Manor Lords - medieval city-building with large scale battles

[Zariusz]

Man, its bizzare to see The Wall posting so much positive stuff in one thread about a modern game. Normally by now you would expect a wall of blackpilled ramblings, probably mentioning degeneracy of slavic urban inteligentsia since this is a Polish game. I guess a decent wokeless game once in years will work like a detox, hah!

Going back to Manor Lords, i do hope that devs will not collapse upon their own success. While it may seem unlikely now, games that started loud with a bang and praise only to later stagnate and crumble into the dust arent unheard of, especially amongst early access stuff i believe.

 

[JarlFrank]

A lot of people just want an interactive wallpaper, watching shit grow and little dudes going about their business

There's a German word for that, coined back when The Settlers was made and became a hit: Wuselfaktor. Literally translated it means scurrying factor. It's the joy of building up a city and seeing all your little dudes scurry about the screen going about their business.

 

[spectre]

Imagine discussing the actual game on the Codex. Whatever happened.

The UI has good fundamentals, imo - no information overload, resources are grouped and e.g. building materials get an expanded view when you're building.
I'm not saying it's fucking perfect, but at least the plotting and road building tools are enjoyable to use. That's my personal impression and I don't intend it to be the universal truth,
just a comparison to some other games I've played in the genre.
Personally, the prime candidate for improvement is the trade screen, especially when you'll be scrolling through more shit, some sort of filtering will be handy.

There's a German word for that, coined back when The Settlers was made and became a hit: Wuselfaktor. Literally translated it means scurrying factor. It's the joy of building up a city and seeing all your little dudes scurry about the screen going about their business.

Call me a casual, but that's what I want first in a builder game - the shit I've plotted need to look good, alive and flavorful. My breed of autism doesn't find joy in optimizing processes down to the last 0,01%

While it may seem unlikely now, games that started loud with a bang and praise only to later stagnate and crumble into the dust arent unheard of, especially amongst early access stuff i believe.

My biggest concern is if it's going to be a perpetual sanbox or skirmish game, or will there be some form of progression, perhaps even a campaign.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Call me a casual, but that's what I want first in a builder game

it's the base maxis built its empire on. simulation first, interaction later. you give an instruction and watch how the whole world reacts, because it will. simearth is still one of my favourite games ever.

 

[JarlFrank]

Wuselfaktor was always intended as an endearing term, because there's an inherent joy in building up a bustling village and watching it come alive as your citizens go after the jobs you assigned to them.

 

[AwesomeButton]

A lot of people just want an interactive wallpaper, watching shit grow and little dudes going about their business

There's a German word for that, coined back when The Settlers was made and became a hit: Wuselfaktor. Literally translated it means scurrying factor. It's the joy of building up a city and seeing all your little dudes scurry about the screen going about their business.

Kind of like the current state of Victoria 3 - zero challenge, just watch the colorful map with clouds and watch your gdp go up.

 

[JarlFrank]

A lot of people just want an interactive wallpaper, watching shit grow and little dudes going about their business

There's a German word for that, coined back when The Settlers was made and became a hit: Wuselfaktor. Literally translated it means scurrying factor. It's the joy of building up a city and seeing all your little dudes scurry about the screen going about their business.

Kind of like the current state of Victoria 3 - zero challenge, just watch the colorful map with clouds and watch your gdp go up.

No, Paradox map painters are too abstract to have Wuselfaktor.

Wuselfaktor exists when you can watch dozens if not hundreds of little dudes marching across the screen going after their business. Detailed economic models where resources are transported across roads and turned into goods help a lot with that.
Paradox's extremely abstract number balancers are the exact opposite of this.

 

[Tyranicon]

You know, the dev could've side-stepped a lot of shit if he just posted a roadmap.

Even something as simple as

May - busy with tons of drugs and hookers
June - buying new real estate, irl, with all my new money
July - finally getting around to fixing small bugs

Etc

 

[spectre]

You know, the dev could've side-stepped a lot of shit if he just posted a roadmap.

Best you can get at the moment:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4358998287110042015/

Hey folks, I'm Matt, the Community Director at Hooded Horse. I have some news about the upcoming patch being worked on for Manor Lords. Slavic Magic has shared some highlights of what’s coming up.

• Fixing all the homeless bugs.
• Tuning the archer damage.
• Tuning the trade oversupply mechanics (right now, it’s harsh and punishes regional specialization.).
• Slowing down the rate of AI claiming territories.
• Improving sawpit efficiency/storage.

We're also actively reviewing feedback and bug reports. All information and feedback have been incredibly helpful to us in identifying issues. If you'd like to join the Manor Lords Discord[discord.com] community, it's a great place to chat, troubleshoot, and discuss the game.

 

[Tyranicon]

You know, the dev could've side-stepped a lot of shit if he just posted a roadmap.

Best you can get at the moment:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/0/4358998287110042015/

Hey folks, I'm Matt, the Community Director at Hooded Horse. I have some news about the upcoming patch being worked on for Manor Lords. Slavic Magic has shared some highlights of what’s coming up.

• Fixing all the homeless bugs.
• Tuning the archer damage.
• Tuning the trade oversupply mechanics (right now, it’s harsh and punishes regional specialization.).
• Slowing down the rate of AI claiming territories.
• Improving sawpit efficiency/storage.

We're also actively reviewing feedback and bug reports. All information and feedback have been incredibly helpful to us in identifying issues. If you'd like to join the Manor Lords Discord[discord.com] community, it's a great place to chat, troubleshoot, and discuss the game.

Those are actually good fixes and some of my (and thousands of other players') top complaints about the game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

No, Paradox map painters are too abstract to have Wuselfaktor.

Wuselfaktor exists when you can watch dozens if not hundreds of little dudes marching across the screen going after their business. Detailed economic models where resources are transported across roads and turned into goods help a lot with that.
Paradox's extremely abstract number balancers are the exact opposite of this.

The map has some cosmetic animations such as the clouds, or cars, trains and carriages passing, also the time of day is changing, although it's not so closely tied and responsive to your actions as the morphing of the picture in Settlers 2.

 

[Kruyurk]

Wuselfaktor exists when you can watch dozens if not hundreds of little dudes marching across the screen going after their business. Detailed economic models where resources are transported across roads and turned into goods help a lot with that.

Wuselfaktor is having a good ale coverage in Stronghold with the drunkards wandering in the streets. And some schadenfreuktor if there is also a bear roaming the streets.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

and while i was at it, after "farthest frontier" i refreshed my knowledge of "foundation", which changed a lot, turning into a complete immobile toy where it's impossible to lose and numbers can only go up. now i get the enthusiasm around this piece of manure: it has no competition.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Good old Jason Kingsley giving his impressions.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Good old Jason Kingsley giving his impressions.

Wait, THE Rebellion?

I had no idea. I saw this guy's videos occationally didn't have any idea who he was besides being a medieval nerd.

 

[Sukhāvatī]

Good old Jason Kingsley giving his impressions.

Wait, THE Rebellion?

I had no idea. I saw this guy's videos occationally didn't have any idea who he was besides being a medieval nerd.

He also owns the rights to Judge Dredd.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Does he have a say on what kind of shit gets made under his company or is he just a money guy because i'm shocked there's not even a single medieval game in this list lol:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebellion_Developments

Also if he actually owns 2000 AD why hasn't he made more Dredd games. I know the last one was kinda of ghetto but it's wierd he never bothered trying again. I guess the company runs itself while he is busy LARPing as a medieval guy.

 

[spectre]

Looks like the game tracks a whole bunch of variables and the system goes teats up if something prods and upsets it.
I've had a raider attack which came from an unexpected direction at a province I've only just set up.
It was pretty satisfying as they burnt a good bunch of the buildings before troops arrived to mop them up shortly afterwards.

Shit got rebuilt pretty fast, but the province kept struggling with all sorts of shit - a bunch of folks got permanently tagged
as homeless (despite there being more than enough housing), and they kept losing the oxen (despite there being a bunch of sheds and hitching posts),
which is sort of a big deal in the early game, cause no ox means no logging and no construction.
And it can really screw your over since there's no easy way to get one if you don't have the 20 shekels to fork out on it.

I've also learned the hard way that archers aren't don't do much in terms of damage. Two 25-man units let off quite a few volleys at mostly unarmored raiders and it didn't inflict even one casualty.
They also fold immediately when charged at. What they can do is divide the enemy force as the AI is really dumb and will go chasing them through the woods,
so that the rest of the guys got a bit more evenly matched - 4 groups of raiders x 18 guys vs. 50 archers, 20 spearmen and 16 retinue on my end.
This was the biggest fight I've gotten into in the beta thus far (not counting the enemy duke who fields a few mercenary units, it needs a bit more buildup until you can take it on).

I'm only mentioning this so that guys who want a "better" Total War set their expectations straight. While the system looks fairly detailed,
what you're looking at are 100 vs 100 man skirmishes. There's no cavalry, so using archers for skirmishing is basically the height of tactics you'll see.
Other than this it's just the simple anvil and hammer - spearwall braces and takes the charge, men-at-arms flank and charge.

Recent patch notes say it's being fixed (and archers are also getting a damage buff), as well as, thankfully, the food distribution system which is all black magic ATM.
So here's hoping for an update of the official branch sometime soon, because it can get pretty annoying at the moment

EDIT:
Also, I only just noticed that there are quite a few mods. Mostly value tweaks, crests and object replacements.
https://www.nexusmods.com/manorlords/mods/

 

[Tyranicon]

Combat right now is just seeing who has the most amount of upgraded retainers, since they smash through everything like goddamn space marines.

If you have at least two regions you can get 2 units of 24 retainers. Fully upgrade them and you'll win every combat in the entire game.

 

[Tyranicon]

Oh yeah, the first major patch came out. https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/eventcomments/4337608650578400532?snr=1_5_9_

Here's the important stuff that were fixed:

• The rate of Hildebolt's claims
• The famous "None" people spawning in huge numbers and refusing to do any work
• The clogged Trading Posts
• The game being stuck at the summary screen after a victory / game over
• Very weak archer damage
• Inefficient sawpits, which also triggered "generic storage full" problem banners
• Barter and trading got a lot of fixes, with on-foot traders now being able to carry 5 items per trip & a new Trading Post setting to only allow trade between the player controlled Regions
• Overly high ale consumption
• Problems with optimizations in large cities
• Marketplace efficiency
• Problems with farming, like crops erasing in the winter, inaccurate overlays & inefficient harvests
• Too harsh oversupply/undersupply systems
• People and/or livestock staying homeless even though there is living space in the settlement
• Ability to add militia staying the same regardless of the order the player hires mercenaries and retinues
• Sheepbreeding development branch spawning sheep too frequently
• King's tax added
• A toggle to allow market stall setup for certain families
• Extra construction reserve UI, for instance reserving planks at the joiner's shop
• Combat animation variety

 

[Fedora Master]

It's still bare bones and badly balanced. In the combat scenario the other guy will still claim regions long before you can and town development doesn't match up with the "story". Good luck getting enough military to fend off the scripted raiders.

 

[Zanzoken]

On sale this weekend for 30% off.



Now that the dust has settled, are we ready to admit that this game was a massive hype job?

Somehow the idea took hold that it was going to be some kind of genre-defining masterpiece, but in reality it's just another city builder to throw on the pile.

 

[Modron]

Have there been any city builders in the last 20 years that don't end up in the pile?

 

[Cyberarmy]

Have there been any city builders in the last 20 years that don't end up in the pile?

Against the Storm

 

[AwesomeButton]

Have there been any city builders in the last 20 years that don't end up in the pile?

I remember I liked Zeus, the follow up to Caesar III. That's 24 years though...