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