Manor Lords Update – The Long-Awaited Patch is Finally Here

Manor Lords Here is a brand-new, fresh update release of Manor Lords and it’s quite something! The fans have been waiting for a while and the lead developer Greg even acknowledged that he didn’t plan the delay to be so long. Instead, in his own words, the team tried to do too much at once along with expanding the dev crew and teaching inexperienced programmers how handle a messy solo-dev codebase. That resulted in delays, canceled features and big rewrites of systems (that let’s face it the majority of you will never see directly but were needed for the game to run smoothly).

The important part? The new patch is live and it brings an incredible amount of features, balance changes, quality-of-life updates and.. bug fixes! Old saves won’t be good anymore since so much has changed, but such is the price of progress. Greg also vowed from this point that the team will now be doing smaller, more regular updates, rather than the various things build to one super release.

So, here’s a look at what’s actually new in this patch — or the good stuff, explained in plain English so can digest it without having to go through developer speak.

Why This Update Took So Long

Greg led off his update with an apology. He knows that players have been waiting, and he acknowledged that he has bitten off more than he can chew. The dev team expanded and with that came more visions to focus, more people learning the ropes, and a bunch of failed ideas that we kicked to curb. He even remembered the feeling of looking at his screen and seeing a “graveyard of perks” that didn’t pan out.

In addition to that, some heavy refactoring was necessary. This, basically, is re-structuring the way the game’s data and logic will be handled under DAT HOOD. You may not see it happening when you play, but the fact is without this your AI towns simply wouldn’t work. What seemed like minor fixes often became huge rabbit holes.

With this foundation tidied up, the game ought to evolve more quickly. That’s why this new patch is both a big content drop and reset point, for much smoother patches in the future.

The Big Additions

Here are the things that new Manor Lords update adds and changes most:

AI Towns

AI players that are CPU controlled now feel more realistic. Their towns expand more naturally and organically, in a manner that would be slightly smudgy with how the player would build. They can’t quite contend with the player militarily yet, but they’re working on it. It is one of the game’s long-term goals – to make AI Lords feel like real humans rather than auto-pilot bots.

Progression System Rework

The biggest complaint before, after all, was that progression felt plain boring. You’d unlock perks or policies, but there was usually one obvious “best” choice, which broke immersion. Now, the progression system is re-engineered to be thematic. But instead of gamey bonuses, the perks are rooted in the growth of your community, and you’ll have more interesting choices to make as you level up your town. Right now only the first set of perks are available in game, higher tiered perks will be coming soon.

More Depth in Core Systems

The update adds a new layer of depth that relates to how your town operates. Here’s what that means:

• Maintenance: If you don’t maintain buildings, then this is what you end up with — mine collapses.
• Efficiency, Productivity, Yield: These are new ways the game gauges how well your workplaces are operating. It’s no longer simply “building produces X,” but a series of modifiers that stack up according to worker time and logistics.
• Population Development: The number of births and the growth currently depend on your settlement conditions.
• Approval Effects: Bonuses or penalties for approval ‘tiers’ are much stronger on your people’s happiness.
• Environmental Affinities: Certain buildings will be more effective in some regions of your city. For instance, pig pens receive a bonus in woodland-heavy areas.

In addition, the game now provides you with tools such as graphs, charts and records for production and consumption so that you can actually see for yourself what’s going on and adjust your strategy accordingly.

Castles and Combat Upgrades

Castles were the big winners in this update. It’s even possible to upgrade to stone castles, station soldiers on walls and peek inside towers. Units also scale ladders and other siegeworks to get at upper floors, and you can activate castle gates independently. Platforms can be positioned on walls, and castle modules are stretchier and more swapable. It adds a lot more in the way of action to sieges.

Food and Resource Rework

Vegetables aren’t just “vegetables” anymore. They’ve been divided into cabbages, carrots and beetroots, all with pluses and minuses. Meat has expanded as well, with [choices] like mutton, pork, beef, chicken and small game now widening the field. Sausage can be made of pork and salt. Fields are now planted with pear and quince trees; they have added mushrooms again to the mix for experimentation.

This renders food supply lines more interesting and realistic, players will have to spread out rather than spam one source.

New Maps and Modes

4 new maps are included; Devil’s Hill, Jagged Cliffs, Divided and Large Lake. They add new layout to the terrain, with a giant lake map and cliff-heavy spots for building interesting towns.

There are also two new game modes:

• Duel: One-on-one mode against the AI.
• Fractured Realm: Any four of the Lords facing off in a free-for-all.

System Reworks Explained Simply

Some of the patch notes can sound daunting, so here’s what some of the key systems mean in practice:

• Affinity System: Buildings have a pulse with the land. If, for instance, you place an animal pen in a wooded area then pig farming improves. This encourages you to plan your settlements around the terrain.
• Maintenance System: Workplaces need upkeep. Pass it by, and you risk ruins or disaster. You determine how much maintenance you do, which influences labor speed.
• Yield System: A new standard of measurement, giving us a glimpse of future output. Instead of flat production numbers, it is now based on labor speed, efficiency and productivity.” That makes things like worker travel time count.
• Reworked approval: Your villagers’ satisfaction applies more of influence, with distinct tiers providing bonuses or penalties. It’s not simply that people remember the past indefinitely — they also tend to concentrate more on what’s occurring in the present.

UI and Quality of Life

The game’s interface received a visual and mechanical makeover. The look is suddenly more medieval, less modern. You’ll notice:

• New production screen with product balance display.
• Hover approval info to explain missing needs.
• Re-designed map-view with hand-drawn resource symbols.
• Also being able to rename my saves, and cycle through regions.
• Improved building tooltips, save confirmations and wall placement accuracy.
• A revamped tutorial divided into sub-sections to be more easily onboarded.

Little quality of life things like road snapping, livestock tooltips, and a log notification all make for an even smoother playing experience as well.

Balance Changes

This patch also had elements of game balance. Some highlights:

• Animal reproduction at present seems to be affected by the herd size.
• Mining spans are larger when mining rich deposits, but if the mines are crowded they may collapse.
• Homelessness gives 30 days to settle a new region.
• Manors/castles can't be fired down by raiders anymore.
• Rescources are generally more balanced to begin, a few nodes have been buffed for diversity.
• Consumption scaling: High-income houses require more goods, such as clothing.
• Trading post prices and livestock trade values were balanced.
• Tariffs on imports from 5 to 10 percent.

Bug Fixes in Plain English

There was a lot of bugs the devs stomped on. Here you go, some simple examples:

• Approval tooltips now show properly.
• Villagers should no longer get stuck inside houses.
• You ever notice how castle walls remain concentric after the building is done?
• Roads won’t just respawn out of nowhere after you load a save.
• Soldiers dont' freeze when their squad gets shot.
• Granary upgrades should work reliably.
• Resource clumps no longer float.
• Wagons should now pathfind correctly around obstacles.
• An owner can’t draw militia from a non-owned area.
• Oxen would no longer try to walk through the walls of the stable.

And that’s only scratching the surface — dozens of less noticeable bug fixes enhance overall stability.

How to Join the Beta

If you’d like to test this patch out ahead of time, you can opt into a beta on Steam. Here’s the simple step-by-step:

1. For the time being you should still probably backup your saves, just in case.
2. Uninstall all mods (they are likely going to break stuff).
3. Open up Steam, right-click on Manor Lords and select Properties.
4. Go to the BETAS tab.
5. Enter the password: veryNiceBasket.
6. Choose pre_release from the beta dropdown.
7. Relaunch Steam and, if you have to, update the game with the server active.

We welcome feedback on the Steam forums or Discord where our dev team hangs out.

Final Thoughts

This is by far the largest Manor Lords update to date, so while it was a long time coming, future ones should be more frequent. The game has more of a pulse: towns grow more organically, resources go deeper, castles feel real and systems like maintenance and approval add layers to how you play.

Yes, it’s a work in progress still. Some of the things feel experimental, and out of balance. But this is what the beta is for.

“The message from Greg was clear — he knows it’s been a long wait, he apologizes for that and the team is learning from all of this. From now on, updates should be arriving more frequently, and the game is moving closer to the living medieval sim that’s been teased in many a player’s dreams.

Smash them If you’ve had your fingers crossed for a return to Manor Lords, it is the time.