What is Manor Lords (and what is it not)?

From the Beginner's Guide: 

Manor Lords is a strategy city-building game in which you play as a lord sent by the king to govern a land of great peril and promise. The game features in-depth city-building, real-time tactical battles, and complex economic and social simulations. You must balance resource management, supply and demand, trade, warfare, and take advantage of the seasons to survive through winter.

Will you prove yourself worthy of this honor? Or will you perish at the hands of bandits, and traitorous rival Lords?

This guide will help you understand the basics of the game, from its User Interface to basic operations. It culminates in an overview of how to survive your first year

Your kingdom awaits.

Now, this already sounds promising. 

To be fair, I'm getting some Lords of the Realm II vibes here. Now that was a game back in the day that cost me more hours than I'd care to count 😁

But, back to Manor Lords.

What it's not

To set expectations, solo developer Greg aka Slavic Magic recently posted a news item on the Steam game page titled "A few words from the Dev before the launch into Early Access".

A great move if you ask me, because in all the streams I've watched, rumours were plentiful. 

Most important to know is:

• It's not Total War comparable at all. Yes, there will be battles, but not on the TW scale. Yes, there are regions, but at a much smaller scale than TW.
• It's not Mount & Blade, Kingdome Come: Deliverance or any other RPG. The closest you'll get to anything like that is walking through your town, similar to the Anno 1800 ability.
• It's not a Starcraft or Age of Empires like RTS game, where resources are harvested quickly and soldiers are trained near-instantly from population that magically appear. 

With that out of the way, lets focus on what it is. 

What is Manor Lords like?

Manor Lords in its core is a medieval city builder. The main focus of the gameplay is on citybuilding and managing of your settlements and people. 

The game is played at a small, regional scale. You decide where to put housing, roads, farms, market places and anything else you can imagine. You decide the crop rotation of your farms, as well as the crops to be planted in the coming years. You decide which family will work which craft.

All of the above takes time. Want to start a farm in the winter? Sure, but don't expect any yields until summer. Want to start a sheep farm to knit nice and warm sweaters? You better start early enough, because that sheep needs time to grow wool.

But more importantly and what makes Manor Lords such a great game in my opinion: Manor Lords is beautiful.

It is definitely a work of art. You play Manor Lords to sit back and relax. If left undisturbed, you will imagine yourself being the Manor Lord of this settlement within no time.

To the point where you'll be wondering about whether you should start stocking up on wool and meat for your winter supply...

Honestly. Watch any of the streams. Watch the gameplay trailer. If you have XBox Gamepass, give the game a go for free. You'll see what I mean.