Hello lordships, I heard you like to run your lands with a firm vice, grappling over your citizens to your law of the land. Well, you may resort to last resorts, but I do my best in last resorts to make my kingdom thrive, spreading my influences through legitimate means without scorch.
If you're figuring out where that came from, it's from this highly expensive medieval town building simulator. Figuring the ins and outs took a while, but it was all worth it. I created a large town, it bloomed though the game mode made me last only 5 years of time. The next time I'll try, I'll fasttrack everything and this time conquer against my enemies. The part where it becomes a military strategy.
Manor Lords combines various genres in order to fulfill its goals of having a lot to do. Now, this is another EA, much like the last few I've wrote on. It has so many placeholder features, which will take time to reach before those reach playable conditions. Like, not even the UI code is set in for those.
Ah yes, customization the crest, and picking the avatar. Well, just the portrait, the 3D model will have to wait till release. It has loads of options to choose from, representing the banner for my early European heritage. My first isn't as good as my next one. That one has 4 layers.
Multiple modes to choose from, such as free play, domination and survival. I chose survival at first, just to give a test of how each playthrough paces itself. Too fast of a headstart, but that helps me stay in focus while dealing with the threat of being eliminated by bandits
And what begins is somehow so barebones, with 5 families, an ox, and left with a lot to figure out. I have an year's time till the Raiders come to invade my humble town. While the options for setting up the villager militia is there. I needed equipment. Which I didn't have around the time. I understood that I have to set up places to farm resources, and then some more.
It's a complex system, I can build hunter's nest, sheep stead, trading posts, taverns, churches, and so on. But, the best way to obtain those equipment was either through trading, which will cost me a lot, or the Burgage houses have set up production which has large requirements in order to get there.
Wasn't going well, so I restarted it, this time to a more peaceful start. No enemies, no one to fight. Just having a time limit of 6 years to build up my domain, best to my ability, and it was a lot to figure out. The game's intrinsic resource system is quite a lot to keep track of.
I am amazed by how accessible, and the depth that all of it has. But, needs a lot to explain of or figuring out. Let me explain it this way, people need food, especially for winter to survive without creating disorder. Those can be easily obtained through berries gathered, and bread created through wheat. Except you need a windmill and oven to get bread made after farming wheat.
And don't get me started on the logistics, you need to build granary for storage and that can be filled up too. Unless it got upgraded. In order to do that, and build houses, and other establishments. You need families without jobs given, an ox and subsequent resources. Then wait it out till it's done.
I know patience is a virtue, but in this case, it really drags on a bit. But getting used to it, and learning more about how to do all this, it kicks the dopamine up to high gear. I mean, I am super engrossed in everything when the thing I figure out works so well. That's because there are stuff that works.
My town grew, and while complications did arise, there were enough ways to still learn and circumvent them. Each of the houses have purposes to serve, and in order to fulfill the higher services, I have to upgrade the plot. And they need all the other facilities listed below. Which gets more difficult as the town grows, again leading to that logistic and technical issue.
I'm not exactly playing a conquest mode, so I don't know to what veracity is possible to get the other lands. All I know is that, building almost everything that I did, afterwards I can easily build my manor. Which is where I set the taxation for my domain. Of course, no ones like taxes though.
Both tax and influence, using the latter to buy land that is earned through the church. My village should have been more than accommodating enough to earn all that I need. Yet, 3 years have already passed, and my patience was sort of wearing thing.
Also, this, growing the town just easily means upgrading each of the plots. More my town levels up, the more development points I earn to unlock certain things like apple gardens, basic armor, plowing, and so on. If I wasn't so busy with other things, and fast tracked my progress here, I could have gotten more enough to diversify my resource portfolio. And here's the big reason why.
Trading, that's the other big thing. Every establishment made, to hoard resources, is to farm enough so that I could trade some to earn regional wealth. That is earned through the lvl.2 and lvl.3 house plots, and giving some of my stuff to neighbor lords for me to use.
And that wealth is traded for treasury through taxing. Like I said, intricate system, sometimes a bit too complicated for my own good. They should have really delineated aspects of it to help what's what and where. Imagine staffing up these places, and not being able the type of places they're in.
If you're the type to get addicted into managing stuff, then this is for you. Plus, the attention to detail, visually. It looks really stunning, and surprisingly running well for my mid-range AMD GPU. Though, I do see some flickering here and there with the shadows, it's small stuff.
Also, I can't get the OST out of my head. Even switches up between the seasons, which speaking of, yeah, making sure that time is well spent there, since that is where crops are grown. Starting in March which is summer, that's where most of the yield comes from.
Now, coming to the part where diplomacy and war sort of factors in. I played the next one, where there is a rival lordship, and another being bandits run by their own leader. Whom I can delegate to, but I won't because scum like him deserves to have a blade shoved right into him. But problem is, this part as well as some aspects of the game feel anemic without those features.
I'm not sugarcoating when I say this, it manage to simulate medieval ages very accurately, and even with features that are on standby for the later updates, for what it has, there's plenty to offer. Of course, only for single-player experiences. I wouldn't some Multiplayer.
I really enjoyed my time playing this, I want to try out the military skirmishes, and diplomacy stuff. Now that I have learned most of what I need to know, doing so with threats looming beyond my borders now could give me a fun time with the even playing field.
Here expecting more from these guys, they seem like they know what they're doing. I have a feeling this will even get a late year release, or if they're putting in more content with the support they'll get, we're off to an amazing end product. Despite some technical issues, and lack of proper guidance.
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