Medieval Historian Reacts To Manor Lords

this is Jason Kingsley historian host of modern history TV and CEO of the video game Studio Rebellion today he's joining us to share his thoughts on the Epic Early Access RTS medieval city-builder Mana Lords I can vouch for the fact that the more work you do with animals the stronger you get you don't need to go to the gym at all you you just shoveling literally gets you fit Jason does plenty of deep dives into medieval life over on his own channel links to that and all of his socials are in the description below hey everyone before we get into the video we wanted to deliver a quick message about redns Day redns Day believes less childhood poverty means more childhood when kids have all the support they need they are more free to be their best selves donations give kids facing poverty access to more nutritious food safety quality education and so much more if you believe that every kid should have the opportunity to chase a brighter future donate today at rednoseday.org right over to Jason the old now one of the interesting things is this period in the medieval history there weren't that many areas of of sort of wilderness as such there lots of places were already settled so starting in the middle of nowhere sort of bit like the winning of the West for example didn't really happen in quite the same way you had waves of migrants coming over chances are you'd be setting up a settlement across roads or where there's plenty of water now burgage plots absolutely this is a this is a big thing one of the key things about burgage plots is they reflect the needs of a medieval household old so medieval household needed a place to sleep they also needed a place to keep pigs cuz pretty much every household had domestic pigs but they also needed to grow their own food as well so they they effectively were living on allotments in in the UK we have things called allotments which you can get from the local government which is a a chunk of land you can grow your veggies on your potatoes and leaks and whatever it might be broad beans so burgage plots are long and narrow and often go onto a back Lane and you still see that in some English town plans and yeah we're collecting big logs here a lot of medieval houses are built with whatever material is available so ideally you want nice big logs of Oak but if you can't get that you use whatever wood you whatever wood you can get hold of and you notice they're using oxen here and I'll I'll pause it again because oxen are very interesting a lot of people don't actually know what oxen are well oxen are male cows who have been castrated in the medieval period if you had a male cow a bull becomes very dangerous when it matures and it's very strong but if you neuter it if you gel it which you would do with a horse for example you create a very physically strong but much more docile creature think of them as as like tractors to an ordinary car so let's think of a horse as a as a car and an oxen as a tractor they they go slowly they're very docile but they get the job done a lot of medieval buildings don't have particularly deep foundations they're often just built into holes in the ground and the the Earth gets trotten in and thatch thatch is a big thing as well you notice the angle of the roof thatch it just redirects the drips of the rain so it drips on the bit below it and trundles down and drips on the bit below it so you need a decent thickness of thatch and it's straw or reads that were gathered and put at a very strong angle so you had very steep roofs and of course there's a natural problem with dry fatch and um fire there a lot of buildings burnt down in the medieval period there's a main road here and the main roads would typically go from a place to another place they connected interesting trade routes often they connected interesting towns that might have a market the concept of a market was very important in the medieval period you had to have a license to have a market the king and the lord of the Mana got money uh for having a market the other big Power Group in the medieval period And this is sort of 13th 14th century we're talking about here by the looks of the clothing was the Church of course the church took 10% of your um income and the church served as a social Center uh welfare as well they supposedly looked after your spiritual and physical health as well most churches were probably little more than big Huts until the The Village had enough money to make a big one like this but the Spire uh spires tend to come in quite a lot later in the medieval churches are are literally just Huts I'm going to I'm going to pause it again here in real life you set up your structure where you've got your natural resources key things are shelter water food so you don't want to be walking for miles and miles to get your water you want to be near a good water source that might be a stream or a river it can't be bad water because you just won't survive there and often marshes and places like that have a lot of infectious beasts so mosquitoes and mid years and things and they're bad so you try to set up away from that kind of stagnant water but you also need land and typically a medieval village would have three great Fields because they farmed communally or rather the fields were shared communally and were allocated by Lots so you might have a strip on that land on The Big Field and one of those great Fields would be kept Barren for one year so there' be a constant cycling of uh fertility that was the idea you put your animals on The Big Field that's not being used for anything they poo everywhere tread their dung in you then plow it up and plant um your food on it the next year so let's watch what the what this game does it's absolutely right you set up where you can where the fertility is the highest plowing by hand is fairly unlikely unless you've got no alternative it's extremely hard work plowing by hand is more for digging for your you know your turnips obviously no potatoes back then they were in the Americas but your turnips your root vegetables and that kind of stuff but you'd probably be using an ox and a heavy plow and that Ox is going quite fast there I would say he's probably going twice as fast and turning around is an interesting one if we if you pause here modern plows can flip so they all plow the same way you go you go one way down the field you get to the end pull the plow up rotate the plow drive back down and it plows the opposite way but it from the fields perspective it's all going left to right or right to left medieval plows were little more than boards that were breaking up the soil it didn't really tip it one way or the other what that means is you end up with wavy lines in fields you look at aerial photographs you can see the line isn't straight the line wobbles in a very lazy s men and women worked equally and we have a lot of pictures um of people working strips down to their more or less their underwear they've rolled down their leggings they've taken their hoods off they've taken their shirts off um women obviously there's no illustrations of women doing that but a lot of men in little more than their linen underwear digging in the uh in the sunlight wheat and barley very important barley in particular is very important flax obviously is what you can grow the fibers for linen you can have the seed to make oil from which is quite useful for all sorts of things uh linseed oil the fibers can be red and allowed to um you they they produce a fiber which is what linen is all about crop harvesting was very manual men women and children got involved in this and it's probably big celebration as well there's nothing more satisfying than getting your harvest in cuz that ensures you're going to survive over the winter and let's not forget that food wasn't readily available you couldn't just sort of jump online and uh and order food if you didn't have a good harvest you knew you were going to have a really miserable winter now foraging is interesting foraging is obviously something people did uh but there were rights associated with it for example you could turn your pigs out to what's panage to forage for acorns of course human beings can eat acorns if they if they have to it's really not very nice I've tried it berries yes I don't think they were a big part of people's diet back then obviously from a gamees perspective it's an easy wild food to harvest yeah and there's an interesting one so herb herb gardens were definitely a thing herbs are really important they added spice so things like mint and Thyme were were grown uh particularly grown in monasteries and things like that but they were also grown for medicinal as well as culinary purposes it's likely they ate quite a lot because you can't do physical work and stay alive without eating quite a lot of calories you're going to be doing a lot of walking you're going to be doing a lot of lifting and shoveling I can vouch for the fact that the more work you do with animals the stronger you get you don't need to go to the gym at all you you just shoveling literally gets you fit now it's interesting in the game they've used a lot of sloping land and I that's fine it makes it variable but we often see most things most medieval Villages set up and flat land you know building into the land means you got to physically dig quite a lot of uh soil out you've got an awkward an awkwardness you've got damp coming in as well you don't want that you know there's no Central heatings you've got a central half but you don't really want moisture coming into your um your building if you can possibly avoid it often the fence around your burgage plot your your garden would be more of those horizontal like wattle and D same stuff your walls are made out of so it's woven usually woven Hazel In and Out so not picket fence like this now these houses look quite big actually these are level one houses they're fairly substantial so these are wealthy medieval people relatively speaking a lot of people lived in sheds really I mean just have a look at how it works in the third world sometimes you people a roof over your head is is a luxury and that's great you know you don't need big spaces you don't need upper chambers you uh you don't need them you want them probably these are more like tow houses some of these are three story uh properties um and I would suggest those would have been more likely to not get in a village but more likely to be seen in the developing towns marketplaces hunting was a big thing typically reserved for the nobility though you would get into a lot of trouble if you took the king's deer as we know from stories of Robin Hood uh it happened poaching happened then it happens now but uh you would keep it quiet here we can see a medieval person bright colors great love to see bright colors on medieval people cuz they love their colors those hoods I've got several of those shaped hoods and they're incredibly warm they keep you warm wool and another layer of wool is is fantastic and is exactly what they wor so the the very accurate costumes here which is wonderful now I'll have some thoughts about dragging a whole carcass like that you'd probably put it on on a horse you probably wouldn't be carrying a the body of a stag like that back easily you'd probably butcher it on site you certainly gut it on site might skin it on site and take back your selected remains um because you can hide it because if you're going to get into trouble for poaching the last thing you want is a big display like that depending on the era you might lose a hand or have an eye put out for doing this so this is a high-risk high-risk o activity but it happened obviously there's a hand cart I've got a hand cart they're brilliant they're really fun they make a brilliant noise makes a really nice sound as you're trundling along it doesn't skid like that though you have to turn it on its on its Center that that's been done because of the requirements of the animation and the requirements of the game and I'm fully familiar for those that don't know I I make games for a living so I know the limitations of what you can and can't do with animation in a game um and what happens in real life if we uh just pause a sec if we can so the game allows you to set up hunting limits when you know these sanction Hunters go out and hunt deer otherwise you will just kill off all of your deer and then the next year those hunters will have no work to do and you'll be short a source of meat how would medieval people know sort of like we need to stop hunting now I'm guessing it's something that happened yeah absolutely well there were Foresters there was a profession there a profession called Forester and their their job was to manage the the landscape they they were sort of uh Wildlife police in a way I mean they were designed to preserve the the the hunting facilities really for the lord of the Mana so there were plenty of places where wild life gets hunted more or less to Extinction could the tragedy of the commons you if everybody gets some now great they have some food now but then it's all gone the game has rendered the liquid as a very suspect yellowy color as well well tanning tanning was a very stinky job it was literally literally involved um you would make a slurry of urine feces human urine and feces sometimes dog Mark as well called Pure um and in a lot of the towns they sent the children out first thing in the morning so parents just remind your children that if they'd lived a long time ago they'd have been sent out to collect dog mark off the streets before breakfast I don't believe the mechanic has been implemented yet OB it's the game's Early Access but when you look on the overlay there's one for smell so I'm anticipating the tannas are going to stink pretty bad and it'll make your um neighbors and the people living by pretty unhappy a lot of things in the medieval period smelled quite badly and you put really smelly things like that downwind and we have city ordinances which the tanning industry needs to be Downstream and down wind from you ale or beer was hugely important think of it as I think it was a liquid bread pretty much everybody drank beer from an early age to when they died and I think it contributed quite a lot of the calories to the diet so it was sought after as a result of that and and having a little bit of a buzz at lunchtime this kind of makes going out digging in the fields again a bit easier perhaps I don't know now this looks a bit fantasy to me this is a little bit um not how it would be you you wouldn't really have a Tavern as such in the same way in a village like this you'd have somebody who was good at brewing beer and they put a broom outside their house to say I've got a brew on does anybody want some and you go in and take your mug and drink with your friends it didn't keep though so you needed to get the ale drunk quickly so I can imagine a few people going there's a bit more than we can drink let's just have a party so whether you'd have as good equipment as this with shields or not it would depend on who supplying you with the weapons you might just turn up with the weapons you had to hand there might just be a sickle or scthe or your knife you might then end up strapping your knife onto a pole you could get hold of or taking your um hedging tool turning it into a bill with a long handle chances of the militia in the early medieval period having swords are unlikely Spears are ubiquitous from ancient times all the way through to the modern era if you think about what a bayonet is bayonet is a spear Point attached to your gun it's a spear not a very good spear a useful spear not as good as a real spear you often had to do 30 days of ser military service was fairly strictly adhered to so the nobility had to keep an eye on how long you were fighting for because after 30 days off you go back home and they didn't want to fight during Harvest either if they could avoid it because they needed everybody on the land to gather the food in for the winter it's interesting that you mentioned that because while playing the game it was actually apparent that if my militia were away from the town for too long and over certain Seasons I made a mistake of campaigning in September my Farms were they they weren't being harvested as quickly and and my food reserves were then lower in the winter so it's interesting that war and battle was planned out historically to support the Agriculture and the economy well AB absolutely yeah man Power Man Woman child power was hugely important you know if if you couldn't take your harvest in well guess what it rots in the fields now a bad Harvest would cause you problems you would know you'd had a bad Harvest you might might have a harvest that's bad enough for you to not have any surplus which means you're not going to starve and if you wanted to go on campaign during Harvest time I think you'd find a lot of people saying not going to do that because if I if I go on campaign during the Harvest Time my children will starve to death and I ain't doing that doesn't matter what you do to me yeah people were paid wages you know so you you'd have professional soldiers in some cases they had to provide for themselves but a lot of cases there were professional soldiers who paid a certain number of pennies a day depending on what you brought so sometimes we have notifications of people bringing better weapons and they get paid an extra penny a day and people have certain skills you there might be archers Master archers and they get paid three Pence a day they might bring a horse there might be a knight they might get paid a shilling a day uh so you know there was a there was a hierarchy of pay depending on how efficient you are mercenaries were very often very well well armed and armored because that was their job and one thing you'll notice here is everybody's got helmets on that's the first piece of armor you would want to get in in combat and they've got the nice pointy helmets as well which meant to deflect swords and they do deflect swords um I've got a cheap helmet I use as a target for my swords and if you don't get right on the Dome the sword just flies off which is why probably if somebody's got a helmet on like that you don't hit them with a sword or spear here you hit them with a mace something heavy try and get the impact to go through and break their neck combat is always an interesting one how does combat in the real world actually work um and obviously it has to be stylized and potentially sanitized for our entertainment purposes anybody that's been in real Combat whatever it might be modern military knows how blim and horrible it is Medieval combat was potentially as bad if not worse you have to be close to people generally speaking if especially if you're going to stab them with a sword you can hear what they're saying if you understand what they're saying they might be saying you know F off you know there's lots of swearing going on lots of people not wanting to close in on a formed Army like this I mean would you charge into 150 men standing there with swords and weapons it's like takes quite a lot of courage to do that and you're probably going to die lot lots of stabbing definitely lots of stabbing stabbing with a spear is relatively quick and easy and a direct stab to get somebody to go away cuz that's what you're probably trying to do just go away don't kill me a lot of close quarter combat here I think a man in armor against men not in Armor man in armor is very difficult to kill they got full armor like this some of these are very well armored they've got full face protection and head protection upper bodies they've got Shields they've got axes got some interesting type of axes there for that period is likely to be different weapons than than axes but you've got the right kind of numbers interestingly a lot of the ancient combat you know the ancient world Persians and the Romans and you know the Chinese had tens of thousands of soldiers in their armies in the medieval period you get armies of 150 which is you know I've got 600 people work at Rebellion that's two medieval armies worth um so it's kind of interesting that the scale and the scope on these islands which is so sort of fun in a way is vanishingly small compared to the the the ancient Egyptians or the ancient Romans scale of warfare radically decreased and changed but the Weaponry becomes very different and steel plate armor becomes very [Music] efficient so as a noble household to grow you get you get your your retinue you get your household guards so as you have more money you can have people whose job it is to sort of be your bodyguards to be your household um a lot of places they had a lord two men at arms and two long bowmen you not talking hundreds you have to go to the higher levels of nobility to have people with retinues of of 150 it's expensive to arm uh a man at Arms in the in the latest equipment you know you're talking about the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of Kit per person just think of the military today what they get given how much a rifle costs and how much body armor costs and how much a tank costs imagine doing that out of your private income and how many people even a rich person could afford to have in their army you mentioned helmets and um different equipment yeah you can increase the survivability of your militia by equipping them with things like gambers and helmets but you have to make them and if there's not enough to go around then your militia will turn up as as I experienced in my game half of them aren't wearing armor they've come come out in their Woolen hoods and just their normal shirts standing next to some luckier chap who's got a gamerson and a plate helmet I think that's extremely likely um you can only equip the people you've got equipment for um if you've got warning you got warning you're going to combat in 3 months time maybe you can get some stuff made but if you get very little warning it was like you got to assemble your men in a week I like the idea here you got brightly colored banners as well Banners are really useful on the battlefield it's very easy to get disorientated we've we've probably all gone for walks in woods and couldn't work out where we are whether we're going north Southeast or west the same chaotic thing happens on the battlefield which way am I facing you could get turned around in combat and be facing completely the wrong way and if you could see the banners this is this is our color you can regroup to that color and so those Banners are above everybody's head height they're flapping in the wind they're brightly colored it's like I'm going to go back to the dragon Banner cuz that's my side that's what they're for they have secondary uses of morale and you know rallying points and that kind of stuff but they basically help orientate you on the battlefield now some of these troops are very well organized they're all they're all coordinated they're all in a nice line there um obviously that's gameplay it's the way the AI is is going and it goes a bit more chaotic now I think people unless they're on the parade ground are not that coordinated there sort of be a bit more of a lump with maybe a front line that's coordinated and a lump of people behind them um it's hard enough i' I've ridden at the Battle of Hastings in the conro there with the horses sort of 10 10 horses side by side trying to keep 10 horses in a line more or less in a line more or less coordinated without anybody actually trying to kill you is quite difficult trying to keep keep a 100 horses in line or a thousand men in line is going to be even more difficult so um I have a suspicion there's much more Chaos on the medieval Battlefield than we like to think I think it's really interesting to see a game that's so focused on the reality of the medieval period we we have lots of ideas that come from the media typically about what the medieval is like you know people moves like Game of Thrones which is kind of quasy medieval or games like Dungeons and Dragons which is sort of semi medievally with lots of overlaps but the real medieval which is this um which I'm very pleased they've done a great job on it I got told that people had use some of my work on modern history TV which is my YouTube channel as a as a reference point which is great which is what it's there for uh I I try to dig into the realities of the medieval period what it was really like to be medieval peasant I love seeing these things from a perspective of a sort of medieval Enthusiast and a practical Horseman for example you know I ride my own horses um so I know how horse handling works but I also can see what they're doing from a gameplay perspective from the the technology and the gaml this is really nice to see and I think they've done a great job just fantastic to see uh a game of this quality doing so well so well done the team that did it a big thanks to Jason for joining us on this video and thank you so much for watching Remember to comment below what other games you'd like to see on the show and be sure to subscribe for more content like this and Beyond

Channel: GameSpot

Views: 306,509

Keywords: manor lords guide, manor lords gameplay, gamespot, expert reacts, manor lords, breakdown, historian, expert, reacts, manor, lords, real history, manor lords tutorial, expert reacts to manor lords

Id: KS56GUgb-08

Length: 25min 24sec (1524 seconds)

Published: Wed May 08 2024