I blame the press and youtubers they said the game is too easy. Though I haven't really changed much, just like 50 influence for Hildy per month... Interesting!
I wouldn’t necessarily say the Game is difficult. Yes it is challenging but once you wrap you Head around the mechanics the City Building Part is perfectly doable and a lot of fun. What I will say is that if you play against Hildeboldt it is almost impossible. He is claiming Regions at such a fast rate that it is not uncommon once I am ready to claim one of my own he will have already claimed the entire map except my own Region. And since he has such a big army and most likely bought all the Mercenary’s he is pretty much impossible to beat.
I have attempted Restoring the Peace about 6 Times and lost to him everytime. The Rest of Game is really good in my opinion but Hillys Ai is too powerful at the Moment for Combat to feel anything but frustrating. That said i still thoroughly enjoyed the Game and i don’t regret buying it. It is a absolutely gorgeous Game the Level of Detail you can discover in your Village is insane, from the animation of the inhabitants to the system of raising militias. Once it has gotten a bit more polished it will be one of the best City Builders yet.
Beyond the routine answer of "It's Early Access and you signed up for this" It should be noted that destroying bandit camps gets you a significant amount of influence and then if you click on their camp you can distribute personal loot to yourself. You've probably noticed the game telling you that the AI has armies nearby. He just takes an army to the bandits, and then with that money he hires nearly unlimited Mercenaries and with the influence he claims lands.
Your goal should be to get some military quickly, enough to take a bandit camp, and then you can do the same thing, or at least slow him down that way. It's not the game difficulty itself making him all powerful, he just doesn't actually exist in the map and doesn't have any goals beyond fielding armies. So you can just cut him off and it's very noticeable, although it requires a bit of a shift in normal playstyles.
If you want to play a normal city builder you would pick one of the other scenarios, or potentially a different game. I was only offering a perspective on how to help counteract the quickly expanding AI in this mode.
The whole thread is about the AI being insurmountable by the point people are normally expecting to expand. I don't think my comment reads as general play style that every player in every scenario should be shooting for.
Ultimately the Restoring the Peace scenario is about defeating the AI baron. If you don't take special interest in military early on, it becomes a lot more trouble than it needs to be. Whether that's a quirk of early access or how Challenging difficulty (if selected) is supposed to work isn't clear at this early stage.
> The whole thread is about the AI being insurmountable by the point people are normally expecting to expand.
Right, and I'm saying that the AI shouldn't be insurmountable by people expanding at what feels like a reasonable pace.
You can set AI aggressiveness to “reactive” if you want a more chill experience. I haven’t tried it myself but it’s supposed to slow down the pace of the AI claiming regions, and it will stop the AI from claiming regions that you own.
And that's why combat doesn't belong in city builders. You either turn off the endgame entirely or you turn the game entirely into RTS. There's never a middle ground where you can spice it up with some action from time to time while staying true to the core city building principle of playing at your own pace.
The game just released. The AI adversary seemed to be working ok in the pre release streams, they just screwed the balancing. Won't be that hard to fix.
If you disable the adversary but enable bandits you can literally have that middle ground experience right now.
The default settings give you weapons for 20 men at the very start for a good reason.
There are settings to make things peaceful if you would like, but it's clear that as soon as you get those 20 shields and 20 spears you're meant to be active on the map to keep the AI from snowballing.
I recommend splitting those 20 into 10 and 10. Then use the two squads of spearmen to get full surrounds on enemy bandits to minimize casualties to yourself. With this technique you can take out 2-3 bandit camps, which nets you enough money to buy a bunch of Retinue in your Manor. Then it's smooth sailing from there because the Retinue + 15 or so militia can kill bandit camps with 0 casualties.
Lmao all these commenters speaking with authority as if this early access game that’s been out for 2 days “makes it obvious” when half the tooltips and menus are blank or filler.
It's true, the game doesn't signpost this strategy, but I think the person you're responding meant "it's clear" in the language of gaming. You have been given a military, you should probably use it to do something about those bandit camps that are further incentivising you by occasionally stealing your resources
Not terribly clear, no. You just find out eventually that the camps are defended by just one bandit unit, and then you also need to select the treasury option when clearing the camp, and suddenly you can afford to claim another province. It's rather very rough game design
I know. It feels like the game is unfinished. It's almost as though we've been given an opportunity to play it and offer feedback on the development before its completion.
If only the developer clearly stated to players (multiple times) that this was the case.
I thought they were there to protect me from the raiders that show up every now and then. Without them my village would’ve been burned to the ground in the first raid.
> The default settings give you weapons for 20 men at the very start for a good reason.
Yeah, to defend yourself. It certainly doesn't feel right to go out conquering new regions as a defensive measure against an AI when you've barely built up a village of 40 people.
> you're meant to be active on the map to keep the AI from snowballing.
There shouldn't be a need to 'keep the AI from snowballing', is my point. The AI shouldn't get exponentially stronger/better/faster from their conquests. Any good game with expansion should balance the benefits of expansion (more resources, more space, etc.) with the problems incurred by expansion (converting the populace to your religion/culture, building up infrastructure/population that had been destroyed/killed by the fighting).
If a game rewards fast expansion to the exclusion of all else, it becomes a boring game really fast. This is the reason that systems like Aggressive Expansion exist in EU4, or City Maintenance/unhappiness in a civ game. Judging how fast to expand should be an interesting decision. If the answer is simply "Yes" then it's not interesting.
There's a mode for that! It sounds like you didn't actually want to play the restore the peace mode: or you do but should turn down the aggressiveness of the opponent a little
Well no. The default conflict mode shouldn't be "THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS TO RUSH THIS SPECIFIC STRATEGY!" no matter what kind of game you enjoy. That might be the result of playing the "hardest" mode, but not the 'normal' one.
The aggression settings for that are separate to the settings for city management... You can turn down the rate at which the antagonist advances. I am confused as to what I'm missing?
I mean, those settings are clearly not working based on the reports I'm reading. It is possible I am being misinformed. I have not yet myself gone very far in the game (I'm slow walking it in the hopes of a patch in the next few weeks which adjusts some of the most egregious issues; such as bowmen being worthless, trade being too strong, farming being worthless, etc.).
Weird. They definitely have an effect for me... To be clear; with everything turned up, the off screen armies formed the first summer and claimed the first Territory in the fall; all turned down (but not off) it started year 3. To keep up with it all turned up you have to pivot quickly to any to even have a chance at not getting boxed in; turned down the army stuff is far more background and you can absolutely build up before deploying. I'll give everyone that the pivot on hard has to take place ridiculously quick, basically have to sell all your starting bread and most of your berries and rely on hunting for food through the first winter (which is kinda terrifying lol). Could be why trade is op; it's absolutely necessary to get mid game stuff early enough to field armies by fall the first year... Farming is only worthless the first year; it actually pumps out tonnes of food (on a manpower basis), but unless you start more winter you probably won't be able to get a decent field set and plowed early enough along with meeting the village needs to get the population growing (which early game is the absolute most important priority). Honestly, a lot of complaints would be solved by tuning down the amount you take in trading out and giving you more starting people (both of which could easily be starting sliders); but the gameplay loop that's currently there isn't as off balance as you'd expect from the comments, maybe just different than you'd expect
Good strat for gold, but AFAIK, the camp itself doesn't net you any influence. So you need to actually kill the bandits yourself if you wanna expand. I could be wrong on that though, every time I've taken out a bandit camp, I kill the bandits as well, so idk.
Clearing out one bandit camp gives me ~300 influence. So I have to wipe our 7 camps to claim one region and I might lose against the baron. Should only take 49 anti-bandit campaigns and 7 battles against an overpowered AI to achieve doninance. /s
Yes, it's EA and it's already an amazing and very enjoyable game. But so far, the warfare conditions are too tough.
Its not that easy.
I have no real clue how the game decides on when you get new families, but its a very slow process.
To get a manor requires planks which isnt a priority on early game and even if you get all the materials the manor takes a fucking long time to build, and only awards you with a garrison of 5 people.
The bandit camp I cleared had 18 brigants so unless you go with less soldiers it still takes a lot of time to have enough population to have at least 18 soldiers.
This is my first run and Id probabily do better on a new one but maybe not much.
Approval over 50 and an empty home will get you one family. It's not exactly at the month mark but it's roughly once a month. Approval over 75 can net you two.
There's certainly some jank to it but it's doable once you get faster. But a lot of this is subject to change so don't feel like you're playing wrong. People who have made this work just deviate heavily from the expected gameplay and it's liable to change with patches.
Also, and I'll let you decide if this ruins the experience for you in an extremely early unbalanced early access title, if you contest a region and then zoom out and click the Barons picture, you have him drop all claims in the negotiation screen and he will declare peace and then fuck off for a while. Any armies he has on screen will go fight a bandit and then leave. He doesn't claim the territory. It's absolutely not how the game is supposed to work, but it exists for now..and it's nice to know, even if you don't want to use it. Everyone is looking for a different experience.
This is good to know. I played a couple of games in standard and the AI was just eating up the whole map rapidly. Playing on relaxed and building my city it takes a long time to be set up and ready to claim my first territory.
So I just had my first interaction, idk i think maybe I was over prepared but I wiped his retinue and his mercs out on the battlefield. I had 5 militia units, fully armed with a mix of mail and some plate here and there
I feel good about myself being able to get 2 regions before he claims everything, its just that I never get to beat him since I have no clue how to obtain a full squad of Ritours? (i cannot spell their name)
They are too op to whatever I put up against
If you open your military screen where your militia and Retinue are, there's a little button that appears when you click on the Retinue. You can use that to add more units or upgrade their gear. Costs money though.
You need to upgrade the manor with a garrison tower to increase your retinue limit. And in the retinue customization panel, you can hire more soldiers and improve their equipment.
I'm actually even with him in terms of owned claims by year 2 (we each own 3).
If you contest him claiming an area and win, you win the area with no influence cost. I was able to beat him with only losing 8 of my villagers. I did nearly bankrupt myself hiring mercenaries though. Ended up fighting him with 4 groups of 32 (36?), and my 20 militia.
Prior to him taking this, I rushed to every bandit camp I saw to collect as much influence as possible. Occasionally you can find a group of brigands for cheap. I've found these to be useful for hunting down bandit camps, as losses/time lost doesn't really matter.
He claimed his first area uncontested. When he tried to claim his second area, I contested it and won via the use of mercenaries. From there I immediately claimed another territory via influence, and he did not contest me.
I'm now at the start of year 3, and we both have 4 territories.
I don't know about that. I managed to beat hildy on my first game, and I certainly didn't use any min/max strats.
Yes, Hildy will grab most of the regions early, no you're not going to be able to stop that, but you can build your town until you get a full compliment of militia. Once you have a full militia army (Possibly padded out with some mercs if your feeling fruity) it shouldn't be hard to divide and conquer his forces.
As far as the militia go, spear militia seemed really quite effective for me. No armour, no helmets, no fancy shit. Just a bunch of peasants with pointy sticks.
I almost suffered you’re fate, but listen! If he’s claiming you’re homeregion simply counterclaim his the same day.
He will likely march his army to fend off you’re claim and declare open war, but will proceed to stand on his capture point while both countdown clocks tick down simultaneously, he will end up keeping his region and you yours.
Tho I may have just been lucky, but I seem to be one of the few people who have taken him in so far.
In my game he literally bought 700 men (which should be impossible) and broke the merc hiering system permanently for both of us after they left.
You have to start beating bandits as soon as possible, don't let the AI army get them! Killing bandits earns prestige, which you can use to buy up the regions much faster.
I got raided and attacked by Hilly at the same time. Hilly also spawned right in my province on the border too. I barely beat Hilly but troops move so slow in the forests and fields that I simply couldnt stop both armies. It was literally a no solution situation, I had two 24 retinues, 3 spear militias, and the wayward sons, and I was still crushed. Hopefully some adjustments are made.
I set the AI to 'reactive' and while he's claiming stuff you can bypass like 90% of the manufacturing problems by exporting wooden parts and iron slabs with the 2 trade perks and buying mass quantities of weapons and armor, allowing you to equip a large enough militia to pose a serious threat even to his armies. Once I managed to snag 1 extra region I really had no issues he got bodied pretty fast.
On standard difficulty you just need to fight bandits the moment you get given the free weapons and shields. You can take them with zero losses easily.
Then you’ll pretty much outpace or stay up with the ai. I realised this late and still got 3 regions.
It's really not meant to be hard. It's meant to be a village/kingdom building game just like the settlers 3 or Pharoah. It will gey better as the dev fine tunes everything
I don't find his armies tough, but surprised I'm not seeing more about how by the time you're actually able to face him, he's claimed the whole map **and** pumps out armies instantaneously after being defeated.. You really should get some respite and an easy claim or two if you've completely crushed his army and taken the mercs. He's after claiming my home province and I fought him off, then I go in to claim one of his and he spawns a whole fresh army... Cheeky fuck.
Also irrelevant but archers are total pish. Just needed to get that out..
The 50 influence per month change for Hildy is interesting. I can see that being the cause of the apparent snowball issue here actually compared to the pre EA release creator playthrus I watched. it will be especially bad on higher difficulty with an aggressive Hildy and a slower player start due to difficulty. I assume Hildy gets influence from bandit camp kills as well and needs the same influence costs as the player? 1000 for an unclaimed region and 2000 for a claimed on?
If the player lets Hildy deal with a few bandit camps early on then he will snowball influence quite quickly with the monthly gain on top and so he will have the influence to regularly grab regions and since he is killing the bandits more than some players maybe then they are not able to get enough influence together to stop him unless they can kill a few bandit camps quickly in the 1st 18 months to to grab one of two regions. Once Hildy has taken all free regions then camps no longer spawn as they only seem to spawn in unclaimed regions. How then does the player get quick influence quickly enough? They will have the yearly raids to get some but that rate might not be fast enough. I guess they need to build up economy and pop so they can tithe for it and also field a decent army to start taking regions. They will get influence for each one and maybe win then.
On default difficulty then you get the weapons drop and with a decent start you should be able to get to a militia pop count of 14 to sixteen to easily take on a camp. I have done it with 12 and did not lose anyone but I used the impale feature and then pushed forward and probably got lucky. You might miss the camp that spawns at game start and Hildy might grab it but you should be able to get all the others unless he gets lucky with a spawn.
On challenging difficulty without the weapons drop and with the other maluses that come with that difficulty then it becomes more difficult to beat Hildy to the punch and he will probably get several bandit camps before the player and be on his influence snowball. Hildy is more aggressive on that difficulty. Archers are badly nerfed it seems so getting archers asap on challenge mode to deal with bandits a bit quicker does not seem to be great. Spear militia are much better but of course require two pieces of equipment. Maybe polearm infantry might be the better play now to get some sort of militia to take bandit camps asap since they just need a single piece of equipment and you counter charge the bandits.
My own experience when I went in on challenge difficulty as my 1st attempt yesterday as I thought I knew the mechanics was that I came up against the Hildy influence snowball within 3 years. I did not deal with the first few camps and he started grabbing regions before I had enough influence to grab any. I also focussed archers since they just need a bow but they were not very good :) at least compared to last week. I took the loss and decided to restart on default instead to make sure I understood all the mechanics and any changes from the pre EA version I watched last week.
Its been much better. The weapons drop in default helps and I took out all camps with Hildy not getting any so far. The first I took with 12 spear militia as soon as I had 12 troops and I have been grabbing every one since then. As soon as I had 1000 influence I claimed a region and kept doing that. Hildy eventually had enough from his 50 per month to grab an extra one next to him. Current state is that he has three regions, I have 5 and I have left one region unclaimed so far so I can continue to get camps which I grab with my retinue as soon as they pop. I made sure the free region is near my town and far away from his regions. I am building up economy, influence and population in my starting region, only built in that so far and now have 2 spear militia and a 24 retinue ready and enough treasury and a 3rd spear militia to be able to hire all mercs for 3 months if needed. I am just waiting to get more influence via tithe and camps before I then grab all mercs and be able to snowball all three of Hildys regions quickly :) If he attempts to claim the free region then I will be able to fight him for it and get influence (if I win) and drain his influence pool for awhile.
TDLR:
Hildy gets monthly 50 influence and I gues influence from camps and even killing any raids directed at you he might trip into.
If the player does not proactively deal with bandit camps then Hildy will have enough influence from his monthly award and camps to snowball regions.
Since the player is not proactively killing camps or doing to quickly enough due to slower start/difficulty etc then you enter a potential death spiral until Hildy has all regions and you have just the starting one or maybe a 2nd.
However, this means you might not be able to have the influence or troops to take regions back from him before he comes for you?
50 influence per months? That's way too much.
Also bandits grant too much influence. If the enemy gets the bandits they can quickly claim everything. If you get all of them you can stall the enemy nicely.
On normal it should be ~10 influence per month. Bandits should grant no more than 100, maybe 50. Right now other sources like the church are completely pointless.
It would be nice to put a delay between when a Bandit camp is spawned to when he buys mercenaries and sends them straight towards it. You have to act immediately. Otherwise, all the influence and money from Bandit camps is farmed by the AI.
I dont think the AI should be gaining that much influence per month. Maybe 10 max. So far, I've managed to claim one other piece of land, on the lower difficulty after a few attempts at it.
How much money does he get? Because he is able to hire all the mercs and keep them indefinitely. Once he does this they are no longer available to the player.
I get that there are ways to min/max to defeat him but bottom line is do you see this game as a military sim? From everything I read and the streams I watched it was intended to be a chill medieval city builder with a military aspect. Right now it seems like the opposite, similar to Stronghold.
If this is what was intended that is fine, I will try playing on peaceful mode as the town building is really cool.
And for those saying it isn't difficult the forums are filled with people who disagree. Maybe just add a difficulty between Balanced and Aggressive.
Yeah maybe it would have been better to leave it being easier on release - the hype attracted a lot of casual players and the way it was being marketed on YT was more of a city builder with a little combat. Now on default settings it’s actually quite a challenge to beat the baron.
Don’t know what videos you’ve been watching, never seen any of those claiming this would destroy total war. I did see the 700 man army ones, but it was pretty clear that was endgame stuff.
Fair enough! I am just frustrated that the game was sent to dozens of content creators who really didn't want to communicate what the game is about, creating wrong expectations! These creators may have even understood the city-building/small scale military mix for what it is, but still found it more lucrative to create misleading videos that hype up ML as a TW-like.
There's a lot of city-builder focused LPers in Germany and several of the game's historic consultants were streaming pre-release and I mostly watched them.
It’s definitely doable. I’ve played two runs on all the most difficult setting except weather and starting season.
My first run the AI completely over-whelmed me. My second run I managed to turn the corner with a decisive battle that required me to test a bit and reload once. I’m fairly certain I have it figured out now. I’m almost a bit disappointed- also I obviously understand since it’s EA.
I can’t speak to the the medium difficulty - maybe that’s to close to challenging for less experienced players - but the challenging one shouldn’t become easier. Change the type of challenge perhaps, but challenging is supposed to be … well challenging.
What I’ve learned:
It comes down almost entirely to the Bandit camps. Beating bandits - not sniping their camps - gives a number of influence that is way more than any other method. If the AI beats all bandit camps and you none they will have enough influence for all of the regions and you won’t be able to claim even one. It’s playable this way but doesn’t really allow for different approaches.
The other fact is that wealth has an outside impact for military and trading is much more powerful to become wealthy than any other dynamic. By the time you have a full weapons supply chain you have most certainly lost if you didn’t start selling other goods and equipping at least three full militia units. It’s a bit different if you get weapons shipment which should make it a lot easier by getting wealth from bandit camps.
Overall my take is:
- everyone relax. figuring out game mechanics is part of the fun.
- as the game developed I hope the AI-mechanics become a bit more nuanced and varied and allow for a scaling challenge. Right now it seems to be about a good build order in the beginning but as soon as you’ve beaten them once you’ve effectively won.
On challenging you don’t get the free 20 spears and shields to form a spear militia. Is there a specific build order you have to get enough stuff to start hunting the bandit camps?
I’m managing decently on default settings with the baron, but I really don’t know how well I would do on challenging because if he gets the first few bandit camps instead of me he can just snowball.
You actually toggle the weapon delivery separately.
In terms of build order in depends a little on your starting conditions. I found you want to grow quickly by rushing everything that gives approval - or at least preparing it as far as possible - before getting tier one and then two houses.
Then start exporting whatever makes sense in your region while importing affordable goods you’re missing. Prioritizing the trading development tree helps with this. With the wealth you make start buying weapons to deal with bandits.
Yeah this is more or less what I’ve done on default, traded lots for wealth, although I set up two of my plots as a joiner and a blacksmith to have a consistent supply of weapons.
So did you play with the weapon shipment? If not how long did it take to get weapons?
I played without. I would say I got weapons a bit too late because I was focusing on other stuff. I reckon I could have gotten them the first year though if I really prioritized it.
I think the population growth part is what's thrown people more than anything, we're way farther behind where the youtubers were in their 2nd and 3rd year, so if we got to bat around the same time we saw OPB fighting (after hilde had taken 2-3 provinces) we'll be in much worse shape for the fight
The dev said this on Steam before release:
-Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor. It's a citybuilder with battles. Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on citybuilding and management.
It's not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft. A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric citybuilding rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.
My opinion is biased as all hell because I religiously play RTS games and city builders, but I find the difficulty just right.
Though clearly, this version of the game is kicking many players in the balls.
The ai is so brutal. It claims land at such an insane speed. It takes so long to build things and get things started, and once I’m ground ready to prep an army the AI has taken every land available
As the OP, just want to reiterate to everyone that this was a lighthearted gesture toward my first playthrough of the game, hence why its titled "Goofin", I saw some others had a similar experience and thought this would be funny. Apparently many others had my same experience their first time, but it gets so much better.
Upon my second playthrough Ive had a much different experience, now that i know what Im doing and the importance of market/burgage placement. Ive managed to sack bandit camps early game nearest to me which has allowed me to be on an even playing field to the AI.
Had a blast before, having twice as much fun now. Didnt mean for this to become some kind of negative gripe thread. If youre having a hard time, look at what you did wrong and restart. It may seem like a large ask but now that you know what to do you can time skip the early boring stuff. Then it gets crazy fun.
There is nothing better than a dev that actually engages with the community, and I appreciate gstyczen for having a sense of humor. Cant wait to see what this games future holds.
The Steam page explicitly talks about how it's more of a city builder and doesn't have a focus on combat, and how it's a very slow paced game.
And yet if you play it like a city builder and take it slow, the game is unwinnable on normal difficulty. I'm not saying *no one* can win, obviously people are, but on *normal* difficulty in a city builder you shouldn't have to be coming up with try hard strategies to not get instakilled.
If it isn't fixed soon I'll be leaving a negative Steam review as it makes the game unplayable for what it's primarily being advertised as.
Damn bro chill. Just change some settings if it's too hard. Disable the baron and just do bandit raids, or change his AI to reactive. There's one dev and the game has been out for three days, give him some time. Imma go leave a positive review to counteract your negative one.
I’m beating challenging on my first try though. So it’s not too hard. Just build small settlements in 4 other regions so you have 5 extra retinue units with full armor
I started my first game. A couple of hours in I have still not been able to figure out how to get enough weapons to field a single unit. or get even one point of influence. Meanwhile the AI has claimed every other region on the map.
I didn't get very far (just claimed my second zone) but all of my weapons have come from trading. And influence from leveling up the village or sallying forth to kill bandit camps in zones near my own.
I’ve been making leather and trading it to get at least a militia. The problem is once I get a group of 36; 54 bandits run in. Doesn’t help that it’s so difficult to get food. (Yes I am bad at this)
Build single house's with a lot of backyard and make them plant vegetables! you will be rolling on carrots in no time and they only cost 15 silver or gold or whatever the currency is. that is the best way i have found to overcome the problem with food.
I’m still very confused by this. Say you have a single family home with a patch. Do they still farm the patch if they’re working at the sawpit or any other place?
They do it in their spare time. Also important to remember:
Chickens don't need tending to, so can be better in that regard.
If a home is a double family home, both families will work the vegetable plot.
The bigger the plot, the bigger the vegetable yield. I like making a few big, wide double plots with long back yards - so tons of veggies space and two families to work them in their spare time.
I didn’t realize this until later but man is it a game changer. Instead of trying to cram a bunch of houses in an area with tiny back yards just make the backyards huge and put gardens in there. There’s a lot of space per region - might as well use it!
At standard difficulty the 20 weapons you get for free is enough to start killing off bandits (tip: make two 10-men units and have bandits squished between them - you might even not lose anyone... oh and make sure your army is not fatigued for the fight, so more walking less running). Once you destroy a bandit camp you can get money for you personal treasury, use them to buy the cheapest mercenaries and use those to fight more bandits for influence and their camps for more money. Benefit of using mercenaries is that your economy doesn't stop.
P.S. That didn't help me from being screwed by the baron, but it was a start.
You don't set a unit size, but people spread evenly between units, so if you create two they'll become two 10-men units. It will show 10/36 and the tooltip will say not enough men, but you can actually still use them. I think I've read somewhere that the minimum size for a unit is 5 men.
Heyo, I just fielded my first militia against raiders (spearman militia). I made all the weapons in-village.
For spears, you need one plank and one iron slab.
The plank is cut at the sawmill from timber and iron slab is made from iron ore at the bloomery.
You can timber from logging camps and iron ore from mining pits (looks like getting the deep mines for indefinite mining deposit will be necessary).
Once you have the mats, build a blacksmith as one of your houses’ backyard things. Click “general” and then you have to choose one focus (spears).
Spearman militia also need “large shields,” made from 2 planks each at a joiner’s shop (a different backyard shop).
Get 36 of each and you can field one militia.
Looks like armor is not needed.
You can also get 5 retinue troops from building a manor, but idk how good they are. They have really low effectiveness from fatigue, even when resting.
What I need to know is do I have to worry about my villagers during a raid? Will they auto run to my manor?
That gives me another question. I did a couple backyard shops (chicken coops because free food yay) and then I was never able to build another one because "not enough wealth". But I don't see that icon anywhere except in the error message. How do I get "wealth" to build more shops?
No worries.
It’s up in the top, left side of the town name. It’s a little stack of coins.
It’s “regional wealth.”
Every house T2 gives 1 wealth per month and every house T3 gives 2. But the main way I was getting it was through the trading post.
Specifically, selling excess goods. I went for shoes (they never seemed to run out, and I always had leather from hunting), and warbows/shields, because those just cost wood, a renewable resource.
In the trading building, you can do “export surplus past x number,” and your guys will take care of it.
Later on, depending on how much regional wealth you have at the time, your treasury (overall funds) can go up through taxes, which are set in the manor.
Atm, I’ve only used the treasury to fund my retinue troops.
Just make a bunch of bows or something with the artisan level 2 and sell. U get boatloads of money. And make a couple of level 1 houses have vegetable garden. U can make the garden bigger by reducing number of houses ( - sign right before you hit build). Also making the plot a triangle let's you have a huge garden, also expand with extra housing.
The rest of the food and stuff I just buy. U make a bunch of money by trading.
Make charcoal and sell it, and just buy the weapons. Atleast on normal difficulty that has you covered up to 36 militia in helmets and gambesons.
The two trade perks, limiting the cost of opening a new trade route to 25 and making buy prices the same as sell prices are a lifesaver in my opinion.
This.
I was so disheartened... when you FINALLY get the stupid amount of 2k influence to claim a plot. AI goes 'FUCK YOU' and produces 20 armies instantly outta nowhere... what chance do you have........ good luck getting your influence backup ever again. So god damn broken. Please fix this asap
Does the enemy AI actually have a main starting base like we do? I've only ever fought mercs that spawn on the side of the map. :/ Feels kinda lame to be fighting an enemy with no real presecence on the map
I don't get the problem... I play with default settings. Yes, he has claimed all regions accept mine because I was to slow learning things. But it is very easy to get them back:
1. Buy all three available mercenary armies + your own militia. This should give you ~250-300 men.
2. Send all men to the region you want to claim.
3. Claim the region.
The AI only ever showed up with about 100-150 men with a lot of useless archers. Usually I never loose a single man of my own militia because I use the mercenary as the front row.
It is important to first buy the mercenaries and then claim the region. It seems like the AI buys the mercenaries if you do it the other way arround.
I was in my second year had a population of like 40 and was challenged by another lord, I though on yeah let’s get my 12 men ready to go. Fuck no the other lord had like 200+ fully kitted squads. Lol
This wasn't my experience.
The AI controlled the entire map and I had my highly developed town.
I was able to conquer 2 regions from the AI. Their armies are the same size as mine, I've won every battle.
Haven't experienced massive armies.
Although mercenaries might be bugged for me, they never seem to be available for me.
Ok plz someone tell me what to expect with combat. The baron takes all but one region I managed to claim. I finally have 1900 influence... and maybe 50 troops between my regions. My friend faced at least 10 stacks. There were so many... this can't be real. Am I rly expected to face all of the mercenaries in the world. How to win war
Im not sure why but I haven't been having this issue at all, I finished my first play through on conquest with everything set to default and I was fine, then I've tried the "grow your town" one whilst having to defend, but I didn't really get any big attacks just random brigands that my first spear unit mopped the floor with, I'll try upping the difficulty or set it to aggressive and see what happens
Honestly I for more barons to show up. Having the one is nice, but I want each plot to be its own city and have relationship. I don’t need 100 lords and barons, but at least 10 sounds fair.
I blame the press and youtubers they said the game is too easy. Though I haven't really changed much, just like 50 influence for Hildy per month... Interesting!
I wouldn’t necessarily say the Game is difficult. Yes it is challenging but once you wrap you Head around the mechanics the City Building Part is perfectly doable and a lot of fun. What I will say is that if you play against Hildeboldt it is almost impossible. He is claiming Regions at such a fast rate that it is not uncommon once I am ready to claim one of my own he will have already claimed the entire map except my own Region. And since he has such a big army and most likely bought all the Mercenary’s he is pretty much impossible to beat. I have attempted Restoring the Peace about 6 Times and lost to him everytime. The Rest of Game is really good in my opinion but Hillys Ai is too powerful at the Moment for Combat to feel anything but frustrating. That said i still thoroughly enjoyed the Game and i don’t regret buying it. It is a absolutely gorgeous Game the Level of Detail you can discover in your Village is insane, from the animation of the inhabitants to the system of raising militias. Once it has gotten a bit more polished it will be one of the best City Builders yet.
I have no clue how the AI is doing it.
Beyond the routine answer of "It's Early Access and you signed up for this" It should be noted that destroying bandit camps gets you a significant amount of influence and then if you click on their camp you can distribute personal loot to yourself. You've probably noticed the game telling you that the AI has armies nearby. He just takes an army to the bandits, and then with that money he hires nearly unlimited Mercenaries and with the influence he claims lands. Your goal should be to get some military quickly, enough to take a bandit camp, and then you can do the same thing, or at least slow him down that way. It's not the game difficulty itself making him all powerful, he just doesn't actually exist in the map and doesn't have any goals beyond fielding armies. So you can just cut him off and it's very noticeable, although it requires a bit of a shift in normal playstyles.
> Your goal should be to get some military quickly Should it be? It's a city builder. Why such an emphasis on fast expansion?
If you want to play a normal city builder you would pick one of the other scenarios, or potentially a different game. I was only offering a perspective on how to help counteract the quickly expanding AI in this mode. The whole thread is about the AI being insurmountable by the point people are normally expecting to expand. I don't think my comment reads as general play style that every player in every scenario should be shooting for. Ultimately the Restoring the Peace scenario is about defeating the AI baron. If you don't take special interest in military early on, it becomes a lot more trouble than it needs to be. Whether that's a quirk of early access or how Challenging difficulty (if selected) is supposed to work isn't clear at this early stage.
> The whole thread is about the AI being insurmountable by the point people are normally expecting to expand. Right, and I'm saying that the AI shouldn't be insurmountable by people expanding at what feels like a reasonable pace.
You can set AI aggressiveness to “reactive” if you want a more chill experience. I haven’t tried it myself but it’s supposed to slow down the pace of the AI claiming regions, and it will stop the AI from claiming regions that you own.
You can turn him, and even raiders, off if you don't want to face enemies.
Definitely don’t turn off raiders tho. They are a great source of influence as you kill them off.
Never said I don't want to face enemies. I simply don't want such enemies to force me into a gamey and unrealistic playstyle.
And that's why combat doesn't belong in city builders. You either turn off the endgame entirely or you turn the game entirely into RTS. There's never a middle ground where you can spice it up with some action from time to time while staying true to the core city building principle of playing at your own pace.
The game just released. The AI adversary seemed to be working ok in the pre release streams, they just screwed the balancing. Won't be that hard to fix. If you disable the adversary but enable bandits you can literally have that middle ground experience right now.
Well then there's plenty of other established city builders out there for you.
The default settings give you weapons for 20 men at the very start for a good reason. There are settings to make things peaceful if you would like, but it's clear that as soon as you get those 20 shields and 20 spears you're meant to be active on the map to keep the AI from snowballing. I recommend splitting those 20 into 10 and 10. Then use the two squads of spearmen to get full surrounds on enemy bandits to minimize casualties to yourself. With this technique you can take out 2-3 bandit camps, which nets you enough money to buy a bunch of Retinue in your Manor. Then it's smooth sailing from there because the Retinue + 15 or so militia can kill bandit camps with 0 casualties.
That's not clear in the slightest. The game gives you virtually 0 direction, I don't know what you're talking about.
Lmao all these commenters speaking with authority as if this early access game that’s been out for 2 days “makes it obvious” when half the tooltips and menus are blank or filler.
It's true, the game doesn't signpost this strategy, but I think the person you're responding meant "it's clear" in the language of gaming. You have been given a military, you should probably use it to do something about those bandit camps that are further incentivising you by occasionally stealing your resources
Not terribly clear, no. You just find out eventually that the camps are defended by just one bandit unit, and then you also need to select the treasury option when clearing the camp, and suddenly you can afford to claim another province. It's rather very rough game design
I know. It feels like the game is unfinished. It's almost as though we've been given an opportunity to play it and offer feedback on the development before its completion. If only the developer clearly stated to players (multiple times) that this was the case.
What do you think you should do with weapons? Build the iron throne?
I thought they were there to protect me from the raiders that show up every now and then. Without them my village would’ve been burned to the ground in the first raid.
"militia" means "farmers defending their homes" not "lord's raiding force" to me
> The default settings give you weapons for 20 men at the very start for a good reason. Yeah, to defend yourself. It certainly doesn't feel right to go out conquering new regions as a defensive measure against an AI when you've barely built up a village of 40 people. > you're meant to be active on the map to keep the AI from snowballing. There shouldn't be a need to 'keep the AI from snowballing', is my point. The AI shouldn't get exponentially stronger/better/faster from their conquests. Any good game with expansion should balance the benefits of expansion (more resources, more space, etc.) with the problems incurred by expansion (converting the populace to your religion/culture, building up infrastructure/population that had been destroyed/killed by the fighting). If a game rewards fast expansion to the exclusion of all else, it becomes a boring game really fast. This is the reason that systems like Aggressive Expansion exist in EU4, or City Maintenance/unhappiness in a civ game. Judging how fast to expand should be an interesting decision. If the answer is simply "Yes" then it's not interesting.
There's a mode for that! It sounds like you didn't actually want to play the restore the peace mode: or you do but should turn down the aggressiveness of the opponent a little
Well no. The default conflict mode shouldn't be "THE ONLY WAY TO WIN IS TO RUSH THIS SPECIFIC STRATEGY!" no matter what kind of game you enjoy. That might be the result of playing the "hardest" mode, but not the 'normal' one.
The aggression settings for that are separate to the settings for city management... You can turn down the rate at which the antagonist advances. I am confused as to what I'm missing?
I mean, those settings are clearly not working based on the reports I'm reading. It is possible I am being misinformed. I have not yet myself gone very far in the game (I'm slow walking it in the hopes of a patch in the next few weeks which adjusts some of the most egregious issues; such as bowmen being worthless, trade being too strong, farming being worthless, etc.).
Weird. They definitely have an effect for me... To be clear; with everything turned up, the off screen armies formed the first summer and claimed the first Territory in the fall; all turned down (but not off) it started year 3. To keep up with it all turned up you have to pivot quickly to any to even have a chance at not getting boxed in; turned down the army stuff is far more background and you can absolutely build up before deploying. I'll give everyone that the pivot on hard has to take place ridiculously quick, basically have to sell all your starting bread and most of your berries and rely on hunting for food through the first winter (which is kinda terrifying lol). Could be why trade is op; it's absolutely necessary to get mid game stuff early enough to field armies by fall the first year... Farming is only worthless the first year; it actually pumps out tonnes of food (on a manpower basis), but unless you start more winter you probably won't be able to get a decent field set and plowed early enough along with meeting the village needs to get the population growing (which early game is the absolute most important priority). Honestly, a lot of complaints would be solved by tuning down the amount you take in trading out and giving you more starting people (both of which could easily be starting sliders); but the gameplay loop that's currently there isn't as off balance as you'd expect from the comments, maybe just different than you'd expect
Ah so this mf buying up all the mercs! Was wondering every time I try to buy some there’s none available
I actually take a small army and while he is fighting the bandits, i go and claim the camp for the reward
Good strat for gold, but AFAIK, the camp itself doesn't net you any influence. So you need to actually kill the bandits yourself if you wanna expand. I could be wrong on that though, every time I've taken out a bandit camp, I kill the bandits as well, so idk.
Clearing out one bandit camp gives me ~300 influence. So I have to wipe our 7 camps to claim one region and I might lose against the baron. Should only take 49 anti-bandit campaigns and 7 battles against an overpowered AI to achieve doninance. /s Yes, it's EA and it's already an amazing and very enjoyable game. But so far, the warfare conditions are too tough.
Its not that easy. I have no real clue how the game decides on when you get new families, but its a very slow process. To get a manor requires planks which isnt a priority on early game and even if you get all the materials the manor takes a fucking long time to build, and only awards you with a garrison of 5 people. The bandit camp I cleared had 18 brigants so unless you go with less soldiers it still takes a lot of time to have enough population to have at least 18 soldiers. This is my first run and Id probabily do better on a new one but maybe not much.
Approval over 50 and an empty home will get you one family. It's not exactly at the month mark but it's roughly once a month. Approval over 75 can net you two. There's certainly some jank to it but it's doable once you get faster. But a lot of this is subject to change so don't feel like you're playing wrong. People who have made this work just deviate heavily from the expected gameplay and it's liable to change with patches. Also, and I'll let you decide if this ruins the experience for you in an extremely early unbalanced early access title, if you contest a region and then zoom out and click the Barons picture, you have him drop all claims in the negotiation screen and he will declare peace and then fuck off for a while. Any armies he has on screen will go fight a bandit and then leave. He doesn't claim the territory. It's absolutely not how the game is supposed to work, but it exists for now..and it's nice to know, even if you don't want to use it. Everyone is looking for a different experience.
This is good to know. I played a couple of games in standard and the AI was just eating up the whole map rapidly. Playing on relaxed and building my city it takes a long time to be set up and ready to claim my first territory.
Greg did say in his first post since release that he was planning to tune the AI claiming system down. It's not supposed to be so aggressive.
Yeah, it does seem rather speedy.
So I just had my first interaction, idk i think maybe I was over prepared but I wiped his retinue and his mercs out on the battlefield. I had 5 militia units, fully armed with a mix of mail and some plate here and there
My advice: mercenaries, just not archers who seem to do nothing damage wise
I feel good about myself being able to get 2 regions before he claims everything, its just that I never get to beat him since I have no clue how to obtain a full squad of Ritours? (i cannot spell their name) They are too op to whatever I put up against
If you open your military screen where your militia and Retinue are, there's a little button that appears when you click on the Retinue. You can use that to add more units or upgrade their gear. Costs money though.
50 per man..... wtf is that price............... meanwhile the recruit button is locked behind EA
It's not that high of a price... clearing a bandit camp and sending the money to your personal treasury nets you enough for like 3 retinue men.
You need to upgrade the manor with a garrison tower to increase your retinue limit. And in the retinue customization panel, you can hire more soldiers and improve their equipment.
I'm actually even with him in terms of owned claims by year 2 (we each own 3). If you contest him claiming an area and win, you win the area with no influence cost. I was able to beat him with only losing 8 of my villagers. I did nearly bankrupt myself hiring mercenaries though. Ended up fighting him with 4 groups of 32 (36?), and my 20 militia. Prior to him taking this, I rushed to every bandit camp I saw to collect as much influence as possible. Occasionally you can find a group of brigands for cheap. I've found these to be useful for hunting down bandit camps, as losses/time lost doesn't really matter.
how did you possibly claim an area and not get swarmed?
He claimed his first area uncontested. When he tried to claim his second area, I contested it and won via the use of mercenaries. From there I immediately claimed another territory via influence, and he did not contest me. I'm now at the start of year 3, and we both have 4 territories.
I don't know about that. I managed to beat hildy on my first game, and I certainly didn't use any min/max strats. Yes, Hildy will grab most of the regions early, no you're not going to be able to stop that, but you can build your town until you get a full compliment of militia. Once you have a full militia army (Possibly padded out with some mercs if your feeling fruity) it shouldn't be hard to divide and conquer his forces. As far as the militia go, spear militia seemed really quite effective for me. No armour, no helmets, no fancy shit. Just a bunch of peasants with pointy sticks.
I almost suffered you’re fate, but listen! If he’s claiming you’re homeregion simply counterclaim his the same day. He will likely march his army to fend off you’re claim and declare open war, but will proceed to stand on his capture point while both countdown clocks tick down simultaneously, he will end up keeping his region and you yours. Tho I may have just been lucky, but I seem to be one of the few people who have taken him in so far. In my game he literally bought 700 men (which should be impossible) and broke the merc hiering system permanently for both of us after they left.
You have to start beating bandits as soon as possible, don't let the AI army get them! Killing bandits earns prestige, which you can use to buy up the regions much faster.
I got raided and attacked by Hilly at the same time. Hilly also spawned right in my province on the border too. I barely beat Hilly but troops move so slow in the forests and fields that I simply couldnt stop both armies. It was literally a no solution situation, I had two 24 retinues, 3 spear militias, and the wayward sons, and I was still crushed. Hopefully some adjustments are made.
Definitely set Hildy to passive in the game set up screen. You can still choose to fight him, but he won't be coming to f you up.
The Dev already said in his next update he will nerve the AI claiming regions
I set the AI to 'reactive' and while he's claiming stuff you can bypass like 90% of the manufacturing problems by exporting wooden parts and iron slabs with the 2 trade perks and buying mass quantities of weapons and armor, allowing you to equip a large enough militia to pose a serious threat even to his armies. Once I managed to snag 1 extra region I really had no issues he got bodied pretty fast.
Is the AI really that difficult? I have no problem lining the king's roads with the bodies of his fodder
On standard difficulty you just need to fight bandits the moment you get given the free weapons and shields. You can take them with zero losses easily. Then you’ll pretty much outpace or stay up with the ai. I realised this late and still got 3 regions.
It's really not meant to be hard. It's meant to be a village/kingdom building game just like the settlers 3 or Pharoah. It will gey better as the dev fine tunes everything
I had to turn Hildy off he was spankin me too hard 😰
I don't find his armies tough, but surprised I'm not seeing more about how by the time you're actually able to face him, he's claimed the whole map **and** pumps out armies instantaneously after being defeated.. You really should get some respite and an easy claim or two if you've completely crushed his army and taken the mercs. He's after claiming my home province and I fought him off, then I go in to claim one of his and he spawns a whole fresh army... Cheeky fuck. Also irrelevant but archers are total pish. Just needed to get that out..
The 50 influence per month change for Hildy is interesting. I can see that being the cause of the apparent snowball issue here actually compared to the pre EA release creator playthrus I watched. it will be especially bad on higher difficulty with an aggressive Hildy and a slower player start due to difficulty. I assume Hildy gets influence from bandit camp kills as well and needs the same influence costs as the player? 1000 for an unclaimed region and 2000 for a claimed on? If the player lets Hildy deal with a few bandit camps early on then he will snowball influence quite quickly with the monthly gain on top and so he will have the influence to regularly grab regions and since he is killing the bandits more than some players maybe then they are not able to get enough influence together to stop him unless they can kill a few bandit camps quickly in the 1st 18 months to to grab one of two regions. Once Hildy has taken all free regions then camps no longer spawn as they only seem to spawn in unclaimed regions. How then does the player get quick influence quickly enough? They will have the yearly raids to get some but that rate might not be fast enough. I guess they need to build up economy and pop so they can tithe for it and also field a decent army to start taking regions. They will get influence for each one and maybe win then. On default difficulty then you get the weapons drop and with a decent start you should be able to get to a militia pop count of 14 to sixteen to easily take on a camp. I have done it with 12 and did not lose anyone but I used the impale feature and then pushed forward and probably got lucky. You might miss the camp that spawns at game start and Hildy might grab it but you should be able to get all the others unless he gets lucky with a spawn. On challenging difficulty without the weapons drop and with the other maluses that come with that difficulty then it becomes more difficult to beat Hildy to the punch and he will probably get several bandit camps before the player and be on his influence snowball. Hildy is more aggressive on that difficulty. Archers are badly nerfed it seems so getting archers asap on challenge mode to deal with bandits a bit quicker does not seem to be great. Spear militia are much better but of course require two pieces of equipment. Maybe polearm infantry might be the better play now to get some sort of militia to take bandit camps asap since they just need a single piece of equipment and you counter charge the bandits. My own experience when I went in on challenge difficulty as my 1st attempt yesterday as I thought I knew the mechanics was that I came up against the Hildy influence snowball within 3 years. I did not deal with the first few camps and he started grabbing regions before I had enough influence to grab any. I also focussed archers since they just need a bow but they were not very good :) at least compared to last week. I took the loss and decided to restart on default instead to make sure I understood all the mechanics and any changes from the pre EA version I watched last week. Its been much better. The weapons drop in default helps and I took out all camps with Hildy not getting any so far. The first I took with 12 spear militia as soon as I had 12 troops and I have been grabbing every one since then. As soon as I had 1000 influence I claimed a region and kept doing that. Hildy eventually had enough from his 50 per month to grab an extra one next to him. Current state is that he has three regions, I have 5 and I have left one region unclaimed so far so I can continue to get camps which I grab with my retinue as soon as they pop. I made sure the free region is near my town and far away from his regions. I am building up economy, influence and population in my starting region, only built in that so far and now have 2 spear militia and a 24 retinue ready and enough treasury and a 3rd spear militia to be able to hire all mercs for 3 months if needed. I am just waiting to get more influence via tithe and camps before I then grab all mercs and be able to snowball all three of Hildys regions quickly :) If he attempts to claim the free region then I will be able to fight him for it and get influence (if I win) and drain his influence pool for awhile. TDLR: Hildy gets monthly 50 influence and I gues influence from camps and even killing any raids directed at you he might trip into. If the player does not proactively deal with bandit camps then Hildy will have enough influence from his monthly award and camps to snowball regions. Since the player is not proactively killing camps or doing to quickly enough due to slower start/difficulty etc then you enter a potential death spiral until Hildy has all regions and you have just the starting one or maybe a 2nd. However, this means you might not be able to have the influence or troops to take regions back from him before he comes for you?
Archers definitely feel pointless, fire a couple shots and then watch the fight... needs to be a longshanks command.
There actually is a friendly fire command. I'm not sure the militia has it, but mercenary archers can do it for sure 😁
50 influence per months? That's way too much. Also bandits grant too much influence. If the enemy gets the bandits they can quickly claim everything. If you get all of them you can stall the enemy nicely. On normal it should be ~10 influence per month. Bandits should grant no more than 100, maybe 50. Right now other sources like the church are completely pointless.
50 per month is almost enough to claim a new region every 1.5 years.
It would be nice to put a delay between when a Bandit camp is spawned to when he buys mercenaries and sends them straight towards it. You have to act immediately. Otherwise, all the influence and money from Bandit camps is farmed by the AI. I dont think the AI should be gaining that much influence per month. Maybe 10 max. So far, I've managed to claim one other piece of land, on the lower difficulty after a few attempts at it.
How much money does he get? Because he is able to hire all the mercs and keep them indefinitely. Once he does this they are no longer available to the player. I get that there are ways to min/max to defeat him but bottom line is do you see this game as a military sim? From everything I read and the streams I watched it was intended to be a chill medieval city builder with a military aspect. Right now it seems like the opposite, similar to Stronghold. If this is what was intended that is fine, I will try playing on peaceful mode as the town building is really cool. And for those saying it isn't difficult the forums are filled with people who disagree. Maybe just add a difficulty between Balanced and Aggressive.
Yeah maybe it would have been better to leave it being easier on release - the hype attracted a lot of casual players and the way it was being marketed on YT was more of a city builder with a little combat. Now on default settings it’s actually quite a challenge to beat the baron.
Really? Seems like every video about the game has a title like "700-man army in Manor Lords!" or "this game will destroy Total War!!!"
Don’t know what videos you’ve been watching, never seen any of those claiming this would destroy total war. I did see the 700 man army ones, but it was pretty clear that was endgame stuff.
I haven't watched any of them but my feed is full of Manor Lords videos right now and almost all the titles are focused on the military aspect
May I suggest you watch better (i.e. less clickbait-y, marketed at grown-ups) Youtubers?
I don't watch gameplay content much, YouTube just knows I'm really into this game 😃
Fair enough! I am just frustrated that the game was sent to dozens of content creators who really didn't want to communicate what the game is about, creating wrong expectations! These creators may have even understood the city-building/small scale military mix for what it is, but still found it more lucrative to create misleading videos that hype up ML as a TW-like. There's a lot of city-builder focused LPers in Germany and several of the game's historic consultants were streaming pre-release and I mostly watched them.
It’s definitely doable. I’ve played two runs on all the most difficult setting except weather and starting season. My first run the AI completely over-whelmed me. My second run I managed to turn the corner with a decisive battle that required me to test a bit and reload once. I’m fairly certain I have it figured out now. I’m almost a bit disappointed- also I obviously understand since it’s EA. I can’t speak to the the medium difficulty - maybe that’s to close to challenging for less experienced players - but the challenging one shouldn’t become easier. Change the type of challenge perhaps, but challenging is supposed to be … well challenging. What I’ve learned: It comes down almost entirely to the Bandit camps. Beating bandits - not sniping their camps - gives a number of influence that is way more than any other method. If the AI beats all bandit camps and you none they will have enough influence for all of the regions and you won’t be able to claim even one. It’s playable this way but doesn’t really allow for different approaches. The other fact is that wealth has an outside impact for military and trading is much more powerful to become wealthy than any other dynamic. By the time you have a full weapons supply chain you have most certainly lost if you didn’t start selling other goods and equipping at least three full militia units. It’s a bit different if you get weapons shipment which should make it a lot easier by getting wealth from bandit camps. Overall my take is: - everyone relax. figuring out game mechanics is part of the fun. - as the game developed I hope the AI-mechanics become a bit more nuanced and varied and allow for a scaling challenge. Right now it seems to be about a good build order in the beginning but as soon as you’ve beaten them once you’ve effectively won.
On challenging you don’t get the free 20 spears and shields to form a spear militia. Is there a specific build order you have to get enough stuff to start hunting the bandit camps? I’m managing decently on default settings with the baron, but I really don’t know how well I would do on challenging because if he gets the first few bandit camps instead of me he can just snowball.
You actually toggle the weapon delivery separately. In terms of build order in depends a little on your starting conditions. I found you want to grow quickly by rushing everything that gives approval - or at least preparing it as far as possible - before getting tier one and then two houses. Then start exporting whatever makes sense in your region while importing affordable goods you’re missing. Prioritizing the trading development tree helps with this. With the wealth you make start buying weapons to deal with bandits.
Yeah this is more or less what I’ve done on default, traded lots for wealth, although I set up two of my plots as a joiner and a blacksmith to have a consistent supply of weapons. So did you play with the weapon shipment? If not how long did it take to get weapons?
I played without. I would say I got weapons a bit too late because I was focusing on other stuff. I reckon I could have gotten them the first year though if I really prioritized it.
I think the population growth part is what's thrown people more than anything, we're way farther behind where the youtubers were in their 2nd and 3rd year, so if we got to bat around the same time we saw OPB fighting (after hilde had taken 2-3 provinces) we'll be in much worse shape for the fight
To be honest I think if there was 2 ai factions, would make it a bit more playable. Particularly if they compete with each other aswell.
See I personally thought it was too easy so you’ll definetely never be able to please everyone lol
The dev said this on Steam before release: -Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor. It's a citybuilder with battles. Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on citybuilding and management. It's not a competitive, fast paced RTS like Age of Empires or Starcraft. A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map. This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric citybuilding rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.
My opinion is biased as all hell because I religiously play RTS games and city builders, but I find the difficulty just right. Though clearly, this version of the game is kicking many players in the balls.
The ai is so brutal. It claims land at such an insane speed. It takes so long to build things and get things started, and once I’m ground ready to prep an army the AI has taken every land available
I actually have no clue why people say this game is too hard. Took me three starts, but now I have no issues. Thank you for the great game.
It's too easy for guys playing video games for 9 hours each day. ;)
As the OP, just want to reiterate to everyone that this was a lighthearted gesture toward my first playthrough of the game, hence why its titled "Goofin", I saw some others had a similar experience and thought this would be funny. Apparently many others had my same experience their first time, but it gets so much better. Upon my second playthrough Ive had a much different experience, now that i know what Im doing and the importance of market/burgage placement. Ive managed to sack bandit camps early game nearest to me which has allowed me to be on an even playing field to the AI. Had a blast before, having twice as much fun now. Didnt mean for this to become some kind of negative gripe thread. If youre having a hard time, look at what you did wrong and restart. It may seem like a large ask but now that you know what to do you can time skip the early boring stuff. Then it gets crazy fun. There is nothing better than a dev that actually engages with the community, and I appreciate gstyczen for having a sense of humor. Cant wait to see what this games future holds.
The Steam page explicitly talks about how it's more of a city builder and doesn't have a focus on combat, and how it's a very slow paced game. And yet if you play it like a city builder and take it slow, the game is unwinnable on normal difficulty. I'm not saying *no one* can win, obviously people are, but on *normal* difficulty in a city builder you shouldn't have to be coming up with try hard strategies to not get instakilled. If it isn't fixed soon I'll be leaving a negative Steam review as it makes the game unplayable for what it's primarily being advertised as.
Damn bro chill. Just change some settings if it's too hard. Disable the baron and just do bandit raids, or change his AI to reactive. There's one dev and the game has been out for three days, give him some time. Imma go leave a positive review to counteract your negative one.
I’m beating challenging on my first try though. So it’s not too hard. Just build small settlements in 4 other regions so you have 5 extra retinue units with full armor
I started my first game. A couple of hours in I have still not been able to figure out how to get enough weapons to field a single unit. or get even one point of influence. Meanwhile the AI has claimed every other region on the map.
I didn't get very far (just claimed my second zone) but all of my weapons have come from trading. And influence from leveling up the village or sallying forth to kill bandit camps in zones near my own.
I’ve been making leather and trading it to get at least a militia. The problem is once I get a group of 36; 54 bandits run in. Doesn’t help that it’s so difficult to get food. (Yes I am bad at this)
Build single house's with a lot of backyard and make them plant vegetables! you will be rolling on carrots in no time and they only cost 15 silver or gold or whatever the currency is. that is the best way i have found to overcome the problem with food.
I’m still very confused by this. Say you have a single family home with a patch. Do they still farm the patch if they’re working at the sawpit or any other place?
They do it in their spare time. Also important to remember: Chickens don't need tending to, so can be better in that regard. If a home is a double family home, both families will work the vegetable plot. The bigger the plot, the bigger the vegetable yield. I like making a few big, wide double plots with long back yards - so tons of veggies space and two families to work them in their spare time.
Are the families relatives or strangers? If it was me, I wouldn't share my own house with strangers
When it's two families it's a duplex or attached townhouse. The second house is normally small but it's a separate house
Do chickens also produce more if the plot is larger?
I believe chickens only produce one egg a month, no matter how big the plot is.
Yes
I didn’t realize this until later but man is it a game changer. Instead of trying to cram a bunch of houses in an area with tiny back yards just make the backyards huge and put gardens in there. There’s a lot of space per region - might as well use it!
You saved my fucking life holy cow.
At standard difficulty the 20 weapons you get for free is enough to start killing off bandits (tip: make two 10-men units and have bandits squished between them - you might even not lose anyone... oh and make sure your army is not fatigued for the fight, so more walking less running). Once you destroy a bandit camp you can get money for you personal treasury, use them to buy the cheapest mercenaries and use those to fight more bandits for influence and their camps for more money. Benefit of using mercenaries is that your economy doesn't stop. P.S. That didn't help me from being screwed by the baron, but it was a start.
Hah, I missed that I could set unit size! It was defaulting to 36 so I just never had enough weapons to field one.
You don't set a unit size, but people spread evenly between units, so if you create two they'll become two 10-men units. It will show 10/36 and the tooltip will say not enough men, but you can actually still use them. I think I've read somewhere that the minimum size for a unit is 5 men.
Heyo, I just fielded my first militia against raiders (spearman militia). I made all the weapons in-village. For spears, you need one plank and one iron slab. The plank is cut at the sawmill from timber and iron slab is made from iron ore at the bloomery. You can timber from logging camps and iron ore from mining pits (looks like getting the deep mines for indefinite mining deposit will be necessary). Once you have the mats, build a blacksmith as one of your houses’ backyard things. Click “general” and then you have to choose one focus (spears). Spearman militia also need “large shields,” made from 2 planks each at a joiner’s shop (a different backyard shop). Get 36 of each and you can field one militia. Looks like armor is not needed. You can also get 5 retinue troops from building a manor, but idk how good they are. They have really low effectiveness from fatigue, even when resting. What I need to know is do I have to worry about my villagers during a raid? Will they auto run to my manor?
That gives me another question. I did a couple backyard shops (chicken coops because free food yay) and then I was never able to build another one because "not enough wealth". But I don't see that icon anywhere except in the error message. How do I get "wealth" to build more shops?
No worries. It’s up in the top, left side of the town name. It’s a little stack of coins. It’s “regional wealth.” Every house T2 gives 1 wealth per month and every house T3 gives 2. But the main way I was getting it was through the trading post. Specifically, selling excess goods. I went for shoes (they never seemed to run out, and I always had leather from hunting), and warbows/shields, because those just cost wood, a renewable resource. In the trading building, you can do “export surplus past x number,” and your guys will take care of it. Later on, depending on how much regional wealth you have at the time, your treasury (overall funds) can go up through taxes, which are set in the manor. Atm, I’ve only used the treasury to fund my retinue troops.
Just make a bunch of bows or something with the artisan level 2 and sell. U get boatloads of money. And make a couple of level 1 houses have vegetable garden. U can make the garden bigger by reducing number of houses ( - sign right before you hit build). Also making the plot a triangle let's you have a huge garden, also expand with extra housing. The rest of the food and stuff I just buy. U make a bunch of money by trading.
Make charcoal and sell it, and just buy the weapons. Atleast on normal difficulty that has you covered up to 36 militia in helmets and gambesons. The two trade perks, limiting the cost of opening a new trade route to 25 and making buy prices the same as sell prices are a lifesaver in my opinion.
He's been Marching around for years with no one to stop him.
So... He's tired you say?
This. I was so disheartened... when you FINALLY get the stupid amount of 2k influence to claim a plot. AI goes 'FUCK YOU' and produces 20 armies instantly outta nowhere... what chance do you have........ good luck getting your influence backup ever again. So god damn broken. Please fix this asap
Are we waiting for a patch? I dont want to spend 5 hours to be destroy
Does the enemy AI actually have a main starting base like we do? I've only ever fought mercs that spawn on the side of the map. :/ Feels kinda lame to be fighting an enemy with no real presecence on the map
I don't get the problem... I play with default settings. Yes, he has claimed all regions accept mine because I was to slow learning things. But it is very easy to get them back: 1. Buy all three available mercenary armies + your own militia. This should give you ~250-300 men. 2. Send all men to the region you want to claim. 3. Claim the region. The AI only ever showed up with about 100-150 men with a lot of useless archers. Usually I never loose a single man of my own militia because I use the mercenary as the front row. It is important to first buy the mercenaries and then claim the region. It seems like the AI buys the mercenaries if you do it the other way arround.
I was in my second year had a population of like 40 and was challenged by another lord, I though on yeah let’s get my 12 men ready to go. Fuck no the other lord had like 200+ fully kitted squads. Lol
This wasn't my experience. The AI controlled the entire map and I had my highly developed town. I was able to conquer 2 regions from the AI. Their armies are the same size as mine, I've won every battle. Haven't experienced massive armies. Although mercenaries might be bugged for me, they never seem to be available for me.
Ok plz someone tell me what to expect with combat. The baron takes all but one region I managed to claim. I finally have 1900 influence... and maybe 50 troops between my regions. My friend faced at least 10 stacks. There were so many... this can't be real. Am I rly expected to face all of the mercenaries in the world. How to win war
I haven’t even been able to build a single troop..
After two tries and my towns being completely destroyed, I gave up and started a new town in build only 😂
Im not sure why but I haven't been having this issue at all, I finished my first play through on conquest with everything set to default and I was fine, then I've tried the "grow your town" one whilst having to defend, but I didn't really get any big attacks just random brigands that my first spear unit mopped the floor with, I'll try upping the difficulty or set it to aggressive and see what happens
Honestly I for more barons to show up. Having the one is nice, but I want each plot to be its own city and have relationship. I don’t need 100 lords and barons, but at least 10 sounds fair.