Manor Lords — Major Update #5 - Core Systems Rework, Castle Overhaul, and New Maps release notes

Hello everyone,

This update is now live on the main branch after spending time on the Beta Branch. Over the past weeks, it focused on bug fixes, AI improvements, and balance and gameplay polish. Thank you to everyone who tested the beta and took the time to share feedback. It was a big help.

You’ll find the full list of changes included in this release below.

If you have a moment, a Steam review sharing your experience would be appreciated. Hearing what’s working and what still needs attention helps guide what we focus on next.

Important to Note

**Saves: **To avoid any potential issues, it’s recommended that you back up your saved files before switching to a new version.

Mods: Please remove any mods. They will most likely crash the game.

**Previous Version: **If for some reason you enjoyed the previous version more, it will be available on it's own Beta branch 0_8_029a password: ILikedItMoreBefore

You can report (https://steamcommunity.com/app/1363080/discussions/3/) and bug reports on the Manor Lords Steam forums or join us on (https://discord.com/invite/manorlords) for bug reports and discussion about the latest patch.

Patch Notes — Version 0.8.029–0.8.050

Major Changes

Starting Location Selection: Ability to select the starting location in the game setup screen for the player and adversaries.
New Maps: Devil's Hill, Jagged Cliffs, Divided and Lake Lemm.
New Game Modes: Duel (1 vs 1 with AI) and Fractured Realm (4 Lord free-for-all).
New Buildings, Jobs & Resources: Quarry, Stonemason, Lime Kiln, and their connected resources: Rough Stone, Dressed Stone, Mortar.
Wall Positioning: A new system for positioning units on walls.
Ladder Climbing: Units now climb ladders to access higher floors.
Hover Fortifications: The player can now hover the castle fortifications and see the soldiers inside.
Gate Control: Added the ability to open and close each castle gate individually.

Castle Upgrade System:

Module Upgrades: Every castle module, including walls and gates, can now be upgraded to lv2.
Placement Logic: Module placement is no longer restricted by distance to the nearest major module. The planner now displays the total Bailey Area. The Bailey area allowed for construction is limited by your lord's or lady's Rank (still WIP).
Wall Platforms: You can now attach platforms to the castle walls. The level of platforms is capped by the wall type.

Affinity System:

Environment Types: Each Region is divided by area into multiple Environment Types: (Meadow, Woodland, Farmland, Urban, Rural).
Building Affinities: Different buildings can have Affinities with different Environment Types, for instance, the Animal Pen has a "Pannage" Affinity which decreases the time to yield for Pig Pens relative to the Woodland area.

Maintenance System:

Workplace Maintenance: A lot of workplaces now must be maintained by delivering resources to function properly.
Failure Risks: Failure to maintain a building can result in various risks, such as collapse for mines, injury and even a minor death chance.
Rate Tuning: You can tune a workplace's level of maintenance, affecting Labor Speed.

Yield System:

Yield Definition: Yield is a measure of how much your workplace produces. Various buildings use different timespans and benchmark values depending on their nature.
Yield Influencers: Yield can be affected by Labor Speed, Efficiency, and Productivity.
Labor Speed: Labor Speed measures how fast your workers perform workplace related tasks.
Efficiency: Efficiency measures how much output you get per input when crafting, per plant when farming or per passive income cycle, depending on the production type. High Efficiency means your Gardens will produce more Vegetables and your Crafting tasks may produce extra items.
Productivity: Productivity is a measure of your logistics: transport and labor times vs idle times, sickness, extension work and militia assignments.

Approval Rework:

Memory Weight Shift: Approval memory weight was shifted to dramatically favor current events versus past events.
Approval Tiers: There are now 7 approval Tiers. Landing in a specific Approval Tier will give various penalties and bonuses to growth, influence, income among others.

Food Resource Rework:

Food Categories:All foods now fit within food categories; Foraged Goods, Meats, Fishes, Vegetables, Grains and Animal Produce.
Burgage Plot Requirement overhaul: Burgage Plots now require a variety of foods from different categories, encouraging more diverse variety as they upgrade.
Expanded Vegetables: Vegetables resource was split into Cabbages, Carrots and Beetroots.
Expanded Orchards: In addition to Apples, Pears and Quinces were added as new Orchard options.
Expanded Meats: Meat was divided into: Mutton, Chevon, Pork, Beef, Chicken, Small Game, and is produced by their respective animals accordingly.
Expanded Fish: Fish was divided into Carp (from ponds) and Eel (from rivers).
New Food: Milk is passively produced by Goats for the Animal Produce category.
Wild Animals: Deer were replaced by Small Game since it's more plausible in historical terms. Small Game also yields Pelts, which is an early trade commodity.
Foraged Goods: Alongside Berries, Mushrooms have been reintroduced as a Foraged Good.
Honey: Honey is no longer consumed. It is intended for use in a future update, but for now can be sold, while the Apiary Extension boosts the yield of Farms and Orchards through the Pollination Affinity.

Regional Development System Rework:

Development Perks: To a lot of players, the development tree was a weak point of the game and described as immersion breaking. Therefore, a new, more grounded system of Development Perks has been introduced. The player will now face more realistic choices at each settlement level and those choices reflect the settlement development stage.
Perk Design: The perks are also designed to be more nuanced from a game design perspective so that choices are less immediately obvious, but compound into strong specializations over time.
Rollout Status: Since it's still in progress, only the first batch of perks (Origins) is available.
Policies: Policies are temporarily removed (still undergoing rework).

Minor Changes

General:

Removed a lot of chance based mechanics in favor of more deterministic calculations to make yield balance more predictable (this includes farming and mining which used to be chance based).
Yields are more linear as Orchard Trees and Field Crops mature.
Moved consumption & approval data to the Family structure instead of storing it on husbands (this was a temporary workaround to represent per family consumption and approval effects).
Since individual villagers no longer have a consumption update, we also moved the disease data to the Family structure. As a side effect, whole families will now get sick together.
Fishing nodes often spawn in rivers now (allowing river fishing).
Streams now use the river system and therefore will spawn small bridges.
Added a new Elevation overlay for use with Farming and Livestock.
Replaced the Brewery extension placeholder.
Added an additional road to Wirnitz in Germanic Valley
Added an extra hard cap for storage distribution limits, eg. if a stall has 21 items for some reason but only 20 storage space, the extra item will not count as supply.

Quality of Life Improvements:

Added a "Protect Resource Area" checkbox for the Logging Camp and Firewood Cutter which makes workers automatically avoid deforestation near vulnerable resources.
Worker families assigned to a building being upgraded will now participate in the construction.
Oxen transporting Timber for construction will get the nearest log instead of nearest on the ground before from buildings.
Oxen transporting Timber will now prioritize delivering to a target near where the Timber is picked up.
Blocked sons with jobs from refueling the home if there is a female family member without any task that can do it instead.
Workplace animals will now be assigned a home as close as possible to the workplace.
When debranching a tree, Workers will always pick the one closest to them.
When cutting down a tree, Workers will pick the nearest one, unless too far away from the Logging Camp.
Changed order of goods produced for Blacksmith and Joiner to list Spears and Large shields first.
Artisans will start producing the first listed good when their workshop is built.
Trading Post Workers will now only use Horses that are assigned to their Trading Post (Horses are automatically assigned when they arrive).
Due to tester feedback, storage building workers supply their Stalls from their own Storehouse/Granary only.
When taking care of the dead, bodies will now be moved to the nearest Corpse Pit or Church.

Manor Specific:

Manors no longer have families living in them (since Manors aren't residential and can't fulfil requirements it was always a bit weird).
When castle modules are placed on a wall, they will split the wall and snap the walls to edges instead of clipping with the module.
Added an option to join 2 walls into 1 after you snap their ends together.
Added missing wall snapping points to the outer towers.
When rotating a module, the attached walls should now stay attached. The rotation is limited if a module has wall connections.
Castle modules now collide with each other when placing in order to avoid building areas impossible for pathfinding and reduce clipping.

Adjustments:

Deprecated some jobs since they no longer were fitting the game design: Removed Dye and Dyer in their previous implementation. Removed Firewood Cart and Food Cart.
Cloaks are removed, instead, there are two recipes for producing Clothes - either from Wool or from Linen.
Apiary is now a backyard extension. Wax is now produced every third cycle from an Apiary.
Removed the "Fence up" Upgrade from fields since it's a leftover of the previous development tree and doesn't quite fit anymore.
Temporary removal of the "Force Early Harvest" button in the Farmhouse.
Granary workers no longer supply Windmills since it was inconsistent with all the other workplaces needing to get their own crafting resources.
Pigs, Goats and hunting hounds no longer use the livestock order timer the Oxen/Mules/Horses do.

Technical:

Added global graphics presets.
\ Added new frame limit options (59.99 and 59.94) in an attempt to reduce VSync lag.
\ Increased house entering distance at high game speeds to reduce people clogging doorways.
Improved the camera collision with cliffs on High Peaks.
Tweaked the cliff pathfinding obstacle accuracy.

Balance

General:

Every newly settled region now gains +1 Growth for 1 year from the "Fresh Settlement" modifier.
Shortened the fadeout time of all Approval Memories from 365 to 90 days to make the mechanic feel slightly more responsive.
Destroying a Bandit Camp will net 33% less Regional Wealth/Treasury on average.
Manors/Castles are no longer flammable under the assumption that raiders shouldn't be able to easily light them on fire.
Fertility drain starts from 5% of growth so that yields don't drop while the crop is still being planted.
Rye fertility now is 1.5 * Wheat fertility, but no more than 100%.
Droughts are much less impactful, no longer sets crop yields to 1.
Granaries get a handcart shed. Handcarts slots changed to 2 (lv1) and 6 (lv2). Storehouse handcart slots are 2 (lv1) and 6 (lv2) as well.
Lightning should no longer start fires on "Weather Events: None" game setting.
Tithe gives 2 Influence for every 1 Food donated (was 1).
Sausages are made from Pork and Salt.
Shoes cost reduced from 2 Leather to 1 Leather.
Reduced sawpit max workers to 1.
Regional Wealth is no longer refunded when demolishing a building.

Resource Deposits:

Starting Resource Node balance changed: Players get either Fish or Small Game, either Berries or Mushrooms, either Iron or Salt, as well as Clay, Stone and Fertility. Two of those get boosted to a Region Strength (Rich Resource Node or a Rich Fertility).
Increased chance of fishing resource nodes on maps with many river regions. (Temporary)
Wild Animal reproduction is now dependent on their herd size. A minimum of 2 animals is required.
Tweaked resource regrowth rates and capacities for all resource deposits.
Rich Mining Deposits have larger mining range than normal ones, allowing you to potentially place more mines on a single deposit.
There is an increasing chance of collapse if the user places too many mines close to each other.

Burgage Plots & Families:

The cost of Vegetable Gardens and Orchards scale based on the size of the Extension Area. This can be viewed as the “Planting Cost” when placing the Burgage Plot.
Vegetable Gardens need to be replowed and replanted after harvest.
Chicken (meat) is now produced every fourth cycle from a Chicken Coop, while Milk is produced from Goats with Chevon and Hides every third cycle.
Families consume 1 Ale every 3 months.
Introduced a 30 day grace period when starting the game / settling a region before the homelessness approval factor kicks in.
Families now consume extra goods related to their Burgage Level, eg. Clothing for Lv2 and up.
Removed Tool cost from all Artisan Workshops as Maintenance replaces it.
Increased Blacksmith and Armorer Workshops Regional Wealth cost increased to 25.

Trade:

All values are now visible at the Trading Post, even without established routes, and a completely new balance has been introduced for all goods.
New values assigned to most Animals for orders and the Livestock Trading Post.
Increased the max number of assigned horses to 4 at the Trading Post.
Increased import tariff from 5 to 10 for all foreign trades.

UI & Text

Styling & Quality of Life:

UI styling overhaul with a more "medieval" and less modern feel.
Resource nodes will display as drawings instead of icons in the parchment (region) view and have more consistent icons in world view.
“Records” statistics screen where you can compare and contrast your regional production and consumption of all goods.
Hovering over Approval displays an overlay detailing missing Requirements and level of satisfaction on all Burgage Plots.
Improved Family list styling in the People Tab. Includes a new hoverable Family Consumption icon detailing what is consumed and how frequently.
Extensions will now display the icon of the chosen animal or crop in the building Residential panel and building floaters when pressing TAB.
Existing saves can now be renamed, and added an overwrite save confirmation check.
Tutorial styling improved, adding subsections for less pop-ups but with more clearly defined information overall.
Log notifications that trigger close to each other are now displayed for a few seconds instead of just the most recent one.
Regions can now be cycled through on the Region Screen.
Livestock Tooltip now displays Extension animals.
Living Space tooltip now includes Plot, Population and Migration details.
When a Burgage Plot is refueled, the cold warning should now instantly disappear.
Quest finished messages should no longer popup for Mercenary Company payments (a bit overkill).
Broken mercenary companies will no longer display in the Mercenary Company Panel.
Windmills now display their efficiency value in the General panel.

Text:

All tutorials rewritten and new tutorial pop-ups implemented.
All wiki entries in “Economy” category rewritten. “Tutorials” category added to allow reading of tutorials at your own pace.
Added a lot more character names.
Added weights to character names to control how likely they are to be picked.
All building descriptions rewritten to list less direct numbers, but be more generalized as yields can now vary.
All upgrades rewritten to be more thematic, consistent and to detail more information about how the upgrade works.
Updated text for establishing a trade route tooltip, delivering more information.
Updated Royal Tax setting description in the Main Menu, delivering more information.

Functionality:

Manor modules now also snap back to the original dragging start position to reduce accidental changes.
Alt-clicking to delete a castle module was replaced by a destroy button.
Improved accuracy when selecting wall points.
Road Snap Points no longer get distorted on the grass.
Removed the building placement front arrow since building entrances are displayed now.
Re-added the Sheen effect after creating or replanting a field/garden to give more visual feedback.

Sound

Drag Audio: Added sound effects when dragging castle modules.

Bugfixes

Fixed approval tooltip not displaying during the first in-game day in a session.
Fixed job assignment sometimes not correctly picking an unassigned family living nearest to the workplace.
Fixed the castle wall blueprints being less curved after committing to construction at least once.
Fixed the camera snapping above water level when moving over waterbodies.
Fixed an issue with the problem banner appearing when the trading post is connected to the trade network.
Fixed soldiers becoming immobile if all their squad members have died.
Fixed region data and problem banners displaying incorrectly after loading a save where the player has lost all region control.
Fixed felled trees sometimes loading with overly large scale.
Fixed certain pre-placed road pieces respawning when loading a saved game.
Fixed the Large Granary not upgrading sometimes.
Fixed villagers sometimes getting stuck inside their homes when loading a saved game.
Fixed Resource Clumps floating in the map view.
Fixed Burgage Plots not tinting red when hovering over any supply if the value is exactly 0%.
Fixed pathfinding ignoring the broken wagon next to the Trading Post.
Fixed the player being able to add militia units from non owned regions.
Fixed livestock orders failing due to the ox trying to navigate into the stable wall and failing.
Fixed resource nodes showing a partially filled icon after all resources have been gathered.
Fixed the "Cold" event text not displaying translation.
Fixed empty extension clutter levitating after loading a saved game.
Fixed flashing building widgets when pressing tab.
Fixed Livestock Merchant tooltip not showing correct translation.
Fixed Bandit Camps rewards triggering twice.
Fixed Rallying Point placement being blocked on Fields and Pastures.
Fixed Bandits cheering too much when killing civilians.
Fixed dying soldiers levitating over ground on slopes.
Fixed demolishing a building being upgraded not returning any construction go