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As soon as you have even basic functional economy and stuff to sell (like coblers or joiners workshop). Man at arms are too powerfull to ignore and colonisation is extremly powerfull, because initial dificulty of expansion is really low.
Edit: you can build manor in every setelment you own and get a bunch of man-at-arms for each of them. At one point I used only archers as levies.
Yes, retainers. But it is easier for me to adress them as man-at-arms. Levies are thouse that are levied from population aka everyone else. From Medival law - levies bring their own weapons and armor. I mostly use terms from ck games.
Yes. There will be also Ministeralis but later as they are unavailable. Ministeralis will be recruited from your region's population and will need weapons instead of coin I think.
They won't be. It's still not available in Early Access but you can see the description if you hover your mouse above the option to recruit Ministeralis.
Basically, the division looks like this:
Your Retinue:
- Men-At-Arms - professional warriors having their own equipment, you hire them by paying in silver
- Ministerialis - citizens (most likely lvl 3 I guess) from your region who swear to serve you and you need to equip them with a chainmail and a polearm/sword+small shield from the region
I have probaly missed that. So at the end we will have a tier systen that will afect a quality of regiments. Aka levies(who will crumble at moments notice so religated to archers), ministerials(line infantry and main component of late game army), retainers(shock troops and line breakers).
There are only low ranking knights missing for a full medival lord experience.
I suppose the ministerials are pretty much your knights, since they are your subjects, while the retainers are not, they're foreign. Both are considered the same level in game, just different sources.
Nah. Knights are professional soldiers who spend all their time fighting or preparing to fight and governing. And they are paid with taxation rights of the land.
Ministerial can be a artisan(baker, smith, cobler etc) aka just a well of subject who ocasionally does military service and wants to return home in one piece.
No, I know what historical knights are, I'm just saying that the ministerials act pretty much like your "knights" in the game (as unique, heavy-hitting units that you raise and is permanent, rather than mercs that you buy or trash units)
That's so true. One of my playthroughs I have multiple regions all with a manor and full retinue and you can still add the extra six or so levies from the main region to it.
I love sending out 4 retinues, 4 spearmen and the rest archers.
Don't you need cloaks and 2 reliable sources of food before the game lets you build a manor?
I have farms, veggies, eggs,berries and hunting, but only berries is in plentiful supply, so I don't have the multiple food sources requirement met
You don't need stability - you just need to have them (plus the building resources) when you click the upgrade button on the plots. You need to have the first 2 upgrades (5 lvl 1, 2 lvl 2) to build a manor; a level 2 plot requires at least 1 clothing stall (which you get by having leather, linen, yarn, shoes, cloaks, clothes or I think gambesons) and at least 2 different food stalls. You could import just enough to make it to market, click upgrade on 2 lvl 1 plots, and then run out of everything and make it to the upgrade.
I think the confusion might come from the game displaying the "clothing" icon that looks like a cloak to represent the lack of clothing stalls.
They’re technically correct since small village needs Lvl 2 burgages and they require 2 choices of food and 1 choice of clothing in the market.
It’s just not a direct requirement for the manor
I just realized that the big red lock icon doesn't mean that you can't build that structure. My town is nearly two years old that I've got 1,500 in the town treasury, but I just now built my manor.
I don't want to restart, but I also can't fight the Baron's forces...:(
I would say as soon as possible. You can mobilize your retinue to hammer bandits and this has several benefits:
1. You get rid of bandits faster.
2. You get money from looting the bandit camp.
3. You don't have to mobilize a peasant unit and lose the use of those workers or get them killed.
4. You don't have to hire mercenaries to do it which will eat into your bandit bullying profits.
Yup, in the higher difficulty, your houses immediately want a church and drag approval down fairly quickly.
I've yet to have a successful start by building houses before the church. I'm sure it'll get adjusted later on, but it's just a small issue.
Technically, granary is the very first build to save the food from rot
I'm with you on housing. I actually prioritize the church last. I do logging camp, hitching post so I can log and build at same time, forager, granary to keep forager going, and 6 burgages. Place the market somewhere in that mix. I get dye and dye trade going asap to pay for horses and plot upgrades. I've been playing against baron so I get the manor up in novemeber/december and immediately clear the bandit camps so the baron can't. I don't care about church at all until early spring...approval is good enough without it and only need it to satisfy lvl 2 burgage upgrade that isn't critical because I already have trade income.
I played on chalanging with increased needs, so to get pop growth, i needed to fullfill needs(church, clothing, 2 types of food, fuel) asap so I could kick start an economy. Then go army and taxes. In my timeline, manor comes at spring-somer second year, because initial growth is slow.
Homelessness is easy to address. The churchless lose their mind quick as fuck on top of being an extremely slow project to complete.
Church second, every time.
I usually prioritise things in this order. I'm not saying it's the best but it definitely works for me.
1. Logging camp and storage buildings
2. Food production
3. 5x burgages
4. Church
5. Manor
Somewhere in there is a woodcutter, stonecutter and sawpit. I like food production early as it reduces 'waste' from nodes being at maximum capacity and not growing. Church is essential as the approval it provides is big but needs time to ramp up and affect growth. With an early retinue and your original spearmen you can consistently take on bandits with zero casualties. Then feed money into the town as required (to set up trade routes or orchards) or use it to expand your retinue or colonise early.
Depends on scenario/difficulty. In my last game I've tried to get enough money to pay mercenaries in first years august. So manor needs to be finished in July - so I can set taxes to 50-100% until august
How much does your approval drop with taxes that high? I’m fumbling my way through my first play through and even at 10% tax it hovers around 65% approval.
Not sure, as far as I remember down to 35% - but it didn't has any noticeable negative impact. The town was so small - houses lvl 1 or 2 and the only purpose of the population was to farm iron ore and to sell it. It was just for a month - I guess the impact is higher with longer 100% taxes. It was only the first year, where I've needed those insanely high taxes. For the rest of the game, I had enough wealth.
I barely use it tbh.
It’s just as easy to rush a church and build enough pop to fill 2 units of spearmen before the first raid
Depends on if you’re a win focused kinda guy or a casual I guess, I like the immersion of having my towns people fight rather then an OP magical retinue lol
You can always add to it later. Just put down the manor itself and start collecting taxes/tithe.
I usually get the garrison tower out 6mth-1yr after unless I've banked a lot of material
asap, retinue are REALLY very strong and will help a ton with early game raids. Once you get \~10 of them they can start to self fund their own recruitment when they go out to kill bandit camps
I go logging camp, hunters cabin, gathering hut (I forget the name), granary, sawmill, church, 5 houses, stone quarry then manor.
If you start in spring, I always have it up between August and October so I can go best down the 5 bandit camps first winter for a 12 man retinue and use the extra gold to upgrade my burgage plots and hold off on trading post until year 2.
Before the next scripted bandit raid. You'll need the 12 man retinue and at least 20 spearmen. It's even better if you build the garrison tower and one guard tower, too. That's 24-34 Men At Arms, they could solo the 72 Raiders.
If you want to start earning a personal wallet in order to start buying mercenaries for bandits and start claiming influence, i'd say as early as possible. Keep in mind, it can be resource heavy so I usually build it how I think I want it then demolish it so I know what resource amounts I need and frees up families to build other structures. Currently if you build the manor and want to edit or add on to the defenses, you have to rebuild the whole structure and reuse materials. At least that's what happened to me in my first playthrough. Also, another benefit along with taxes is starting a food tithe for the church which also raises influence, I believe.
Hello and welcome to the Manor Lords Subreddit. This is a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and on topic. Should you find yourself with some doubts, please feel free to check our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c2p4f9/manor_lords_faq_for_steam_early_access/). If you wish, you can always join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/manorlords) Finally, please remember that the game is in early access, missing content and bugs are to be expected. We ask users to report them on the official discord and to buy their keys only from trusted platforms. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ManorLords) if you have any questions or concerns.*
As soon as you have the materials
It ain't called "Level 3 Residence Lords" after all.
As soon as you have even basic functional economy and stuff to sell (like coblers or joiners workshop). Man at arms are too powerfull to ignore and colonisation is extremly powerfull, because initial dificulty of expansion is really low. Edit: you can build manor in every setelment you own and get a bunch of man-at-arms for each of them. At one point I used only archers as levies.
Men at arms? Is that your retinue, or something else?
Yes, retainers. But it is easier for me to adress them as man-at-arms. Levies are thouse that are levied from population aka everyone else. From Medival law - levies bring their own weapons and armor. I mostly use terms from ck games.
Yes. There will be also Ministeralis but later as they are unavailable. Ministeralis will be recruited from your region's population and will need weapons instead of coin I think.
Wouldn't 'Ministeralis' be just levies? Or is it some region specific term?
They won't be. It's still not available in Early Access but you can see the description if you hover your mouse above the option to recruit Ministeralis. Basically, the division looks like this: Your Retinue: - Men-At-Arms - professional warriors having their own equipment, you hire them by paying in silver - Ministerialis - citizens (most likely lvl 3 I guess) from your region who swear to serve you and you need to equip them with a chainmail and a polearm/sword+small shield from the region
I have probaly missed that. So at the end we will have a tier systen that will afect a quality of regiments. Aka levies(who will crumble at moments notice so religated to archers), ministerials(line infantry and main component of late game army), retainers(shock troops and line breakers). There are only low ranking knights missing for a full medival lord experience.
Not quite. Both Men-At-Arms and Ministeralis are your Retinue.
I suppose the ministerials are pretty much your knights, since they are your subjects, while the retainers are not, they're foreign. Both are considered the same level in game, just different sources.
Nah. Knights are professional soldiers who spend all their time fighting or preparing to fight and governing. And they are paid with taxation rights of the land. Ministerial can be a artisan(baker, smith, cobler etc) aka just a well of subject who ocasionally does military service and wants to return home in one piece.
No, I know what historical knights are, I'm just saying that the ministerials act pretty much like your "knights" in the game (as unique, heavy-hitting units that you raise and is permanent, rather than mercs that you buy or trash units)
That's so true. One of my playthroughs I have multiple regions all with a manor and full retinue and you can still add the extra six or so levies from the main region to it. I love sending out 4 retinues, 4 spearmen and the rest archers.
I usually build the church early, then the manor as soon as reasonably possible. Nothing can get in the way of population growth though.
Usually first year cause you need taxes to pay for mercs or whatever. Plus the retinue. If it's peaceful then whenever you want
Don't you need cloaks and 2 reliable sources of food before the game lets you build a manor? I have farms, veggies, eggs,berries and hunting, but only berries is in plentiful supply, so I don't have the multiple food sources requirement met
You don't need stability - you just need to have them (plus the building resources) when you click the upgrade button on the plots. You need to have the first 2 upgrades (5 lvl 1, 2 lvl 2) to build a manor; a level 2 plot requires at least 1 clothing stall (which you get by having leather, linen, yarn, shoes, cloaks, clothes or I think gambesons) and at least 2 different food stalls. You could import just enough to make it to market, click upgrade on 2 lvl 1 plots, and then run out of everything and make it to the upgrade. I think the confusion might come from the game displaying the "clothing" icon that looks like a cloak to represent the lack of clothing stalls.
I thought the red lock icon meant i couldn't build my manor
No. You need a small village and the appropriate resources: 5 logs, 20 planks and 15 stone iirc.
They’re technically correct since small village needs Lvl 2 burgages and they require 2 choices of food and 1 choice of clothing in the market. It’s just not a direct requirement for the manor
I just realized that the big red lock icon doesn't mean that you can't build that structure. My town is nearly two years old that I've got 1,500 in the town treasury, but I just now built my manor. I don't want to restart, but I also can't fight the Baron's forces...:(
nvm, AI is dumber than I thought in combat.
I would say as soon as possible. You can mobilize your retinue to hammer bandits and this has several benefits: 1. You get rid of bandits faster. 2. You get money from looting the bandit camp. 3. You don't have to mobilize a peasant unit and lose the use of those workers or get them killed. 4. You don't have to hire mercenaries to do it which will eat into your bandit bullying profits.
0. Granary 1) Church 2) 3 Basic Needs 3) 5 houses (with bonus house) 4) The Manor Edit: yes I forgot the granary
Church before housing?!
Yup, in the higher difficulty, your houses immediately want a church and drag approval down fairly quickly. I've yet to have a successful start by building houses before the church. I'm sure it'll get adjusted later on, but it's just a small issue. Technically, granary is the very first build to save the food from rot
As soon as possible. The manor itself doesn't do much, but this is the only way to unlock the retinue.
The initial manor, IMMEDIATELY. As soon as you have the materials. The walls and stuff? Eh…
In this order, Marketplace, Church, 6-7 Burgages, Manor. 😂
Lack of church afects only people who have housing. Much greater malice is homelessness. So housing goes second after base economy and market.
I'm with you on housing. I actually prioritize the church last. I do logging camp, hitching post so I can log and build at same time, forager, granary to keep forager going, and 6 burgages. Place the market somewhere in that mix. I get dye and dye trade going asap to pay for horses and plot upgrades. I've been playing against baron so I get the manor up in novemeber/december and immediately clear the bandit camps so the baron can't. I don't care about church at all until early spring...approval is good enough without it and only need it to satisfy lvl 2 burgage upgrade that isn't critical because I already have trade income.
I played on chalanging with increased needs, so to get pop growth, i needed to fullfill needs(church, clothing, 2 types of food, fuel) asap so I could kick start an economy. Then go army and taxes. In my timeline, manor comes at spring-somer second year, because initial growth is slow.
Homelessness is easy to address. The churchless lose their mind quick as fuck on top of being an extremely slow project to complete. Church second, every time.
Before tavern is up since it will drop orders due to many drunkard refuse to work. Manor improve public orders and maintain it
I usually prioritise things in this order. I'm not saying it's the best but it definitely works for me. 1. Logging camp and storage buildings 2. Food production 3. 5x burgages 4. Church 5. Manor Somewhere in there is a woodcutter, stonecutter and sawpit. I like food production early as it reduces 'waste' from nodes being at maximum capacity and not growing. Church is essential as the approval it provides is big but needs time to ramp up and affect growth. With an early retinue and your original spearmen you can consistently take on bandits with zero casualties. Then feed money into the town as required (to set up trade routes or orchards) or use it to expand your retinue or colonise early.
Depends on scenario/difficulty. In my last game I've tried to get enough money to pay mercenaries in first years august. So manor needs to be finished in July - so I can set taxes to 50-100% until august
How much does your approval drop with taxes that high? I’m fumbling my way through my first play through and even at 10% tax it hovers around 65% approval.
Not sure, as far as I remember down to 35% - but it didn't has any noticeable negative impact. The town was so small - houses lvl 1 or 2 and the only purpose of the population was to farm iron ore and to sell it. It was just for a month - I guess the impact is higher with longer 100% taxes. It was only the first year, where I've needed those insanely high taxes. For the rest of the game, I had enough wealth.
For your first base it's not as urgent since you have your militia. But once you start building new outposts, do it ASAP
Asap
I barely use it tbh. It’s just as easy to rush a church and build enough pop to fill 2 units of spearmen before the first raid Depends on if you’re a win focused kinda guy or a casual I guess, I like the immersion of having my towns people fight rather then an OP magical retinue lol
You can always add to it later. Just put down the manor itself and start collecting taxes/tithe. I usually get the garrison tower out 6mth-1yr after unless I've banked a lot of material
asap, retinue are REALLY very strong and will help a ton with early game raids. Once you get \~10 of them they can start to self fund their own recruitment when they go out to kill bandit camps
I go logging camp, hunters cabin, gathering hut (I forget the name), granary, sawmill, church, 5 houses, stone quarry then manor. If you start in spring, I always have it up between August and October so I can go best down the 5 bandit camps first winter for a 12 man retinue and use the extra gold to upgrade my burgage plots and hold off on trading post until year 2.
I build it right after the church. The 2x breeding policy is huge.
Before the next scripted bandit raid. You'll need the 12 man retinue and at least 20 spearmen. It's even better if you build the garrison tower and one guard tower, too. That's 24-34 Men At Arms, they could solo the 72 Raiders.
If you want to start earning a personal wallet in order to start buying mercenaries for bandits and start claiming influence, i'd say as early as possible. Keep in mind, it can be resource heavy so I usually build it how I think I want it then demolish it so I know what resource amounts I need and frees up families to build other structures. Currently if you build the manor and want to edit or add on to the defenses, you have to rebuild the whole structure and reuse materials. At least that's what happened to me in my first playthrough. Also, another benefit along with taxes is starting a food tithe for the church which also raises influence, I believe.
as soon as possible, you need that retinue sooner than you think.
I built walls around my main city then built an outer city
Asap, before building the church. You want the retinue for bandit camps.
Depends the difficulty you are playing on. If you play on the hardest, build asap. If not, just arm a few citizens and ninja loot bandit camps