore as much a medieval city construction game as it is a management game or a strategy game. However, Manor Lords is also a somewhat different game which does not have much in common with other references of the genre and to avoid any disappointment or misunderstanding, the developer specifies what Manor Lords is not. not.

• Manor Lords is not not a competitor of Total War. This is a city-builder with battles – certainly with battles, but not as big or frequent as in games of Creative Assembly. According to the developer, “the majority of the game focuses on building and managing cities.”
• It's not about not no longer a grand strategy empire management type game. The map has a few regions, but players are not intended to conquer Europe or orchestrate diplomatic marriages. Manor Lords is played on a much smaller scale.
• It's not not no longer an RPG. According to the developer, his game is different from Kingdom Come: Deliverance or a Mount and Blade. Manor Lords certainly has a “tour mode” for walking around its town in the third person, but “it's an experimental and cosmetic bonus”, the game is designed for a top view and a first person view is not is not planned.
• Finally, it is not a question not no longer a fast and competitive real-time strategy game like Age of Empires or Starcraft. Still according to the developer, “a large part of the game mechanics relies on the aesthetics of the city and resources take time to be transported across the map.” The gaming experience is intended to be “more relaxed, with moments of high intensity that spice up city building”, but the game is “not high intensity all the time”.

The developer also mentions the choice of an early access launch. He specifies that Manor Lords is his first game of this scale, that certain aspects are not completely completed and that he is sure that players will request modifications after testing the title. Early access therefore seems to him to be the most appropriate choice. The game has nevertheless been distributed to several influencers (from what we can see, the title already seems rather accomplished) and the curious can therefore easily form an initial opinion on the state of finish of Manor Lords before to possibly invest in early access.