ULTIMATE Guide to Manor Lords - COMPLETE Tutorial with Timestamps

welcome to the ultimate man andl Lords beginner guide where we'll go through step by step and with chapters every part of Mana Lords enabling and teaching you to establish a healthy and growing medieval town and understanding its economy and warfare systems what's nice about manl Lords is that you're allowed to take your time and as long as you play on the regular speed one it's unlikely that you're going to mess up too much at any stage in this game unless of course you don't understand anything at all but that's why I'm here so relax sit back and let's do this together Mana Lords is all about mechanics working together to either help or challenge you and as we begin our little Adventure you don't begin with much first of all at the top of the screen we get a nice overview over all of our resources essentially how well we are doing at any given moment if you hover over these symbols and numbers you'll even get a detailed rundown of every sub resource within that section so while the food tab refers to Total food in the region by hovering over it we get to see just how much of the different food types we have available and the same goes for every other one of the resource groups the middle part here refers to the region at hand meaning that the information changes based on the region you're currently in the information on the top right refers to your personal wealth and power the information on the bottom is where the action happens and by opening these various windows we can build roads create our town raise armies when applicable view helpful information about various parts of the game and change in-game settings by zooming in we can get a detailed view of the world up close and by by assuming out we eventually reach the campaign map where we have easy access to the entire world to get a better look at where different resources are located or indeed where there exists Bandit camps and where the AI Lord has control when we eventually gain influence by taking out Bandits and Raiders we get to claim other regions for ourselves and can begin creating entirely new towns in the regions we claim let's say we begin with the default stockpile of goods it's not going to be more than a few dozen units of your most basic resources in fact you only begin with eight units of lumber which is the most important thing in the very beginning as they have to be used carefully the first thing I recommend building is a storehouse and a granary and both can be found in the storage section in the building menu in the bottom corner of the screen this is because a storage house allows a dry and safe storage of goods and a granery does the same for food this is vitally important because let's say you begin your game in Spring which is the Natural season to begin the game in and you'll be very likely to encounter rain Within month or two rain is dangerous actually because it will damage your unprotected stocks that are just laying on the ground meaning these two buildings will secure your current and future Goods especially since both can be upgraded to contain even more storage later on and once they're finished let's assign one family to work at each building for now so we're sure they pick up these goods and store them safely of course now that we have built these two buildings we're left with less Timber than we started with a big threat to your early Game survival is the lack of Timber timber because you want to do two more essential things with it you see this little number up here that's approval you begin with 50% approval meaning that your people are neither happy nor discontent however in order to grow and create a large bustling town the reason we're here after all we need to raise that approval because that's what attracts new citizens that and available housing you begin with no houses at all actually yet we start with five families which makes them homeless and over time this lowers approval at the the same time building these houses first will completely us since without a lumber mill which demands Lumber to build we cannot get more lumber in other words we must build a logging Camp preferably near a forest and not too far from our storage house let's also connect everything with roads which costs nothing to build but feels awesome to lay down remember also to assign a family to the logging camp with more lumber coming in over time we should have two families left to work in construction and leading The Oxen which is important work and you should more or less always take care to have one such unassigned available family for this type of work as Lumber comes in we can now begin to build houses as many as your Lumber allows for and I would advise you to construct nothing else that demands Lumber until you've placed down between five and 10 houses I say 10 here because to attract more families which we desperately need you need Surplus accommodation meaning available living space 10 houses will give you some Breathing Room in this way for a little while notice how how we can scale and drag how many units we want or how large their plot is at the same time which is a really handy tool especially because that second house symbol that pops up means our housing unit gets a plot of land to build extra workspace on and we'll get back to that soon enough remember to also place a well close by so people have access to water but if you find yourself running low on fuel which you will soon make sure to place down a wood cutters camp and place down a family there too who will produce firewood at this point you might be running on food now is a very important time to look for easy sources of food namely meat and berries which should come naturally to all regions so we place both those down when we can and connect them to roads however we only have so many workers left now and the ones who are house need to get to our Goods easily in other words I'd say to remove one worker from their grannery since that was mostly for emergencies place them on the berry deposit to get a quick surge of food and create your first Market the market is where your families will play place down stalls related to their profession and allow your people to easily grab what they need in order to indeed fulfill their needs this means that soon enough the firewood Choppers will offer Fuel and the berry Pickers will offer food and the same goes for any other type of resource within the groups of food Fuel and clothing indeed with more families coming in as our approval heightens and housing is available we should Place one worker in the hunting camp because this is when things get interesting you see Hunters gather not only meat which is a great source of early game food but also hides meaning you can start tanning leather this means that again once enough families have arrived we should create a Tannery meaning we're going to get leather you see there are several ways to success in manal Lords for most intents and purposes success is measured in mostly five ways and you should ideally be doing well in all of them these are how rich your town is your surplus of food your surplus of fuel the market access of your people to these resources and how rich and mighty you are in most ways the four first ones result in the fifth and final one meaning it's often smart to begin by making sure your town is doing well this is why we're building a leather Tanner because it not only relates to making clothing available to your people which raises their approval but it also relates to trade trading is by far the best way to make money and frankly goes a very long time in feeding your population as well if you can maintain a positive trading balance this is why we should build a Trader at our earliest convenience and trade away our leather because leather will make us a lot of money notice however that in order to do so we need to pay gold to establish a trade route we begin with 50 gold so make sure you keep at least enough to open this first route by the way you might have noticed that the second you managed to establish your first five houses that you gained a town level and with it a development Point development points lead us to what is manal Lord's development tree a group of bonuses you can attain over time to help you in your way there are many paths here from allowing you to create more complex armor to grow apple trees Harvest honey and use oxen to plow your Fields but the first and most important perk I highly recommend getting at this point in time is the trade Logistics perk this is because to begin with establishing new trade RS can come to cost insane amounts of gold but with this perk those prices tops out at 25 gold meaning you'll save a ton of money down the road but even more than that is that this perk leads to arguably the best perk in the game better deals which significantly decreases the price of importing Goods which is the only way currently to make properly good money if you're planning on establishing a positive trade balance while also importing Goods this becomes more relevant later on but it's certainly worth knowing already now back to our Tanner however we cannot just rely on our hunting camp to bring hides to our Tanner that won't really do remember those plots behind our houses those can actually be used to bring in more food through vegetable farming or chicken keeping and later on when the houses are upgraded even more specializations but right now if we can afford it it would be wise to build a go pen since goats give us a passive yield of hides allowing our Tanner to make leather faster this allows us to eventually build vegetable plots or chicken cous when we gain money from Trading so over a couple of weeks our balance will once again be positive and we can focus on getting more food until now we've mostly skipped it but you might have noticed that we have touched upon approval and needs if you hover over a house you can in fact see that House's needs and if we meet the requirements of the families within for the first level of houses we also have the most most basic needs but fulfilling them makes the family as happy as can be all the same and allow us if we have the resources to upgrade the house to level two these first needs are water access a basic Church fuel stall Supply food stall Supply and clothing stall Supply notice how these requirements either have one or two squares next to them which indicates how many or the level of the chosen requirement they need for the church level they need the basic church built hopefully not too far away so it doesn't take the family ages to go pray but for the food stall Supply they need two types of food to be content meaning for example berries and meat to be satisfied contrary to the clothing demand where one article like leather is enough upgrading a house actually gives it living space for one more family as well and begins you to n you one gold per month per family in the house but more than that upgrading allows you to finally begin making complex items like shoes War bows swords and Spears a heavy armor and so on so in many ways it's a great benefit and necessary to do so be aware however that other than the cost of four Timber which is rather cheap a level two house will demand a lot more from you to maintain their approval like the complex ale resource the highest level of church which means you have to spend resources upgrading your current church and even more variety in food and clothing add on to that also the fact that if you want to make use of these complex resources and become Artisans by doing so it won't only cost you money and other resources to actually upgrade and even produce these new Goods but the family of that house will be removed from your larger Workforce meaning they become professional blacksmiths armors Fletchers or cobblers this is not to suggest that you shouldn't upgrade you absolutely should but I would not suggest doing so before you can reliably fulfill more than half of these needs and before you make sure you have enough families available to allow this one to become skilled workers should you require Stone however even though we technically do begin with it you could consider building a mine over the stone resource in your region and the same goes for the other resource bits like iron or clay which you will need later on notice as well that relating to trade it can be wise to import a cheaper good in order to manufacture a more complex and expensive good yourself for example importing Clay is cheap but exporting roof tiles which comes from clay after assigning a family to a clay furnace is expensive meaning you can easily get a positive trade balance from this transaction mixing and matching Goods like this is a good thing although I would say it's often better if you're able to produce a cheap lower good yourself and then exporting the complex good for the ultimate cash boost indeed once we have enough meat berries and hopefully either vegetables or eggs from our backyard Farms to fulfill our other needs the church is the only one remaining we do begin with most resources needed to build a church except for the planks which are different from Timber and firewood planks demands that another building be built and this saw pit demands Lumber to function just like with the tan readen we now have two production buildings which demands a lower tier resource to build and we we must make sure to balance our need of these with our need to maintain a healthy balance of the base good to create a healthy ecosystem notice also that in order to move around Goods like Timber planks and stone which are the base building blocks for virtually any building in the game you need an available oxen which may transport these goods from one place to another this is why I recommend having your saw Pit close in proximity to your logging Camp which cuts down on the travel time you can get more oxen however and you can even assign them specifically to work on the building of your choice although this largely disables them from helping out elsewhere at least urgently to get more oxen we can purchase one at a stable but do be aware of the stable space which should be upgraded before you purchase more livestock to keep available room for them L they run away with our planks we can un build our church and with our church completed we have fulfilled our basic needs our approval is increasing and we may upgrade our homes to level two notice however that even though you do have a surplus of various Goods that not necessarily all houses will be able to upgrade at the same time this is because not every family has equal access or time to pick up their goods from the marketplace so these needs will likely wax and wne in terms of being fulfilled but if you continue to do well they will likely get fulfilled at some point sooner or later thus far we've mostly focused on the city building aspects of manner Lords and following this tutorial will for the most part guarantee you success in the game but the other side of the Man coin is Warfare and even at this early stage you might find the need to to muster your men and go to war you see as briefly mentioned Bandits roam their regions outside of yours and even though they leave you alone and are left alone mostly they will periodically come and steal various resources from you which can significantly harm your progress indeed depending on your settings Bandit raids may even occur after a year at the earliest meaning we need to either take the fight to them or prepare your Army in matter Lords also known as your Levy isn't just something you recruit every person you field are actually taking the directly from your adult male population meaning you'll be restricted to how large your village is to fill your ranks now essentially every Bandit Camp features one Bandit group of about 16 men thus far meaning you'll do well to feature at least 16 or more men in your Levy in this early stage you'll notice however that you don't just need population to get a levy but you need equipment now depending on your game settings again you can either receive a shipment of basic Spears and large Shields once you've reached the first town level upgrade when building five houses which means that you can technically equip up to 20 men as Spearman which I recommend doing as they can easily take out the bandits however if you do not get the shipment getting a levy is a bit more complicated you see in order to produce weapons and armor yourself and create a certified arms industry you're going to need a combination of planks which we already have and iron and to get iron slabs we're going to have to get iron ore found in iron mines just like with stone and Clay iron mines can be built on an iron deposit and when a family is assigned to it will produce iron ore iron ore can then be taken to a bloomery where the workers there will create iron slabs which will then be used by your blacksmiths and armors to create weapons and armor the blacksmiths and armors are tied to your level two and above houses which means they are specializations if you wish to create bows you can do so fairly simply since the only resource you'll need are planks if you wish to create complicated iron armor however you'll need to unlock the armor perk for that once you have your equipment ready you may go to the Army menu and choose which type of infantry unit you'd like to focus your first Lev on for the most part you do well to pick Spearman since that's the gear that you get that free shipment of if you pick more than one type of unit and have the equipment for it your men will even out between them until they're both full which means that if you don't have enough people to service both units namely at least 72 adult men your next unit will eat part of the numbers of the first one so keep that in mind you can have a maximum of six Levy units at any given time each one totaling 36 men however if you gather enough lumber and planks and stone you can also build the ultimate building the manor you may only have one Manor per region and it allows you to implement taxation of your region in percentage increments and enable tithes to the church sending a percentage of your food in return for influence in this way if you have a functioning Regional economy through trade you can end up making a ton of money from taxation but perhaps the most important part of the manner is the ability to get your retinue and to expand and improve this retinue the retinue is your Elite group of units it begins at 5 goes up to 24 if you expand your Manor with an expensive Tower and can recruit more of them by paying from them out of your own pocket in addition you can even purchase better armor for them either from foreign merchants or from local Artisans but the latter demands that you produce this good yourself the retinue is particularly awesome not just because they're Elite but because you can customize them with different helmets weapons and Shields and even change their names and the color of their equipment what's nice about the new is that because you're paying for their service yourself in onetime payments you do not have to produce weapons or armor for them so they're kind of outside that system if you don't have an arms industry or import weapons if you manage to attain enough influence through destroying bandic camps and defeating Raiders you can even claim new regions on the map build up entirely New Towns and establish new manners each one with their own renue native to that region in other words you can realistically field up to five or six retinues while the other Lord remains on the map the r Lord by the way is essentially an AI Army that sometimes shows up to fight Bandits and who will either stay passive claim neutral regions or claim your regions depending on your game settings the latter being very rare by the way diplomacy in manl Lords is almost non-existent except for declaring war at this point and you don't really have to bother with it at all at this point so for the early to mid game you don't have to pay too much attention to this Lord until you want to attack him yourself at which point you just claim his region with enough influence points and wait for the game to give you a point on the map where your battle will be fought for the control of the region however keep in mind that sending people out to battle puts their life at risk but more than just risk it stalls your production and productivity at home because you're suddenly left with a significantly lowered Workforce it won't ruin your game if you send out the OD Levy to get rid of Bandits and if everyone survives but if you leave them out there it'll likely become a big issue for your first outing then I recommend getting your ly together destroy the bandits and then raid their Camp which gives you a choice you see the Bandit Camp has gold and you can either send this gold to your nearest region or you can pocket the money yourself for this first Camp raid I highly recommend taking the money yourself because this will give you more than 100 gold and that more than pays for the monthly salary of a mercenary unit as soon as you lead your levies back to your region you may disband them which doesn't destroy the unit forever but simply lets them back into civilization and you can always call upon them later however the next time you need to destroy a bandit camp or defend the against a raid you can now open the mercenary menu and pay for the group of your choice preferably as cheap of an option as possible but still one that will do the job as long as you destroy a bandaid camp with a unit you'll end up with more money than you began with just remember to disand the mercenary unit if you do not wish to keep it around because you don't just pay The Upfront cost you pay them on a periodic cycle which may quickly drain that manly purse of yours however and on the other hand this means that if you focus on trading and make a healthy profit Say by opening trade roots for your weapons industry and decide to trade those weapons away instead of using them for war you can become a proper Merchant Republic or the most Serene Republic of the manner if you will and decide to completely rely on Mercenaries this is a fun way to play actually since if you actually build up that trading arms industry you can always use those weapons for yourself later on but since you are not right now you get to consistently keep high production rates and keep your men safe from war let's talk a bit more about how fighting actually works seeing how the rest of Mana Lords for the most part allows you to take your time and Ponder your decisions the battles of Mana Lords is the most intense and action focused part of the game but despite this momentto moment action it's fairly simple to learn yet comes with some interesting Mechanics for you to make use of like most games out there selecting units comes easy you can either simply click control and click on multiple or drag over multiple at a time to select one or more units at a time left clicking elsewhere unselects them while right clicking on a spot in the world moves them to that point or right and drag moves the whole line to that point double clicking forces them to run to their destination but remember that this depletes their stamina fast so this can be a risk to do over time if you line up your soldiers in a cool formation you can hold alt while rightclick dragging to send your army information to that spot however notice that each unit also comes with commands some are special so for Bowman you can choose to have them shoot regularly for longer range or shoot shorter but for more damage for some units with a shield you can assume Shield wall formation giving you much better defensive stats when facing the enemy you can also tell your units to pursue a balanced defensive or aggressive stance each one providing you with the best mode of fighting for any given situation even though archers will sometimes refrain from firing from behind an ally unit when that unit is fighting an enemy in close quarters you can make use of their fire while the enemy is somewhat further away but no matter whether you're using archers or not it's often wise to make use of flanking or hammer an animal tactics encircling the enemy and and draining their effectiveness this way you can also make use of terrain for height advantages and yes holding The High Ground is a certified winner in other words if you make use of formations positioning and terrain and feel the proper units you're sure to go far in manl Lords whether you are using your own ly or go mercenaries only or partially that does it for the early game of M Lords up to the level two buildings but the game doesn't end there so if you followed along thus far great job you have succeeded in understanding manal Lord's basic concept and you may Grant at to the mid and late game because in many ways they are kind of the same at this point in time if you understand the basic concepts for the most part manal Lord's more complex mid and late game revolve around your homes but also focus on Farming and trading and let's begin with farming because I think for a lot of people this will seem like the intuitive place to begin even in the early game but here's why I caution you against that farming in manords is a lengthy process it's not just about putting down a Farm building and bread comes out like it split no what you need to do first is place down a field but even this is not that easy an important aspect of manal Lords is fertility and every region on the map comes with varying degrees of it some patches of land being more suitable for farming than others you want to place down your field in The Greener zones for bigger yields but consider also that different soil is better tailored to different crops and there are four different crop types in the game wheat flax Harley and Rye namely for making bread ale flax and bread again Rye is unlocked through the development tree and is strong ER than wheat giving you potentially better yields so that is something to consider down the line however we are placing down our Wheat Farm since we wish to reliably feed our population first and foremost for ultimate optimization in the early game consider making the field one Morgan which is a decent size that most Farmers should be able to plow sew and then harvest in time for winter however this is just the beginning you need farmers of course and Farmers work out of The Farmhouse families must once again be assigned to The Farmhouse to work the fields but the only work the fields between the months of March up to and including November after which any remaining crops will rot and waste you can see the progress your farmers and Fields have made in plowing sewing yielding and then harvesting the crops by clicking on the field itself which is also where you can conduct upgrades by the way a feature available to a select group of buildings like storage sheds for more space Trade buildings for more horses herbalist how to enable herbs and indeed fields and farms in order to do two important things when you have unlocked them in the development tree you see plowing Fields can take a long time but by unlocking Ox driven plowing from a farmhouse you can do this in a fraction of the time giving a lot more time for The Sewing and the yielding indeed at a field if you have unlocked the pasture development you can after having imported cheap have them Grace on your fields which gives them back fertility a lot faster that's another thing by the way after one season of harvesting Fields will lose their fertility and will if you want it back need to go fallow for a season in order to yield its maximum potential the next year this means that your Fields won't be working at all half the time if you're careful with maintaining fertility which is another reason why supplementing your food supply with trade and other sources is vital that was a bit of a tangent but still an important one so let's get back to the bread making process so say a few months have passed by and the Harvest is over your farmers will now take the wheat to The Farmhouse where they turn it into grain the grain will stay there however unless you build a windmill and employ workers there where the grain will be turned to flour now you need a communal Baker's house to finally create bread with its own workers of course now as you can tell this is a lengthy process that requires a ton of families just to get properly started but getting bread will also often take a good 6 months between sewing and harvesting in other words Farms should ideally be done on a large scale not just one plot in my opinion this is at least how to properly make use of farming and the investment it requires at the moment since farming requires both a surplus of people and that you have other Foods sources that can sustain you while you're waiting for the yield to be turned into bread I guess in essence make sure to diversify your food sources and to do so effectively let's talk a bit about trade again we talked about how trade can be a good way to make early game income but what's interesting is that you really want to make it big trade becomes crucial for your food supply and possible other needs you see everything can be traded and if you wish to keep upgrading your houses from level two to three for example you're going to need money to do so one good which is a classic one to export is leather and by extension shoes because these are expensive goods and can be mass-produced indeed no matter if you're going to raise your own Levy or Not Your Arms industry is very likely to begin stockpiling weapons which means they're ripe for export weapons like bows Spears sidearms and shields will yield a ton of money over time through trade meaning we can begin paying for imports now just remember that all of these higher tear goods are considered to be needing major trade routes meaning they have to be paid for to be unlocked which is all to say that the better deal perk is vital to keep those costs down in other words our exports are what we'll pay for our Imports and our Imports can be geared towards extending and diversifying that food supply this can rapidly increase your storage of food much faster and more reliably than farming ever could and is frankly the only way I'd recommend to go about building towns that are larger than a few hundred people what is important to note though is that in order to not bankrupt yourself or suddenly empty your export stock you need to carefully balance what you wish your surplus of every good to be this means that while you should consider exporting quite a lot more than you import that you keep a base stock of goods left say if you wish to be able to call in your ly later on keeping a few dozen Spirits or Shields and Bows handy would be very smart over time this has the potential to Nate you enormous wealth not just for your region but also for you personally since with that manner we mentioned earlier we can actually tax our people in percentage increments and with enough money and time well you too can become richer than you ever thought possible however there are a few goods that I would recommend reporting instead of making yourself since currently there's almost no way you'll make enough of them to satisfy those higher needs of the people ale is one of them and since ale has a lengthy production process importing ale or even malt is recommended as long as you can afford it which alleviates space and workers for other projects the same goes for clothing actually because the more complex stuff can be hard to put together demanding higher tier resources like flax or yarn which demands a relatively lengthy route to make so again at this time I'd recommend import in some of those types of goods to an extent at least if you have the money for it in terms of our houses however there are a few things you should know as of right now housing reaches their limit at level three the only truly meaningful upgrade however is at level two when you're able to make the inhabitants into arance which also brings you one Regional wealth per month per family living there and yes at level two each house allows for the inhabiting of one additional family however in terms of level three houses they don't come with that same transformative thing only they of course now look insanely badass and they now bring in two gold per family to the region wealth which potentially significantly increases that monthly income when you have enough of them for a balanced economy that brings in more people keeps them happy and most importantly fed and warm it's important therefore to focus on trade and local farming at the same time to develop your region with new technology and using your hard tier exports to pay for the importation of lower tier Goods like food first and foremost and you know that is for the most part everything you need to know to succe seeded manner Lords and information I wish I knew when I dived in my first time if you enjoyed the video I sincerely hope you'll tell me your thoughts and comment down below and leave me your questions too if there's something I forgot to mention I hope you leave a like subscribe to the channel and consider supporting me on patreon or as a YouTube member if you enjoy what I do and wish to support me further thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time cheers

Channel: Andy's Take

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Length: 29min 29sec (1769 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 26 2024