Manor Lords combines deep city-building, strategic battles, and intricate economic simulations in a medieval setting. As a lord, you'll manage the growth of your village into a flourishing city, handle resources, and expand your territory through strategic conquests. Inspired by late 14th-century Franconian architecture and art, the game strives for historical accuracy, enhancing both gameplay mechanics and visuals.
https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/news/app/1363080/view/4187863867982742757?l=english

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https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1363080/Manor_Lords/

Hi everyone,

The first official Manor Lords patch (0.7.972) is ready. If you have participated in the beta, remember to turn "betas" to "none" to access it.

Saves: We recommend you begin a new save to enjoy all the fixes and changes.

Mods: Please remove any mods you have before beginning a new save to ensure you can play without interference from an outdated mod.

Here's an overview of some fixes and additions that were worked on during the beta testing:

• 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

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To make trading between Regions easier, I made sure that the players can use Trading Posts to trade between their own regions without using Barter / Pack Stations.

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Whenever a person dies, there is a 30 day mourning period that blocks growth. You can now preview this in the Building Panel of the Burgage Plot or by pressing TAB.

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Carried corpses now have a visual representation.

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New upgraded retinue armor variations & new militia helmet were added.

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I reimplemented a mechanic called "Annual Royal Tax" or "King's Tax" (I'm still deciding on the naming). No tax for the first 5 years, 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury per citizen after 15 years. In theory, it should slightly punish bad workplace optimization and make it more difficult to hoard huge amounts of cash.

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The Large Granary building got a rework. The doors now properly animate.

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A new unit patron was added - St. Maurice

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I added an "Allow market stall setup" toggle to prevent the workers/inhabitants of certain buildings from setting up market stalls.

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You can now also set a construction reserve for buildings using planks for crafting, like the Joiner's shop.

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The tax is collected annually from all players (main player and AI) and goes to the liege. It is calculated per population, serving as a counterbalance for players hoarding huge wealth despite non-optimized economies.

Currently, players can incur debt without consequence. In the future, failure to pay will result in losing the king's favor and eventually facing the king's army as enemies.

Players can now switch trade to "local only" in the trading post for each type of good, allowing them to exchange goods between their own regions while ignoring free merchants. Two trading posts (one in each region) are still required to make this function work. Employed traders will prioritize traveling to the location with the best prices to commence trade, potentially including regions owned by other Lords. The transport distance factor is reduced to make it more predictable for players where traders will go (to the place with the best price). Regional wealth is still required to exchange goods between regions with a trading post to maintain regions as independent economic units, simulating a more realistic economy.

• Food Consumption: People now pick a random food resource instead of eating food in a specific order.
  
• Crop Fertility: Fertility is no longer drained after crop growth reaches 100%, making early harvest micromanagement less necessary. Yield may still increase over 100% growth if max yield is not reached.
  
• Yield Cap: will now never increase past 100% growth to avoid confusion about exceeding 100%. Even when fertility reaches 0%, there will still be a small possible yield.
  
• Harvesting Efficiency: When harvesting, crops are directly added to the field inventory instead of the villager inventory to reduce bottlenecks from harvesting walk times, especially for large fields.
  
• Oxen Prioritization: Prioritized oxen plowing over transporting resources to the granary and warehouse to reduce oxen walking back and forth from the plowed field every time new resources are available for transport.
  
• Plowing Shed: Plowing shed now adds 2 livestock worker slots.
  
• Food Distribution: Food-producing residential plots no longer stock up on their produce before sharing with the marketplace.
  
• Sawpit Log Storage: Increased sawpit log storage space to 5.

• Baron Region Claims: Lowered the rate of the Baron claiming regions and adjusted it to better reflect game settings.
  
• Worker Camp Upgrade: Removed the worker camp upgrade intended for colony regions; it will be re-added when properly implemented.
  
• Trade Route Establishment: When establishing a trade route, merchants no longer all spawn at the nearest trade point but are distributed to circle between various trade points.
  
• Archer Damage: Archer damage increased from 4 to 13.
  
• Trade Logistics Development: The "Trade Logistics" development branch now lowers the cost of new trade routes by 50% instead of clamping it at 25.
  
• Trade Route Costs: Increased the base cost of opening a trade route from 12 to 20 (before the good value multiplier). Reverted the cost of opening new trade routes to linear scaling.
  
• Market Oversupply: When the market is oversupplied, players can still export goods at a lower price. The price multiplier for oversupplied goods is now 0.75x for oversupplied and 0.5x for critically oversupplied.
  
• Market Oversupply Rate: The rate at which the market becomes oversupplied no longer depends on the value of goods, ensuring equal rates for all good types.
  
• Better Deals Development: The "Better Deals" development branch reduces the foreign import tariff by 50% instead of removing it completely.
  
• Global Market Supply: Tuned global market supply to rebalance itself faster, aiming for a closer to one-year cycle if not trading.

• Ale Consumption: Reduced ale consumption by 75% (approximately 1/3 per family per month).
  
• Building Placement: Made building placement steepness limits harsher to prevent trading posts and churches from looking awkward on sharp slopes.
  
• Soldier Approval Factor: Soldiers no longer trigger the "unburied bodies" approval factor when corpses are in their proximity.
  
• Hitching Post: Hitching post is free again to reduce the chances of players getting stuck without an ox, hitching post, or the ability to order an ox.
  
• Sheep Breeding: Capped sheep breeding to a maximum of 1 new lamb every 10 days.
  
• Water Fetching: Villagers are now only allowed to fetch water from the well nearest to their home, except in case of a fire.
  
• Maximum Yield per Plant: Increased the maximum yield per plant from 2 to 4 (Hunting Grounds policy still reduces it by half).
  
• Plant Yield Rate: Plant yield rate reduced by half to encourage early harvest only in emergency mode.
  
• Militia Squad Limit: The militia squad limit is now 6, regardless of whether the player has a retinue or mercenaries. This will be connected to a rank system in the future.
  
• Fertility Regeneration: Doubled the fertility regeneration rate effect on fallow fields and from fertilization.
  
• Plant Growth Rate: Adjusted crop growth to match crop rotation (to hit 100% at harvest as often as it can on auto).
  
• Tree Growth Rate: Slowed down tree growth rate by around 30% to enhance forest management impact.
  
• Trading Post Workers: Increased the carrying capacity of on-foot trading post workers from 1 to 5.
  
• Royal Tax Calculation: Royal tax is calculated as follows: No tax for the first 5 years, 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury per citizen after 15 years.
  
• Granary and Storehouse Worker Slots: Adjusted Granary and Storehouse Worker Slots: unified to 3 families for level 1 and 6 families for level 2.

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• Mindfulness System: Applied the "mindfulness" system to free merchants to reduce clumps and traffic jams.
  
• Trade Location: Moved the location of trades further off the map to ensure space for all trade wagons, even if the trading post is placed on the map edge.
  
• Trader Transactions: Allowed traders to make transactions without entering the shed if the trading post is clogged, as long as they are within the general building bounds.
  
• Marketplace Logistics: Improved marketplace logistics efficiency and optimization.
  
• Market Supply Reset: Reset market supply on loading old saves (from builds 0.7.954-0.7.956) due to mismatched global market supply stock values.
  
• Market Stall Workers: Capped the number of workers supplying a single market stall to 2 to reduce market clogs with the increased market supply frequency. The number of stalls is now reduced back to the number of families divided by 5, with a minimum of 1 to ensure functionality in towns with fewer than 5 families.
  
• Market Supply Optimization: Further optimized market supply functions for smoother late-game town performance.
  
• Trading Post Thumbnail: Added the missing trading post building thumbnail.
  
• Trading Post Price Range: Trading posts now display a price range for imports, indicating whether they can buy from other regions or foreign trade sources.

• Default AA: Changed default AA under DX11 to TAA.
  
• Spatialization Update: Added a spatialization update call for recruits teleported home when rallied to ensure proper collision calculations.
  
• Follow Mode Optimization: Updated "is close to camera" value in follow mode to prevent optimization of animations or sound effects for characters near the camera.
  
• Firefighting Behavior: Made firefighting villagers ignore anti-clogging behavior at narrow pathfinding points.
  
• Pathfinding Updates: Minor unit in-town pathfinding updates.
  
• Destructible System: Swapped the old UE4 destructible system for a new UE5-friendly chaos-based debris system currently used for chopped firewood cutter logs.
  
• AA/Upscaler Selection: Tweaked default AA/upscaler selection during first-time launch for specific GPUs (e.g., RTX properly defaulting to DLSS).
  
• Pathfinding Thread: Added another pathfinding thread for handling multiple end-game cities.
  
• Harvest Prediction Optimization: Optimized harvest prediction and fertility changes to reduce stutter.
  
• Log Display: Limited the log display to store only the last 100 entries to improve UI optimization.
  
• Idle Task Optimization: Optimized the function for finding friends to do idle tasks like conversations.
  
• Door Opening Animations: Optimized door opening animations.

• Mourning Period UI: The residential panel now has a "mourning period left" UI element that displays the number of days of mourning until the burgage plot can bring in more family members.
  
• Mourning Icon: Added mourning icon to the building floater.
  
• Save Restrictions: Disabled the ability to quick save during the game over/victory cinematic. Disabled manual save after being defeated and added a tooltip explaining why saves are disabled. Disabled quick save and autosave if the game was lost.
  
• King's Tax Rate Multiplier: Added king's tax rate multiplier to the game setup settings.
  
• Victory Camera: After continuing the game after a victory, the camera returns to the player's main region instead of levitating over the map edge.
  
• Currency Icon: Unified the currency icon in the mercenary company panel to clarify payment with the treasury, not regional wealth.
  
• Accommodation for Homeless: Added an accommodation call for homeless people after a fire, ensuring they are quickly re-assigned to available burgage plots.
  
• Family List UI: Aligned "workplace/reassign" buttons vertically in the family list due to most families having more than one member.
  
• Font Fix: Fixed old fonts being used in the family entry widgets.
  
• Fertility Overlay: Made fertility overlay colors and colorblind symbols more accurate with the percentages displayed in the field's building panel.
  
• Building Panel UI: Tweaked building panel header buttons/toggles to improve readability and distinguish buttons from toggles.
  
• Market Stalls: Set "Allow market stalls" to ON by default for all workplaces and artisan workshops to aid new players in setting up stalls without confusion.
  
• Popup Queue: To avoid popups like "royal tax increase" from interrupting visit mode, they are now queued and triggered after the player returns from visit mode, after around 1-2 seconds.
  
• Transaction Popup: When trading between regions, the transaction popup will now display over both trade buildings, depending on which is closer to the camera.
  
• Region Borders: Region borders will show under the cursor even if the camera is low, clarifying where region territory ends.
  
• Region Calculation for UI: Tuned how "current region" is calculated for the UI to make it more comfortable to build on the edge between two player-owned regions.

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• Fixed a crash when doing a sequence of livestock import, export, and import because "home" wasn't cleared properly during export, and the same animal was reimported.
  
• Fixed a rare crash if a handcart fails to spawn, likely if the trading post was built so that part of it crosses the map edge.
  
• Fixed crash on startup if OpenXr SDK is installed.
  
• Fixed a crash when deleting a building if there are pathfinding obstacles being verified (for instance, soon after loading a game).
  
• Fixed the player being able to reassign a family to another Region, which could crash the game.

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• Fixed victory status not resetting after starting a new game, leading to a game over screen not appearing if the player lost/won multiple games without turning the game off.
  
• Fixed crops dying in the winter instead of actually increasing yield by absorbing nutrients from the snow as intended for winter crops.
  
• Fixed oxen sometimes "ghost plowing" a field when they are waiting for their guide.
  
• Fixed plow and ox sometimes misaligned on 12x game speed.
  
• Fixed farm workers not accounting for oxen plowing the farms in some situations, leading to a lot of unnecessary collisions on the field.
  
• Fixed crop rotation unplowing the fields.
  
• Fixed disbanded mercenary group becoming immediately available again after save/load cycle.
  
• Fixed the trading post export transactions not moving regional wealth between the regions correctly if owned by the same lord.
  
• Fixed paused taverns fulfilling the entertainment requirement.
  
• Fixed attempt for never-ending fires if a fire was triggered after the building was already on fire.
  
• Fixed livestock sometimes being unaccommodated after order even though there is stable or pasture space due to being transferred to the region twice (once when buying and once when livestock merchant brings it to the building).
  
• Fixed livestock traders traded between on-map regions, possibly sometimes paying twice because the ownership changing function was called both on pickup of livestock and on dropoff.
  
• Fixed the game getting stuck on the game summary screen infinitely after winning or losing the game.
  
• Fixed "none" people populating the town after a raid sometimes who just stand around waiting forever and possibly crash the game while reloading.
  
• Fixed the employed traders going to trade points even though the trade route for the traded good is not opened yet.
  
• Fixed the farm workers moving to transport tasks early even though there is still plenty of crops to harvest.
  
• Fixed predicted yield not showing correctly in the field building panel.
  
• Fixed people not resetting rotation after dismounting.
  
• Fixed farming oxen not respecting work area limits.
  
• Fixed bandit camps respawning on loading because "lastBanditCampSpawnedDay" didn't save properly.
  
• Fixed villagers not setting up market stalls to sell their home produce like vegetables if they are unassigned.
  
• Fixed granary workers stealing ale from the tavern.
  
• Fixed livestock exports getting interrupted by sheep herd behavior.
  
• Fixed livestock trader job not triggering an import task when buying livestock from another region.

• Fixed the blurry desktop icon.
  
• Fixed the save/load menu header not translating after changing the language.
  
• Fixed the front lighting not being visible in the retinue editor if bounced light approximation is turned to low or off.
  
• Fixed floating feedback text spawning during the cinematic mode.
  
• Fixed autosave triggering during the cinematic mode.
  
• Fixed the gilded aventail hounskull helmet appearing blurry in the retinue editor.
  
• Fixed the forest mask not drawing.
  
• Fixed the wrong yarn basket carrying animation.
  
• Fixed the wrong apple basket carry animation.

• Fixed "storage full" triggering for wrong buildings sometimes (for example, sawpit having 1/1 logs).
  
• Fixed attempt for oxen bringing too many logs to the sawpit and crossing the storage limit.
  
• Fixed free merchants sometimes got stuck if a trading post was built so close to the edge that a portion of it was outside of any region bounds.
  
• Fixed horse wagon rotations getting a bit too wonky on slopes.
  
• Fixed a bug where a unit could no longer move due to being forever stuck in "waiting for pathfinding to finish" if another unit with a lower squadID got completely destroyed.
  
• Fixed traders not importing from on-map regions even though the price is better than buying from trade points.
  
• Fixed farm workers & farm oxen stealing planks from fields which are getting "fenced up."
  
• Fixed "homeless" problem banner not disappearing after upgrading homeless camp to a worker camp.
  
• Fixed animals not getting removed from stable space / pasture space after death.
  
• Fixed animal corpses not disappearing over time.
  
• Fixed a dirty fix for families moving into homes but not registering correctly and not displaying in the UI, leading to a "secret" family living in one of the burgage plots. The reason is still unknown and being investigated.
  
• Fixed wealth getting transferred when doing barter.
  
• Fixed bartering traders always return 1 item regardless of the barter value and carrying capacity.
  
• Fixed bartering traders packing too much stuff in their origin region when barter value is more than 1x.
  
• Fixed trading post exports not proceeding with transactions once the trader reaches the destination.
  
• Fixed multiple markets sometimes distributing multiple instances of the same good type to a plot, for instance, a single plot would "eat" 2 leather, leaving houses on the outskirts forever undersupplied.
  
• Fixed crop rotation to fallow causing farmers to harvest itemID_0, which was invisible in the UI and stopped supply dumps from being cleared because they were never considered as fully empty.
  
• Fixed farmers getting stuck in pickup-putdown handcart loop when multiple farms are used.
  
• Fixed unnecessary harvest data recalculations triggering in the winters.
  
• Fixed a bug with trading between regions where during selling items the wrong region would pay for the transaction.
  
• Fixed free merchants not applying the foreign import tariff when selling their goods to trading posts if another region was exporting the traded good for a lower price.
  
• Fixed trade wagons sometimes traveling with empty inventory.
  
• Fixed traders doing "major trades" even without an established trade route.
  
• Fixed workers ignoring storage filter settings.
  
• Fixed the "current year" always incrementing in January, regardless of the month the game was started in, also leading to the tax being calculated inconsistently [fix for new saves only].
  
• Fixed market supply percentages not displaying correctly because it still accounted for uninhabited homes.
  
• Fixed a bug with workers not setting up market stalls if there are less than 5 families in the settlement.
  
• Fixed squad icons disappearing/flickering when disbanding certain squads.
  
• Fixed export price showing even though trade is locked because there's no trade route established and no interregional trade available.
  
• Fixed foreign market supply incrementing instead of decrementing when off-map trade was being done by trading post workers.
  
• Fixed disband/remove squad sometimes affecting wrong squads if multiple squads are selected when pressing "disband" or "remove".
  
• Fixed "Not enough funds for import" warning displaying even though there is enough.
  
• Fixed apiaries leaving invisible items in supply dumps after demolition.

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• Added a new patron saint banner graphics: St Maurice.
  
• Added a carried dead body visualization.
  
• New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Pointy bascinet.
  
• New upgraded retinue body variation: Coat of plates.
  
• New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Hounskull bascinet with a gilded cover.
  
• New militia helmet variation - banded bascinet with a mail aventail.
  
• Reworked LV2 granary model with proper animated doors.
  
• Added new 6 "short" attack animations to reduce animation repetitiveness during combat.
  
• Added new "inch forward" battle locomotion animations which should greatly reduce the weird "wiggling" effect when groups push each other.
  
• Lady visit mode: If you pick the green lady portrait, the visit mode character should now be female.

• Combat animation clean up.
  
• Made debris piles align to ground slope.
  
• Fixed the throw torch animation ending abruptly.
  
• Increased location precision for animals standing in the stables.
  
• Fixed the praying animation.
  
• Adjusted the two-handed weapon default idle pose to give it a more natural stance.
  
• Improved the precision for snapping terraforming meshes (like mines or sawpits) to ground.
  
• Made leaf clumps smaller and disabled the parallax mapping since it caused distortions and wasn't very visible anyway.
  
• Tuned field dirt UV wiggle to make those huge vegetable gardens players were making less wavy.

• Fixed the armor clipping through the leg of the upgraded retinue puffy sleeve upon body variation.
  
• Fixed some mail armor variants clipping with helmets on T3 militia units (militia mail will get their own unique variations soon).
  
• Fixed the wrong door orientation for LV2 cottage variation B (with a planked gable).
  
• Fixed the TAB building floater residential data not showing in 0.7.969.
  
• Fixed a potential bug when a family assigned to a smithy is unassigned while a family member is rallied, and the function that unequips their smithing aprons may, by mistake, unequip their body armor or/and helmet.
  
• Fixed player army UI not getting updated after squad array changes because of non-player commanded units getting removed.
  
• Fixed recruit distribution sometimes assigning new militia recruits to an invalid unit

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Thank you for all of your continued feedback and reports through the beta patches.
I hope you enjoy the update! Please share your thoughts and feedback on Manor Lords in a Steam review if you have a moment. It helps a lot!

Thank you for playing!

Greg Styczeń,

Lead developer, Slavic Magic

Hi all,

You can now access a new experimental branch of Manor Lords (0.7.965).

To avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended to make a backup of your save files before switching to a beta version.

• Press Win + E
  
• Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar.

If you'd like to try it, please follow these steps:

• Open Steam
  
• Right-click on Manor Lords in your library
  
• Select Properties
  
• Go to BETAS tab
  
• Enter the password: veryNiceBasket
  
• Choose "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" drop-down list
  
• Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client)
  
• Launch the game

The new strings are not localized yet and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental.

To discuss please join the official Discord server https://discord.gg/manorlords. You'll find a channel specifically for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch.

What's inside

This time I focused mostly on balancing and bugfixes. Most notably:
-You can hire 6 militia squads even if you already have retinue and mercenaries employed. The plan is to make the cap relative to the Lord's rank in the future builds.
-Sheepbreeding development branch was capped and no longer spawns sheep exponentially.
-A lot of work was done around fields, harvests and fertility - overlays and crop prediction should now be far more accurate and ox and worker behavior should be more optimized.
-Barter and trading got a lot of fixes, with on foot traders now being able to carry 5 items per trip
-Toned down the King's tax and exponential trade route costs introduced in 960.
-Fixed the "Loserville" mercenary bug
-Improved the marketplace distribution

I added one experimental feature - "Allow market stall setup" toggle to prevent the workers/inhabitants of certain buildings from setting up market stalls.

You can now also set a construction reserve for buildings using planks for crafting, like the Joiner's shop:

Full changelog:

0.7.960 -> 0.7.965

Gameplay & balance:
-Capped sheepbreeding to 1 new lamb every 10 days max
-[Experimental] Villagers are now only allowed to fetch water from the well that is nearest to their home, except in case of a fire.
-[Experimental] Yield will now never increase past 100% growth, because it was unintuitive to players that yield can still increase over 100% (which was initially designed for winter crops)
-[Experimental] Even when fertility reaches 0%, there should still be a tiny little bit of yield possible now
-[Experimental] Amped up max yield per plant from 2 to 4 (Hunting Grounds policy still reduces it by half)
-[Experimental] Plant yield rate reduced by half. This is a continued attempt to "force early harvest" only an emergency mode.
-The militia squad limit is now 6 regardless of whether the player already has a retinue, mercenaries or not. In the future it will be connected to a rank system.
-[Experimental] Doubled the fertility regeneration rate effect on fallow fields and from fertilization
-[Experimental] Slowed all plant growth down by around 30%. The reason for slower field crops is to make winter crop make sense. The reason for slower veggie crops is cause it was too powerful compared to farming.
-[Experimental] Slowed down the tree growth rate by around 30%. The players requested it to make the forest management even more impactful.
-[Experimental] Increased the archer range by 1.5x and increased their damage from 12 to 15
-[Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes was brought back to linear scaling
-[Experimental] Bumped up the carrying capacity of on-foot trading post workers from 1 to 5
-[Experimental] Royal tax is now calculated as follows: No tax for the first 5 years, 1 Treasury per citizen after 5 years, 2 Treasury per citizen after 10 years, 3 Treasury / citizen after 15 years.
-[Experimental] Granary and Storehouse worker slots adjusted - unified it to be 3 families for lv1 and 6 families for lv2

Minor changes:
-Removed the optimization where only every nth plant affected the fertility values, because it lead to too many errors in displaying fertility values
-Made fertility overlay colors & colorblind symbols more accurate with the percentages displayed in the field's building panel
-Made crop yield prediction more accurate
-Added missing tooltips to minor/major trades
-You can now set "trade rule" for advanced trades even without an established trade route (since you can use trading post to trade between your own regions). To indicate that you won't be able to trade something without a trade route, lowest import price might show as NA ("not available")
-Reworked the construction reserve system to also allow for other good types to be reserved, for instance reserving planks at the joiner's workshop. This should also now save properly.
-Optimized inventory array functions
-Added the ability to disallow setting up stalls on the marketplace for certain families or workplaces
-Tuned how "current region" is calculated for the UI to make it more comfortable to build on edge between 2 player owned regions
-Iron deposits and clay deposits will now avoid generating on steep locations
-"MODDED" may now display after the version number when a mod is installed (to make bug reports easier to decipher)

Crashfixes:
-Fixed a crash when deleting a building if there are pathfinding obstacles being verified (for instance soon after loading a game)

Bugfixes:
-Fixed the employed traders going to tradepoints even though trade route for the traded good is not opened yet
-Fixed the farm workers moving to transport tasks early even though there is still plenty of crops to harvest
-Fixed predicted yield not showing correctly in the field building panel
-Fixed people not resetting rotation after dismounting
-Fixed farming oxen not respecting work area limits
-Fixed the gilded aventail houndskull helmet appearing blurry in the retinue editor
-Fixed the forest mask not drawing
-Fixed bandit camps respawning on loading because "lastBanditCampSpawnedDay" didn't save properly
-Fixed villagers not setting up market stalls to sell their home produce like vegetables if they are unassigned
-Fixed the wrong apple basket carry animation
-Fixed wealth getting transfered when doing barter
-Fixed bartering traders always returning 1 item regardless of the barter value and carrying capacity
-Fixed bartering traders packing too much stuff in their origin region when barter value is more than 1x
-Fixed trading post exports not proceeding with transactions once the trader reaches the destination
-Fixed multiple markets sometimes distributing multiple instances of the same good type to a plot, for instance a single plot would "eat" 2 leather, leaving houses on the outskirts forever undersupplied
-Fixed crop rotation to fallow causing farmers to harvest itemID_0, which was invisible in the UI and stopped supply dumps from being cleared because they were never considered as fully empty
-Fixed villagers getting stuck at homes forever if a bandit camp is spawned anywhere in the region, cause they thought the region is under attack and they should stay at home
-Fixed mercenary company arrival region not saving properly, leading to broken saved mercenary companies for hire
-Fixed granary workers stealing ale from the tavern
-Fixed livestock exports getting interrupted by sheep herd behavior
-Fixed livestock trader job not triggering an import task when buying livestock from another region
-Fixed the missing "hunger" popup artwork
-Fixed a typo in the credits list

Cosmetics:
-Tuned field dirt UV wiggle to make those huge vegetable gardens players were making less wavy
-Improved the precision for snapping terraforming meshes (like mines or sawpits) to ground
-Made leaf clumps smaller and disabled the parallax mapping since it caused distortions and wasn't very visible anyway
-[WIP] If you pick the green lady portrait, the visit mode character should now be female, though it's still work in progress and will look a bit funky.
-Combat animation cleanup

Thank you for playing!

Greg Styczeń,

Lead developer, Slavic Magic

Hi all,

You can now access a new experimental branch of Manor Lords (0.7.960).

To avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended to make a backup of your save files before switching to a beta version.

• Press Win + E
  
• Paste %USERPROFILE%\AppData\Local\ManorLords\Saved\SaveGames into the search bar.

If you'd like to try it, please follow these steps:

• Open Steam
  
• Right-click on Manor Lords in your library
  
• Select Properties
  
• Go to BETAS tab
  
• Enter the password: veryNiceBasket
  
• Choose "pre_release" from the "Beta participation" drop-down list
  
• Wait for the game to update the files (if nothing happens, restart the Steam client)
  
• Launch the game

The new strings are not localized yet and stability hasn't yet been thoroughly tested. Some balancing changes are still experimental.

To discuss please join the official Discord server https://discord.gg/manorlords. You'll find a channel specifically for discussing the ongoing pre_release branch.

My first goal was to fix all the most common reported issues:

- 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
- Problems with optimizations in large cities (still some work to do here)
- Inefficient marketplace supply
- Problems with farming, like crops erasing in the winter & inefficient harvests
- Too harsh oversupply/undersupply systems
- People and/or livestock staying homeless even though there is living space in the settlement
- Overly high ale consumption

Additionally, to make trading between Regions easier, I made sure that the players can use Trading Posts to trade between their own regions without using Barter / Pack Stations.

Each good type now has a switch that disables trading it with Free Merchants / Tradepoints in case the players wants to only trade with another Region. The displayed import price will adjust dynamically, showing the lowest possible price found (and NA or not available if there is no good of this type anywhere to be found).

Trade related development branches were nerfed drastically because players argued that it made the game too easy.

Whenever a person dies, there is a 30 day mourning period that blocks growth. You can now preview this in the Building Panel of the Burgage Plot or by pressing TAB.

Carried corpses now have a visual representation.

New upgraded retinue armor variations were added.

I reimplemented a mechanic called "Annual Royal Tax" or "King's Tax" (still deciding on the naming). It's a tax that is collected from the Treasury once per year, goes to the King, that is calculated per resident and in theory should slightly punish bad workplace optimization and make it more difficult to hoard huge amounts of cash.

The Large Granary building got a rework. The doors now properly animate.

A new unit patron was added - St. Maurice

Full patch notes below:

Version 0.7.955->0.7.960

Major changes:

-The King's Tax is now enabled (or Annual Royal Tax, can't decide on the name)
a) This tax is collected annually from all players (main player and AI) and goes to your liege. It's counted per population and therefore should become a counterbalance for players who hoard huge wealth despite having non-optimized economies.
b) [WIP] For now the player can go in debt without consequence, but in the future the player will lose king's favor and eventually the king's army will show up as enemies for players who refuse to pay

-Global/Local trade switch for trading posts
a) The player can now switch trade to "local only" in the trading post for each type of good if they want to use the trading post to exchange goods between their own regions but ignore the free merchants.
b) For now 2 trading posts (both regions) are still required to make it work.
c) Employed traders will prioritize to travel to the place with best prices to commence trade, and yes potentially including regions owned by other Lords. This can have interesting consequences in the future. For now I reduced the transport distance from the calculation in order to make it more predictable for the player where the traders will go (to the place with the best price).
d) Regional wealth is still required for exchanging goods between regions with a trading post since I want to keep the regions as independent economic units which in my view a more realistic simulation of economy.

Gameplay & balance:
-[Experimental] When consuming food, people will now pick a random food resource instead of eating food in a specific order
-[Experimental] Fertility is no longer drained after crop growth reaches 100% so that always micromanaging early harvest is no longer a preferred strategy. Yield may still increase over 100% growth if max yield is not reached.
-[Experimental] When harvesting, the crops are directly added to the field inventory instead of the villager inventory. This was done to ensure that harvesting walk times aren't the main bottleneck for farming, especially for large fields. [Side note: moving harvest season to August is also possible in a future patch if needed]
-[Experimental] Prioritized Oxen plowing over transporting resources back to the granary & warehouse to reduce the ox walking back and forth from the plowed field every time a new batch of resources is available for transport
-Plowing shed now adds 2 livestock worker slots
-Lowered the rate of the Baron claiming regions and adjusted it to better reflect the game settings
-Removed the worker camp upgrade - it was meant for colony regions and will be readded when they are properly implemented
-Food producing residential plots no longer stock up on their produce before they share with the marketplace
-Increased sawpit log storage space to 5
-[Experimental] When establishing a trade route, the merchants will no longer all spawn in the nearest tradepoint. Instead, the game will distribute the merchants to circle between various tradepoints in order to make building trading posts right on the edge of the region less optimal.
-Increased warbows ranged attack from 4 to 12
-[Experimental] "Trade logistics" development branch now lowers the cost of new trade routes by 50% instead of clamping it at 25
-[Experimental] Cost of opening new trade routes now scales exponentially with every opened trade route
-[Experimental] Base cost of opening a trade route was increased from 12 to 20 (that is before the good value multiplier)
-[Experimental] When market is oversupplied, the player can still export stuff, although for much lower price
-[Experimental] The price multiplier for oversupplied goods is now 0.75x for oversupplied and 0.5x for critically oversupplied
-[Experimental] How fast market is oversupplied no longer depends on the value of goods because it punished having high value trade routes. Now the oversupply rates are equal for all good types.
-[Experimental] Better deals development branch reduces the foreign import tariff by 50% instead of removing it completely
-[Experimental] Reduced ale consumption by 75% (around 1/3 per family per month)
-[Experimental] Made the building placement steepness limits harsher cause the trading posts and churches often looked super janky on very sharp slopes
-Soldiers no longer trigger "unburied bodies" approval factor when corpses are in their proximity
-[Experimental] Hitching post is free again, to reduce chances of players getting stuck with no ox, no hitching post and no ability to order an ox

Minor changes:
-Applied the "mindfulness" system that was initially designed for the oxen to the free merchants. This system is used to reduce clumps and traffic jams.
-Moved the location of trades further off map to make sure there is some space for all the trade wagons even if the players place the trading post right on the edge of the map
-If a trading post is clogged, traders are allowed to make transactions without entering the shed, as long as they are within the general building bounds
-[Experimental] Changed default AA under DX11 to TAA
-Added a spatialization update call when recruits are sneakily teleported home when rallied to ensure collisions are properly calculated after teleportation
-Added a check for idle villagers to avoid hanging around the graveyard for random conversation since it looked weird
-Made "is close to camera" value update on setting follow mode to make sure the game doesn't optimize animations or sound effects thinking the character is still far from the camera
-Disabled fire damage for people who have water buckets and are actively firefighting + redued the fire damage amount
-When all resource visualization slots are "filled", villagers will transport to a random one instead of the first one found. This ensures less traffic jams for instance at the churchyard if all graves are "full" already.
-Firefighting villagers will now ignore anti-clogging behavior (waiting their turn at narrow pathfinding points)
-Added a "mourning period left" UI element in the residential panel to display how many days of mourning are left until the burgage plot can bring in more family members again
-Added mourning icon to the building floater
-Made sure mourning period is properly added to save data
-After continuing the game after a victory the camera should go back to the player's main region instead of levitating over the map edge
-[Experimental] Disabled the ability to quicksave during the game over / victory cinematic
-Disabled the ability to manual save the game after being defeated & added a tooltip explaining why saves are disabled
-Disabled quick save and autosave if game was lost
-When ox gathers a log, it will prioritize immediately bringing it to the sawpit before bringing it to the logging camp unless construction reserve forbids it
-Improved marketplace logistics efficiency and optimization
-Tuned the AI retreat distances in an attempt to reduce how often its archers get into the loop of attack-retreat
-Added the missing trading post building thumbnail
-Minor unit in-town pathfinding updates
-Swapped the old UE4 destructible system for a new, UE5 friendly, chaos based debris system. For now it's just used for chopped firewood cutter logs.
-Further tweaks to properly choose the right default AA/upscaler during the first time launch correctly for specific GPUs (eg. RTX properly defaulting to DLSS)
-Added kings tax rate multiplier to the game setup settings
-Due to mismatch in global market supply stock values, old saves (from builds 0.7.954-0.7.956) will have their market supply reset on loading
-[Experimental] Due to changes in how food is consumed, a popup "Food consumed" may no longer appear if a building is selected while a food is being consumed from inventory
-[Experimental] Made the sheep flock a bit more closely together to look more like a herd
-Steepness limits no longer apply when placing rally points
-Players can now rally their militia on fields and pastures
-Trading posts will now display a price range for imports in case they can buy it both from other regions AND from foreign trade sources
-Increased the sheep & lamb collision radius
-Capped the number of workers who supply a single market stall at the same time to 2 to reduce markets getting completely clogged with the new upped market supply frequency
-Further optimized the market supply functions to make late game towns run smoother
-Optimized the function that searches for a friend to do idle tasks with (like conversations)
-Optimized the door opening animations
-Increased the precision when checking whether a character is inside a building on fire and should take damage
-Unified the currency icon in the mercenary company panel to make it clearer that you're paying with treasury and not regional wealth
-Added accommodation call after fire is started and turns people homeless so that they can be reaccommodated to other available burgage plots immediately
-Since almost all families have more than 1 family member, I made the "workplace/reassign" buttons aligned vertically instead of horizontally in the family list
-Fixed old fonts being used in the family entry widgets

Crashfixes:
-Fixed a crash when doing a sequence of livestock import, export and import, because "home" wasn't cleared properly during export and the same animal was reimported
-Fixed a rare crash if a handcart fails to spawn, probably if the trading post was build so that part of it crosses the map edge
-Fix crash on startup if OpenXr sdk is installed

Bugfixes:
-Fixed victory status not resetting after starting a new game, leading to a game over screen not appearing if the player lost/won multiple games without turning the game off
-Fixed crop transports not accounting for the farm work area
-Fixed crops dying in the winter instead of actually increasing yield by absorbing nutrients from the snow as it was intended for winter crops
-Fixed oxen sometimes "ghost plowing" a field when they are waiting on their guide
-Fixed plow and ox sometimes misaligning on 12x game speed
-Fixed farm workers not accounting for oxen plowing the farms in some situation, leading to a lot of unnecessary collisions on the field
-Fixed crop rotation unplowing the fields
-Fixed disbanded mercenary group becoming immediatley available again after save/load cycle
-Fixed the trading post export transactions not moving regional wealth between the regions correctly if owned by the same lord
-Fixed paused taverns fullfilling the entertainment requirement
-Fix attempt for never ending fires if a fire was triggered after the building was already on fire
-Fixed problem banners not erasing after an entity gets erased (for instance an animal runs away and leaves a "not enough pasture space" banner)
-Fixed "update task" sometimes triggering before a character gets assigned their region
-Fixed livestock sometimes being unaccomodated after order even though there is stable or pasture space due to being transfered to the region twice (once when buying and once when livestock merchant brings it to the building)
-Fixed livestock traders trading between on-map regions possibly sometimes paying twice because the ownership changing function was called both on pickup of livestock and on dropoff
-Fixed the game getting stuck on the game summary screen infinitely after winning or losing the game
-Fixed "none" people populating the town after a raid sometimes who just stand around waiting forever and possibly crash the game while reloading
-Fixed the blurry desktop icon
-Fixed the save/load menu header not translating after changing the language
-Fixed dead animals triggering the mourning period in burgage plots, halting growth
-Fixed mourning period halting homeless accomodation
-Fixed migration/growth of family members ignoring the 30 day mourning period sometimes
-Fixed the game getting stuck after you click "continue in sandbox" until any main tab is pressed
-Fixed the front lighting not being visible in the retinue editor if bounced light approximation is turned to low or off
-Fixed floating feedback text spawning during the cinematic mode
-Fixed autosave triggering during the cinematic mode
-Fixed "storage full" triggering for wrong buildings sometimes (for example sawpit having 1/1 logs)
-Fix attempt for oxen bringing too many logs to the sawpit and crossing the storage limit
-Fixed free merchants sometimes getting stuck if a trading post was build so close to the edge that a portion of it was outside of any region bounds
-Fixed horse wagon rotations getting a bit too wonky on slopes
-Fixed a bug where a unit could no longer move due to being forever stuck in "waiting for pathfinding to finish" if another unit with a lower squadID got completely destroyed
-Fixed the wrong yarn basket carrying animation
-Fixed traders not importing from on-map regions even though the price is better than buying from tradepoints
-Fixed farm workers & farm oxen stealing planks from fields which are getting "fenced up"
-Fixed "homeless" problem banner not disappearing after upgrading homeless camp to a worker camp
-Fixed animals not getting removed from stable space / pasture space after death
-Fixed animal corpses not disappearing over time
-Added a dirty fix for families moving into homes but not registering correctly and not displaying in the UI, leading to a "secret" family living in one of the burgage plots. The reason is still unknown and being investigated.

Cosmetics:
-Added a new patron saint banner graphics: St Maurice
-Added a carried dead body visualization
-Made debris piles align to ground slope
-Fixed the throw torch animation ending abruptly
-New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Pointy bascinet
-Fixed the armor clipping through the leg of the upgraded retinue puffy sleeve jupon body variation
-New upgraded retinue body variation: Coat of plates
-New upgraded retinue helmet variation: Hounskull bascinet with a gilded cover
-Increased location precision for animals standing in the stables
-Fixed the praying animation
-Fixed the wrong door orientation for LV2 cottage variation B (with a planked gable)
-Adjusted the two handed weapon default idle pose to have a more natural stance
-New militia helmet variation - banded bascinet with a mail aventail
-Fixed some mail armor variants clipping with helmets on T3 militia units (militia mail will get their own unique variations soon)
-Reworked lv2 granary model with proper animated doors

Thank you,

Greg Styczeń
Lead developer (?), Slavic Magic

Manor Lords has now released! The game will be 25% off for the first two weeks, and you should be able to see the discounted price in your currency below:

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1363080

We also have a new release day trailer for you to check out:
I want to add a personal note of thanks. You have all been incredibly supportive of Manor Lords, this city builder started by a solo-developer, and taken it to 3.2 million player wishlists. Your support of developer Greg and his game has already been huge, and so I want to say: please, don't feel any pressure to buy the game if waiting is better for you. If money is tight right now or you're still uncertain, we'll run those 25% discounts often and give you plenty of opportunities to get the game later as well, no one should feel any fear of missing out or any kind of pressure. Or if you'd just rather wait some time and jump in later after some patches and updates have come out, that's fine too -- Early Access isn't for everyone, if you check back later the game will just keep getting better and better. We want you to make the right decision for you, without any pressure or rush of any kind.

But if you do choose to jump in now and join in the Early Access process, that's awesome -- please leave your feedback and suggestions in reviews and comments, and we look forward to getting your help in making the game better together!

Tim
CEO, Hooded Horse

Hey everyone,

It's been quite a journey so far, but it won't stop on April 26th. During development, the core tester group was around 130+ people. Given the popularity of the game, I'm pretty sure there is going to be a wave of feedback that I will need to address after the early access launch.

I wanted to address a few things for everyone who intends on buying the game on April 26th...

What this game is not.

-Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor. It's a citybuilder with battles. Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on citybuilding and management.

-It's not a Empire Management style Grand Strategy game either. The map has regions, but you won't be able to conquer the whole Europe, nor have marriages or anything like that. The game is designed to play at a much smaller scale.

-It's not an RPG either. If you played KCD or Mount&Blade, ML is a different type of game. There is a visit mode in Manor Lords which allows you to walk around your town, but it's an experimental, cosmetic bonus feature, the game is really meant to be played from the "bird's eye" perspective, like a strategy game (almost always) should. There won't be any first person gameplay.

-It's not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft. A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric citybuilding rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.

This will be an early access release.

Yes, it must be disappointing, but I think it's the right choice. It's my first serious game and not only some stuff is still unfinished, but I bet you guys will ask me to change some things you don't necessarily like. But I want to pursue an open development strategy of a back and forth between me and you, I think it worked great for the game so far (I'm comparing to times where there wasn't even a testing group and I was developing in a bubble).

The publisher and I recently shared the game with content creators all over the world. Feel free to check out numerous streams and let's plays out there before buying to make sure this is the game for you!

That said, the reception has been super positive so far for which I’m very grateful. I think the game should find a way into the hearts of players who expected Manor Lords to be what it is, a realistic, organic, authentic city builder with real time battles.

Roadmap

I do not plan on releasing a roadmap yet. I've made a mistake once or twice before, of promising and working on a feature only to find out that the testers didn't care as much as I did and that they actually wanted something else. So even if I have a plan, I want to adopt the philosophy of "listen, verify, implement". This way I expect the first month of patches to be just bug fixes and polish. During that time, together with Hooded Horse, we’ll be collecting your feedback and then prioritizing work based on what we hear.

I'm still considering whether to keep the testing of future patches closed or open, my current idea is to have an open pre_release beta branch so that everyone who owns the game can check and test the most recent pre-release unstable version of the game and contribute if they want to. And keeping the main branch as the previous most stable version. Though let me know, maybe you'd prefer me to keep the unstable versions to a closed testing group?

As always, thanks for following and all the support. I’ll certainly keep the updates more frequent here once the early access officially starts.

Have a good one!

Greg

We recently passed 2 million wishlists from Steam players. I’m continuously surprised and grateful for all the interest in Manor Lords – I could never have imagined this, thank you.

I’ve been hard at work as we prepare for our April 26th release date. If you missed it, here’s our release date announcement trailer from a couple months ago:

Thank you to everyone for all the support – wishlisting, testing, providing feedback, and just generally being a part of the journey. I can’t wait to share more news in the months ahead – we've been exploring additional goods and supply chains to add ahead of launch, and there have been some great conversations about mechanics to add and tweak. It’s both a busy and exciting time, and I’m glad to have the chance to share it with all of you.

I hope everyone had a great New Years!

Slavic Magic

Hello everyone,

We're thrilled to announce the release date for Manor Lords! You will be tasked to govern a land of great peril and promise on April 26, 2024!

The initial Early Access release will feature:

• Organic City Building – Manor Lords provides a gridless city-building experience with full freedom of placement and rotation. Building mechanics are inspired by the growth of real medieval towns and villages, where major trade routes and the landscape influenced how settlements shaped and developed.
  
• Medieval Warfare – The competing ambitions between you and neighboring lords will inevitably lead to conflict. Lead your people into battle, not as expendable units to be easily replenished, but as your beloved loyal subjects where every death is a cost worth considering.
  
• In-Depth Management – From boots to barley and hides to honey, Manor Lords features a great variety of goods fitting of the era. Materials need to be transported and processed into finished products through production chains, as you leverage technological advancements and policies to help determine how your city grows
  
• As well as a small selection of different modes and scenarios.

We can't wait to grow and develop the game together with your feedback as players!

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/1363080/Manor_Lords/

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