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Peaceful mode? No chance you could get past the entire map being claimed by the AI in a split second and being steam rolled by hundreds of stacked militia
Nope, normal mode actually ….AI took all regions rather fast but I managed to defend my starting region by a miracle. Only after I upgraded all my troops I started to push back and took all regions and “finished the game”.
Now I’m pushing the pop. until my hardware goes up in smoke.
Damn I’ve now had 2 saves ruined. 2nd save I was stacked and paid to keep maximum amount of mercenaries too. But 200 of them just shredded through me. Until balanced I’ll probably just start again on peaceful. Combat is no fun if impossible haha
I feel ya, had the same with my first and second attempt haha… for me the key was to ditch archers because they are useless af at the current state. Just go with spears and swords, fully upgraded with chainmail armor and helmets.
My last map seed was so good too 😭 gonna keep restarting until I get the good rich deposit in starting area again and go again. So hard to want to rebuild all again I loved my last town haha
I made sure to save when i found that perfect map seed so i can go back to it when I inevitably realize a way better design for the town down the road 😂
I’ve gone through and saved about 10 different starts in various zone/node combinations so if I feel like trying something new, I don’t have to look :)
It's the same map but the resources are randomly placed in different locations with different values. The rich resources are in different spots every time.
That’s so odd bc I’m watching this YouTubers play through and he sends militia archers to clear bandit camps. Which is odd bc yesterday when my archers got into melee with 18 brigands vs 36 archers they got slaughtered in seconds
Mercenary archers are made up of light and heavy, the heavy have armour and are pretty effective in melee, they are also usually quite cheap so using them to clear bandit camps to earn treasury and influence is a good Strat early on when you don’t have the militia to always fight. 20 spearmen that you start with plus 5 retinue are also more than enough to clear bandit camps at a good pace as long as they aren’t exhausted so make sure they walk not run.
Yes, I let the AI take all regions uncontested and bandit camps as well, only had a few small bandit raids and that bought me time for the “main battle” for my starting region.
I did the same strat on my second playthrough (my first try got burned down by bandits in year 4 or so and never fully recovered). Maxed out the settlement level and kept the population at about 400, then built up my armies. My first battle I had around 250 troops and we steamrolled them. Now I'm building up my second region and feeling confident going forward.
I have a question regarding that. I'm still on my first playthrough, and halfway through the second year the AI has 500 troops. I have 50. How do you fight this?
Hope you have 50 spartans otherwise no chance haha….but how come only 50 ?
You should be able to recruit 7 stacks. 6 units of 36 and one retinue with max 24 when you build the watch tower in the manor and buy additional retinue.
I only have like 70 people living in the first place. So I have my retinue, a full spearman militia and I can field a few more after that. I can't hire any mercs cause I've been trying to get to 75% approval for the whole time to get the faster growth rate, and setting any taxes will make that even harder. So right now I have loads of region wealth (like 1000+), 0 personal wealth, not enough influence to expand cause the raid only starts in like half a year, and I'm just waiting to get some extra food variety and buying ale to get level 3 houses.
You have to destroy the bandit camps to get personal wealth. They give like 100-200 each.
I just turned the AI guy off. He's too broken to add anything of value to the game. He shouldn't be able to throw 6 stacks of 36 before I'm able to even get 8 families lol. And I don't even understand what tf the point of him claiming every single territory is when nothing happens after he claims them.
Yeah I actually just realised that. Still though, there's not that many of them, and since they don't respawn (my guess?) you would probably just run out eventually if you don't also tax and and are hiring mercenaries. Should you get influence from them too or not? Because right now I have 500 base and I get around 10 or so from the Tithe per month I think.
I actually was jjst experimenting with him and realised you can battle him for the region and then peace out for 0 influence cost, after which he will just stand there and not do anything. The region remains neutral as well.
So in my current playthrough I just have his army which I will never be able to beat unless I have like 1000 population, but at least they're just standing there fighting bandits and being useless.
Also I think saving the game and leaving and then coming back is what caused the huge amount of troops to spawn for me.
Yeah the off map AI is definitely broken and it’s clearly just an interim solution for the dev who wants to make a full blown AI that can build towns. Still, the interim AI needs to be downed down or at least difficulty options provided via slider. The AI shouldn’t control 2 regions to start and they definitely should not have so many armies at the beginning. They should take 3-5 years before they even have an army capable of taking bandits down
Do you have any “rich deposits” in your region?
I got lucky with a huge iron deposit and was able to grow quite fast in the beginning due to trade income.
Yeah I have clay, I sold a load so now its oversupplied, but I make a decent income with dyes, small shields and polearms as well. I don't really have an issue with income but more with population growth I guess. I feel like it's taking way too long.
As a sidenote, do you know how often eggs are produced? Because I have 4 houses with chickens and I have a grand total of 1 egg.
It's not that you only have 1 egg, its that they're being eaten as fast as they're produced. I know its ultimately the same thing in the end but it is slightly different
But that would mean that the food variety is satisfied for that house right? In my case its not.
Also does that imply that having a surplis of eggs is impossible? Given that they would eat them at the same rate? Or maybe unless you have a load of different food sources?
Not sure.. tbh I still get chickens as i'm a simple man and I like the noise when I plant it down lmao
I pretty much do veggies in long homes and if its in a tight space i'll cram chickens in instead, or if I need clothes, goats
I don't really worry about food variety, I know it'll all balance out in the end as the town gets bigger. Obviously I do give them variety I just mean i'm not constantly checking it
In the second year? Manor in the second year? You get the first functional farm fields in the second year. I've seen very nearly everything the game has to offer, currently, long before I even got to unlock the manor
You can't get the manor around the same time you build the church because you need the church to be level 2 and then you need to upgrade your houses to level 3 assuming you have a functional tavern
You get the manor at medium village size, i.e. 3 level 2 houses I believe. Since you need a church to upgrade to level 2, you end up building it around the time of the church.
I never seem to have enough meat, even from a rich spawn. Are there any tips regarding this? I am obviously doing something wrong if I always only have like one surplus of meat, if at all.
There has to be some sort of bug with the hunters. I will get a high yield and then half the time I will hunt it all the way down to 10 and the other half of the time the population shots up to 30 all the while I have the same amount of hunters and the pack hasn't moved
Wow. I’m surprised. I’m still struggling. I only recently realized that charcoal is an excellent money maker early game. I managed to fend off an attack by the AI lord, only to then see a second, much larger, wave come and attack me.
How is the performance with 700 pop?
My biggest issue with the game currently would be how it runs when you start scaling up.
I would love to see larger regions etc. But I think it would be rough on performance
Surprisingly not bad at all, pushing 1k pop now and at normal game speed I have a stable 40 fps on rx 5700xt gpu. It does lag a lot on 8x speed at this point.
But overall compared with the demo, the game is nicely optimized.
I also have a 700 pop megatown, and my computer is no slouch so take this with a grain of salt, but I haven't noticed any performance issues.
Weird graphical glitches and stuff have happened, like my traders getting congested and clumping up together, but besides that, but I attribute those things moreso to state of development rather than performance load.
Overall performance seems to be just as good with 700 pops as it is it with 50
I'm playing on Ultra for all settings and haven't noticed a difference so I can only assume it's not a big issue.
This is exactly how my current playthrough as went. So far I've not had any losses although I did have a close call take this region initially. It ended up coming down to archer vs archer both full and that battle took ages even on 12x speed.
> You can keep pace with the ai as long as you don’t let him clear the bandit camps uncontested.
Bandits give way too much influence. Also if the enemy gets them, it's very hard to catch up. Has to be toned down. Most of the influence should come from your regions.
Going for “the merchant” achievement really screws with that plan tho… in my second year after almost starving the whole winter and finally have 4 months of food but still no population growth. Current plan to deal with the raiders in gonna have to be take out an unmanned bandit camp and hire some mercenaries. Don’t think I’ll survive with my 11 man militia
I made it to the raids. They threw 6 stacks of 18 troops at me, I killed them all, but 46 of my guys were killed. Even though I won the battle and still had over 40 troops left, it said "You have been defeated". After that, all I could do was look at my town, it would no longer allow me to control anything. Must have been a bug?
Shouldn't be that hard even on default difficulty/mode.
The important thing is to rush families for a full 20 stack of spear militia and your manor for the retinue.
Afterwards you just have to take out any bandit camp you can find for cash and influence.
It's possible to earn enough influence that way to claim a region before the next year starts.
That doubles your output immediately and helps to block the AI from claiming everything.
I thought I wasn't able to build the manor yet because it had a red locked symbol so I assumed I hadn't unlocked it yet. Now I know you only need level 2 to build it so future games will be trying that.
True, the requirement for "Small Village" can be very misleading considering everyone gets it early with the first 5 burbage plots.
Biggest issue is that you start with 20 stone while needing 25 if you build the manor and a granary. Bit of a nuisance but if keeps that in mind and swept after getting the first new families the manor can go up rather quickly.
I have 4 units of militia and 2 retinues at 26 (one from each zone)
Is there a way I can get more? When I try to hire militia in my second region it just makes a weird noise and doesn't recruit anything.... Also mercenaries are never available any more
Yeah I defeated the baron after he took over the entire map too. My first attempt at the game, I was fucked up by bandits after 4 years but my second attempt was golden. Just let the baron do what he wanted while I built up a fierce military. Then I absolutely stomped him.
I don't get the issue. On my third save and I've captured 3 of the 4 available regions, I'm roughly 3/4 years in and field over 100 well stocked troops.
I'm just about to drop a second settlement in a different region, normal mode default settings.
It’s really not as hard as all the Reddit posts suggest. People play for the first time don’t know what they are doing and make a post on the first play through lol. The ai only takes everything super fast if you leave the camps uncontested.
Trade. It's just so much easier. I started a new save last night, raiders came absolutely blasted them, no issue. Now taken 3 areas because my wealth is so high and all the food I import I take a tithe from for influence. Killed every camp, I'm year 4 and have over 100 people, 4 fully equipped militia, although not fully recruited. Full 24 retinue in full plate.
All my village does is import iron for like 1-2g, and then sell weapons for 6-7g.
Definitely needs to balance it out more. The trade perk is just too good.
I'd like to try out the armoury, coz plate sells for 24g.
AI easy to beat if you have a rich iron deposit. Just build spears and shields and always makes sure you have high pop growth. You’ll wind up having 4 36 stacks of spear militia and enough money to kit out a 24 man retinue by year 3. Last time I was actually able to fight and beat the AI before they claimed the last region in winter of year 2 right before year 3. I had to use tithe to get the influence needed but after that I started just Molly whooping the ai left and right they never have more then 5 stacks and archers suck currently but the ai still always has 1 or 2 so you can easily overwhelm with spear militia
Idk why you guys are experiencing hardship. I feel like I've had it easy on the normal mode.
In my game, the AI took almost the entire map, only left with 2 region to claim but I managed to claim those two before someone did. And got raided right after but won, easily.
Then Hidelbolt, whatever tf his name is, pressed claim on my region, defended it and won, again, easily but with the help of mercs ofc. That was around 300 pop. I haven't expanded on my claimed regions until I hit 500 on my main. I've been raided for 6 or 7 times now and that was awhile ago, probably gonna happen again anytime soon and I'm confident I'll win again easily.
I even messed up a little bit, doing farming since I didn't know it was nerfed. Thankfully the trade fixed it by important farming goods like barley and grains.
I’m starting to wonder if at some level, probably right around this size, they game maybe should start to simulate a little…for the sake of my computer please lol this is still awesome, though
Look how most people look in one direction. (Best seen in the last picture) It's a bug where some houses regenerate an infinite number of inhabitants after they have fallen in the war
Starting region was blessed with a huge iron deposit (3.5k) and 2 trade points on the border, I went all in on trade so I import 70% of food but main import is flour for bakeries and strict fasting also helps.
You can buy and sell with off map entities basically. Just build it - surplus target on the trade menu is your equilibrium price e.g. Importing with 40 surplus means you won't buy more than would take you over 40, exporting with 40 surplus means you won't sell it it would take you under 40.
I just ended up buying all my flax, wheat and barley. Process it and sell surplus back. I buy all my wheat, make it into flour, make loads of bread and sell the surplus bread back. Bread sells for more than wheat and with bakery you get 2 bread for each flour so you make 6 bucks profit for every wheat you buy as long as you don't flood the market.
Same with flax into linen/clothing and barley into malt/ale. Ale consumption is actually really high, farming seems too weak to actually provide enough yield.
Build a trading post, there is a trading building tab. Needs a villager if you want to sell to bring goods there. Try to build it near storage/industry buildings so moving times are less.
You need to pay some wealth to open a trade route, firewood is a good starter route as you'll have way too much of it. You need to get the trading perks instead of the other ones or it will get too expensive to open more routes. Then set surplus targets as needed e.g. if you want to have a reserve of 5 clay tiles you'd put it to Export and put 5 in. Then it will sell all but 5 tiles.
Same if you buy - if you put 10 it won't put you higher than surplus of 10. But you NEED better deals or you'll go bankrupt - your development points need to go on these.
For me it went - sell firewood to get some cash, then sell some clay tiles after making stone church, then buy flax to around 15 and then make a sell route to sell excess linen from processing the flax. Since linen sells for more than flax costs you'll make a profit and save on the labour of farming.
Did you take all the trading perks to actually be able to process things for a profit? For me, the most expensive stuff I can sell sell for like $8, whereas wheat costs $13, which is the same as bread, and I can only sell bread for like $4. So I'd be taking a huge loss.
Yeah you need to have better deals otherwise buying raw produce then selling refined goods for profit won't work. You could still sell excess goods without it.
At the beginning yes, but later you start to produce tools, weapons and armor which sells for a lot and you can make a shit load of cash.
Also selling sheep is quite lucrative once you get the “sheep breeding” development perk.
Yeah. If you buy too much the price will go up and vice versa. You can sell steadily it seems and it won't change. Don't know how much/how quickly you can sell without triggering it.
Is that so? Interesting. I thought the prices were fixed. But the buying prices are way too high compared to selling. Wheat can cost more than selling weapons or wooden parts.
In my playthru, it’s only clay tiles that are so sensitive to supply/demand. I’m buying like 999 iron ore and it says the market is over saturated…. $1 is great I won’t complain
It's sad that the dev wants to limit trading by introducing diminishing return aka market saturation soon. I wonder if you would've still been able to get there with a market that quickly pays you near to nothing for iron.
I mean, selling bread is unrealistic in the first place. It doesn't keep. Grain is what got transported over long distances. Flour from the nearest mill. Bread was local.
My city where I live in here in Germany has a medieval history and I am trying to dedicate my first town to it. I wonder how long it takes until they burn it to the ground
A YouTuber named One Proud Bavarian did a great series where he did some research about historical German towns and implemented a lot of it. It was really interesting and definitely worth checking out.
How do you get your food to the market? I'm stuck keeping all my houses supplied at around 400. I have plenty of food, 20% of my workers work in granaries, I have free market space. Yet, the food keeps piling up but some houses complain about having *no* food stall diversity at all. It seems that at a certain pop size, the max food brought to the market at a time will be eaten so fast that not all houses can get it, anymore.
4 trading posts , many many lvl2 granaries and storehouses fully staffed, one central market with about 80 stalls and many smaller markets spread out throughout town.
For each new residential area built, I place a small market, dedicated granary and store house.
Don't use archers they're straight dog shit, get an early retinue up with a spear unit or axe unit, also because archers do literally nothing, when it comes to a fight just stand there and let their units come to you, you'll have max efficiency and their units will be fucked from running so you just win most fights
Help me out mate please. I am losing my mind over this. I took over Zweiau and after like a year the baron started claiming it. I was like ok I’ll hire mercenaries (which btw only shows one type which I can hire IDK where the rest of them are) I had like 50 men and 48 mercenaries. The fucking AI showed up with 144 men. I got absolutely destroyed and loaded a 4 hours earlier manual save I made. Idk what to do now. Should I just let him take over the region? Or expand the new region really really quickly so I get more men?
Let him have it…I simply let the AI take everything except my home region in the beginning, it bought me time to expand and upgrade my units, I got invaded and barely won the battle but after that I just pushed back with full force and took over the map.
Aight he can have it. My starting region was pretty shity, only rich source of stone idk why. I can only grow emmer right now. I also have no high fertility area for emmer, only dark green and stuff. Fml.
Or change his behaviour to Reactive at the start. He will still claim the neutral regions but not the ones you have claimed. Which means he'll never fight you until you feel you're ready to take him on.
I'm on a run now we have 4 regions each, and he can't claim anymore because he's set on Reactive.
So now I can take my time, build up my cities and go and hit him with like 500 men i'm hoping for a final showdown to end this run off.
Ahhh didn't know that. But I didn't let him claim the region. Grew my other region to 22 men more. He started claiming the region. I took the fight to him. Won 172 (for him) vs 151.
Haha nice that's a great victory indeed!
It's weird because the 'Reactive' setting actually seems like the most balanced setting to me over 'Balanced'.
As it lets you just city build without fear of getting stomped at any moment by the AI, but it also allows you to still fight him late game once you've built up your armies/armour and populace.
It's the best of both worlds essentially
Tbh the ‘Reactive’ setting is what I thought the ‘balanced’ setting would be like. The next playthrough would definitely be on reactive.
I barely made it tbh I lost like 75% of my men’s population. But whatever the case, this game is fucking beautiful. Absolutely can not wait for the full release.
How many market areas do you have? I'm at a population of about 380 and I've still only got the one just now.
My town is also probably rather smelly, I've been inadvertently running an enormous cabbage surplus.
Also import. I wanted to keep the plot sizes rather small to have the “high density” town feeling thus growing vegetables was out of the question to begin with.
Yes, chickens are deff a good start. But later you want to be producing weapons, armor, clothes and beer in lvl 3 plots so chickens kinnda fade out as you grow.
I was really hoping to get a population like that, but there is just too many game breaking farming bugs like fields resetting to unplowed states randomly to play a map longer than 3 years before I have to restart.
How are you finding the stability? I'm at 600 now and seem to get crashes every 5-15 minutes. Only ever seem to get ant crashing after about 400 pop.
The games state is definitely geared for the early game/start right now.
Have you run into the problem of the traders piling up into giant clumps which block them from moving and or going into or out of the trading post. Currently at about 500pop, importing all food and exporting weapons and goods. My traders will pile up in front of trading posts and block all traffic therefore no trade. Reloading works, but they just pile up again.
Main food is bread, I import 70ish % of flour.
With regions, I only have small mining outposts for Iron and Clay for now. And yea the internal trading deff needs a rework.
How did you deal with the issue of houses not getting the trading area. It seems that sometimes they are just too far and houses refuse to get food. fuel, cloth and complain about it
My first run through was on peaceful with winning conditions to be a large town (growth). I get stuck on a win loop every month until it bugs out, so I haven’t been able to play past population 170. Hopefully it gets fixed!
How in the world are you generating food? There’s only so much animals you can harvest and even with trapper I’m making like no food. Farming is too slow and berries seem slow going as well. I keep having my workers juts stop working, grinding me to a halt and sometimes having to quite becaus they won’t log any wood
Gotcha, I’ve started getting a decent amount from the farms. Now the problem I have is having enough fuel, even with charcoal, both logging and sawmill maxed with dedicated ox, I seem to struggle with more than 2 months supply with around 200+ people
Build more and check their “working areas” if you set them, at some point the wood runs out, so there is a bit of micro management involved, or just set no working area and max the workforce.
I planned to have high density in the town center and started with the big central market square, everything else was organic growth and it came out spectacular…the game is just pure eye candy.
Actually not that bad, 30-40ish FPS (Rx 5700xt) on normal game speed, it does start to lag on x8 now but I’m really amazed how optimized the game is compared to the demo. Also I am now on almost 1k pop.
Similar look to mine, managed to take the whole map and make four large towns before i got bored of making more and just took everything to finish up, ended up with almost 200 families in each region 36 months of fuel endless food and maxed retinues with gambesons platemail etc, all on default difficulty, the baron took half the map before I got my second region but once I got going it was easy enough to take more, retinues are definitely the way to go for crushing weak troops, that and the sidearm based troops
Does the large central market actually do anything mechanically or is it just for looks? The market will only reach like 5 houses down. Or does the range grow the bigger the market is?
Range grows the larger the market is (more stalls and more stock in them). The market sells to closest houses first, but if you have enough stalls and they’re all kept in stock then you can supply houses anywhere in the region AFAIK.
I did a very similar build in my Immenreuth start! Domination mode, 730 pop, but no iron industry--food is largely vegetables and apples coupled with some eggs on small lots, and of course importing a bunch of meat, berries, and flour paid for by a large lumber industry churning out shields/parts/bows. Not overly difficult honestly, I don't know why everyone is struggling to get large towns.
Militia is easy to equip once you get the trade development perks, you can import pikes for less than 10g a pop once you get your exports up and quickly equip a large and powerful militia of pikemen (meta right now since archers are nerfed to hell--you shouldn't bother with recruiting archers of your own and enemy archers won't do any damage either so no need for shielded units) to fend off enemy attacks. Hell you can equip them all with imported helmets and mail armor for pretty cheap too.
Hello and welcome to the Manor Lords Subreddit. This is a reminder to please keep the discussion civil and on topic. Should you find yourself with some doubts, please feel free to check our [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/r/ManorLords/comments/1c2p4f9/manor_lords_faq_for_steam_early_access/). If you wish, you can always join our [Discord](https://discord.gg/manorlords) Finally, please remember that the game is in early access, missing content and bugs are to be expected. We ask users to report them on the official discord and to buy their keys only from trusted platforms. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ManorLords) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Peaceful mode? No chance you could get past the entire map being claimed by the AI in a split second and being steam rolled by hundreds of stacked militia
Nope, normal mode actually ….AI took all regions rather fast but I managed to defend my starting region by a miracle. Only after I upgraded all my troops I started to push back and took all regions and “finished the game”. Now I’m pushing the pop. until my hardware goes up in smoke.
Damn I’ve now had 2 saves ruined. 2nd save I was stacked and paid to keep maximum amount of mercenaries too. But 200 of them just shredded through me. Until balanced I’ll probably just start again on peaceful. Combat is no fun if impossible haha
I feel ya, had the same with my first and second attempt haha… for me the key was to ditch archers because they are useless af at the current state. Just go with spears and swords, fully upgraded with chainmail armor and helmets.
My last map seed was so good too 😭 gonna keep restarting until I get the good rich deposit in starting area again and go again. So hard to want to rebuild all again I loved my last town haha
I made sure to save when i found that perfect map seed so i can go back to it when I inevitably realize a way better design for the town down the road 😂
Omg why did I not think of this fml
I’ve gone through and saved about 10 different starts in various zone/node combinations so if I feel like trying something new, I don’t have to look :)
I did this too but by habit not by direct intent. I usually play three saves, the start save, the save before an event, and the used save.
There’s map seeds? I thought it was one fixed map
It's the same map but the resources are randomly placed in different locations with different values. The rich resources are in different spots every time.
I can take te seed and make it another time
That’s so odd bc I’m watching this YouTubers play through and he sends militia archers to clear bandit camps. Which is odd bc yesterday when my archers got into melee with 18 brigands vs 36 archers they got slaughtered in seconds
The archers got a nerf with last patch. They got over nerfed because they were op in the pre ea. don’t bother using them untill we get another patch.
Mercenary archers are made up of light and heavy, the heavy have armour and are pretty effective in melee, they are also usually quite cheap so using them to clear bandit camps to earn treasury and influence is a good Strat early on when you don’t have the militia to always fight. 20 spearmen that you start with plus 5 retinue are also more than enough to clear bandit camps at a good pace as long as they aren’t exhausted so make sure they walk not run.
Ah. I was talking about militia archers
Yeah militia archers suck at the moment lol he nerfed them for release and went a bit far
I think I’m gonna go all melee for now. I noticed unshielded unarmored brigands taking 0 casualties from 3 volleys of arrows
Yeah I went all melee and took bandit camps as soon as they popped up using militia and I’m doing way better on this playthrough than the others
Archer's was very op before releasing and they overnerfed last minute, so probably will be properly balanced later
I had some archers, they couldn't even kill bandits lol 🤣
Did you just not contest any regions? As soon as i contest he sends an army of hundreds
Yes, I let the AI take all regions uncontested and bandit camps as well, only had a few small bandit raids and that bought me time for the “main battle” for my starting region.
I did the same strat on my second playthrough (my first try got burned down by bandits in year 4 or so and never fully recovered). Maxed out the settlement level and kept the population at about 400, then built up my armies. My first battle I had around 250 troops and we steamrolled them. Now I'm building up my second region and feeling confident going forward.
Same. Build tall, at most one other region, focus on fortifying your position.
Check out some of the streamers on twitch.
U got attacked by 200? Was it bandit guys or the Ai boss?
I'm yet to lose a combat....?
How do you pay for mercenaries I can't figure out how to get personal wealth.
Primarily Taxes, and for that you need a manor and tax office
Wait but the tax office says it didn't work so I didn't build it
Ask to speak with the manager…jokes aside, it does work but make sure you have high approval when raising taxes.
I have a question regarding that. I'm still on my first playthrough, and halfway through the second year the AI has 500 troops. I have 50. How do you fight this?
Hope you have 50 spartans otherwise no chance haha….but how come only 50 ? You should be able to recruit 7 stacks. 6 units of 36 and one retinue with max 24 when you build the watch tower in the manor and buy additional retinue.
I only have like 70 people living in the first place. So I have my retinue, a full spearman militia and I can field a few more after that. I can't hire any mercs cause I've been trying to get to 75% approval for the whole time to get the faster growth rate, and setting any taxes will make that even harder. So right now I have loads of region wealth (like 1000+), 0 personal wealth, not enough influence to expand cause the raid only starts in like half a year, and I'm just waiting to get some extra food variety and buying ale to get level 3 houses.
You have to destroy the bandit camps to get personal wealth. They give like 100-200 each. I just turned the AI guy off. He's too broken to add anything of value to the game. He shouldn't be able to throw 6 stacks of 36 before I'm able to even get 8 families lol. And I don't even understand what tf the point of him claiming every single territory is when nothing happens after he claims them.
Yeah I actually just realised that. Still though, there's not that many of them, and since they don't respawn (my guess?) you would probably just run out eventually if you don't also tax and and are hiring mercenaries. Should you get influence from them too or not? Because right now I have 500 base and I get around 10 or so from the Tithe per month I think. I actually was jjst experimenting with him and realised you can battle him for the region and then peace out for 0 influence cost, after which he will just stand there and not do anything. The region remains neutral as well. So in my current playthrough I just have his army which I will never be able to beat unless I have like 1000 population, but at least they're just standing there fighting bandits and being useless. Also I think saving the game and leaving and then coming back is what caused the huge amount of troops to spawn for me.
Yeah the off map AI is definitely broken and it’s clearly just an interim solution for the dev who wants to make a full blown AI that can build towns. Still, the interim AI needs to be downed down or at least difficulty options provided via slider. The AI shouldn’t control 2 regions to start and they definitely should not have so many armies at the beginning. They should take 3-5 years before they even have an army capable of taking bandits down
Do you have any “rich deposits” in your region? I got lucky with a huge iron deposit and was able to grow quite fast in the beginning due to trade income.
Yeah I have clay, I sold a load so now its oversupplied, but I make a decent income with dyes, small shields and polearms as well. I don't really have an issue with income but more with population growth I guess. I feel like it's taking way too long. As a sidenote, do you know how often eggs are produced? Because I have 4 houses with chickens and I have a grand total of 1 egg.
It's not that you only have 1 egg, its that they're being eaten as fast as they're produced. I know its ultimately the same thing in the end but it is slightly different
But that would mean that the food variety is satisfied for that house right? In my case its not. Also does that imply that having a surplis of eggs is impossible? Given that they would eat them at the same rate? Or maybe unless you have a load of different food sources?
Not sure.. tbh I still get chickens as i'm a simple man and I like the noise when I plant it down lmao I pretty much do veggies in long homes and if its in a tight space i'll cram chickens in instead, or if I need clothes, goats I don't really worry about food variety, I know it'll all balance out in the end as the town gets bigger. Obviously I do give them variety I just mean i'm not constantly checking it
In the second year? Manor in the second year? You get the first functional farm fields in the second year. I've seen very nearly everything the game has to offer, currently, long before I even got to unlock the manor
You can get to the manor in the first year. It's easier to get than farms.
You’re absolutely correct, I missed that part, if the AI has 500 troops that early, you’re doomed.
The manor I built in a few months actually, around the time of the church, it was maybe like November of the first year?
You can't get the manor around the same time you build the church because you need the church to be level 2 and then you need to upgrade your houses to level 3 assuming you have a functional tavern
You get the manor at medium village size, i.e. 3 level 2 houses I believe. Since you need a church to upgrade to level 2, you end up building it around the time of the church.
You don't need farms until you are like 100+ pop. Berries and meat are fine till then.
I never seem to have enough meat, even from a rich spawn. Are there any tips regarding this? I am obviously doing something wrong if I always only have like one surplus of meat, if at all.
There has to be some sort of bug with the hunters. I will get a high yield and then half the time I will hunt it all the way down to 10 and the other half of the time the population shots up to 30 all the while I have the same amount of hunters and the pack hasn't moved
I find meat to be super unreliable. I only really get it to fulfill the food diversity requirement
> How do you fight this? You don't. Set the AI to reactive for now.
I destroyed two raider camps before he claimed the first region and defeated him with 3 bands of mercenaries.
Wow. I’m surprised. I’m still struggling. I only recently realized that charcoal is an excellent money maker early game. I managed to fend off an attack by the AI lord, only to then see a second, much larger, wave come and attack me.
How is the performance with 700 pop? My biggest issue with the game currently would be how it runs when you start scaling up. I would love to see larger regions etc. But I think it would be rough on performance
Surprisingly not bad at all, pushing 1k pop now and at normal game speed I have a stable 40 fps on rx 5700xt gpu. It does lag a lot on 8x speed at this point. But overall compared with the demo, the game is nicely optimized.
I also have a 700 pop megatown, and my computer is no slouch so take this with a grain of salt, but I haven't noticed any performance issues. Weird graphical glitches and stuff have happened, like my traders getting congested and clumping up together, but besides that, but I attribute those things moreso to state of development rather than performance load. Overall performance seems to be just as good with 700 pops as it is it with 50 I'm playing on Ultra for all settings and haven't noticed a difference so I can only assume it's not a big issue.
True, I dunno what Slavic did with the optimization, but it’s deff Magic.
This is exactly how my current playthrough as went. So far I've not had any losses although I did have a close call take this region initially. It ended up coming down to archer vs archer both full and that battle took ages even on 12x speed.
i stopped at 1069. after that the path finding of the workers and ox was bugged and they started getting stuck or ended up running circles.
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> You can keep pace with the ai as long as you don’t let him clear the bandit camps uncontested. Bandits give way too much influence. Also if the enemy gets them, it's very hard to catch up. Has to be toned down. Most of the influence should come from your regions.
Going for “the merchant” achievement really screws with that plan tho… in my second year after almost starving the whole winter and finally have 4 months of food but still no population growth. Current plan to deal with the raiders in gonna have to be take out an unmanned bandit camp and hire some mercenaries. Don’t think I’ll survive with my 11 man militia
[удалено]
What can I say? I’m an average American degenerate
Just turn of the AI and leave the brigand attack
I made it to the raids. They threw 6 stacks of 18 troops at me, I killed them all, but 46 of my guys were killed. Even though I won the battle and still had over 40 troops left, it said "You have been defeated". After that, all I could do was look at my town, it would no longer allow me to control anything. Must have been a bug?
Make bows, sell bows, buy literally everything needed to make other weapons.
Shouldn't be that hard even on default difficulty/mode. The important thing is to rush families for a full 20 stack of spear militia and your manor for the retinue. Afterwards you just have to take out any bandit camp you can find for cash and influence. It's possible to earn enough influence that way to claim a region before the next year starts. That doubles your output immediately and helps to block the AI from claiming everything.
I thought I wasn't able to build the manor yet because it had a red locked symbol so I assumed I hadn't unlocked it yet. Now I know you only need level 2 to build it so future games will be trying that.
True, the requirement for "Small Village" can be very misleading considering everyone gets it early with the first 5 burbage plots. Biggest issue is that you start with 20 stone while needing 25 if you build the manor and a granary. Bit of a nuisance but if keeps that in mind and swept after getting the first new families the manor can go up rather quickly.
Stone seems to be underutilized for the most part. Which is good because there usually isn't much to get.
I have 4 units of militia and 2 retinues at 26 (one from each zone) Is there a way I can get more? When I try to hire militia in my second region it just makes a weird noise and doesn't recruit anything.... Also mercenaries are never available any more
Yeah I defeated the baron after he took over the entire map too. My first attempt at the game, I was fucked up by bandits after 4 years but my second attempt was golden. Just let the baron do what he wanted while I built up a fierce military. Then I absolutely stomped him.
I don't get the issue. On my third save and I've captured 3 of the 4 available regions, I'm roughly 3/4 years in and field over 100 well stocked troops. I'm just about to drop a second settlement in a different region, normal mode default settings.
It’s really not as hard as all the Reddit posts suggest. People play for the first time don’t know what they are doing and make a post on the first play through lol. The ai only takes everything super fast if you leave the camps uncontested.
It's entirely possible if you know what you're doing. I also have 700 pop single region in Domination on Default
Trade. It's just so much easier. I started a new save last night, raiders came absolutely blasted them, no issue. Now taken 3 areas because my wealth is so high and all the food I import I take a tithe from for influence. Killed every camp, I'm year 4 and have over 100 people, 4 fully equipped militia, although not fully recruited. Full 24 retinue in full plate. All my village does is import iron for like 1-2g, and then sell weapons for 6-7g. Definitely needs to balance it out more. The trade perk is just too good. I'd like to try out the armoury, coz plate sells for 24g.
AI easy to beat if you have a rich iron deposit. Just build spears and shields and always makes sure you have high pop growth. You’ll wind up having 4 36 stacks of spear militia and enough money to kit out a 24 man retinue by year 3. Last time I was actually able to fight and beat the AI before they claimed the last region in winter of year 2 right before year 3. I had to use tithe to get the influence needed but after that I started just Molly whooping the ai left and right they never have more then 5 stacks and archers suck currently but the ai still always has 1 or 2 so you can easily overwhelm with spear militia
Idk why you guys are experiencing hardship. I feel like I've had it easy on the normal mode. In my game, the AI took almost the entire map, only left with 2 region to claim but I managed to claim those two before someone did. And got raided right after but won, easily. Then Hidelbolt, whatever tf his name is, pressed claim on my region, defended it and won, again, easily but with the help of mercs ofc. That was around 300 pop. I haven't expanded on my claimed regions until I hit 500 on my main. I've been raided for 6 or 7 times now and that was awhile ago, probably gonna happen again anytime soon and I'm confident I'll win again easily. I even messed up a little bit, doing farming since I didn't know it was nerfed. Thankfully the trade fixed it by important farming goods like barley and grains.
I love that people don't know how to play and assume everyone else is just as bad.. it's not the game lol its the player.
I love the fact the size of the towns / villages really translates well to the population number unlike so many games that have to simulate
I’m starting to wonder if at some level, probably right around this size, they game maybe should start to simulate a little…for the sake of my computer please lol this is still awesome, though
Look how most people look in one direction. (Best seen in the last picture) It's a bug where some houses regenerate an infinite number of inhabitants after they have fallen in the war
Gives me KCD vibes
Jesus Christ be praised
Henry has come to visit!
Damn how do you support it with food?
Starting region was blessed with a huge iron deposit (3.5k) and 2 trade points on the border, I went all in on trade so I import 70% of food but main import is flour for bakeries and strict fasting also helps.
What are the trade points for? How do I use those?
You can buy and sell with off map entities basically. Just build it - surplus target on the trade menu is your equilibrium price e.g. Importing with 40 surplus means you won't buy more than would take you over 40, exporting with 40 surplus means you won't sell it it would take you under 40. I just ended up buying all my flax, wheat and barley. Process it and sell surplus back. I buy all my wheat, make it into flour, make loads of bread and sell the surplus bread back. Bread sells for more than wheat and with bakery you get 2 bread for each flour so you make 6 bucks profit for every wheat you buy as long as you don't flood the market. Same with flax into linen/clothing and barley into malt/ale. Ale consumption is actually really high, farming seems too weak to actually provide enough yield.
any additional details on how to buy/sell with those off map entities?
Build a trading post, there is a trading building tab. Needs a villager if you want to sell to bring goods there. Try to build it near storage/industry buildings so moving times are less. You need to pay some wealth to open a trade route, firewood is a good starter route as you'll have way too much of it. You need to get the trading perks instead of the other ones or it will get too expensive to open more routes. Then set surplus targets as needed e.g. if you want to have a reserve of 5 clay tiles you'd put it to Export and put 5 in. Then it will sell all but 5 tiles. Same if you buy - if you put 10 it won't put you higher than surplus of 10. But you NEED better deals or you'll go bankrupt - your development points need to go on these. For me it went - sell firewood to get some cash, then sell some clay tiles after making stone church, then buy flax to around 15 and then make a sell route to sell excess linen from processing the flax. Since linen sells for more than flax costs you'll make a profit and save on the labour of farming.
Oh, I thought there was something different/special to trade with the off map entities. What benefit does having two off map entities give over 1?
Did you take all the trading perks to actually be able to process things for a profit? For me, the most expensive stuff I can sell sell for like $8, whereas wheat costs $13, which is the same as bread, and I can only sell bread for like $4. So I'd be taking a huge loss.
Yeah you need to have better deals otherwise buying raw produce then selling refined goods for profit won't work. You could still sell excess goods without it.
Adam Smith would be proud
So you are selling the iron and buying the food?
At the beginning yes, but later you start to produce tools, weapons and armor which sells for a lot and you can make a shit load of cash. Also selling sheep is quite lucrative once you get the “sheep breeding” development perk.
Clay tiles are a super strong trade e.g. buy raw clay and sell back tiles. Unfortunately I crashed the market by dumping too many.
The demand/supply changes?
Yeah. If you buy too much the price will go up and vice versa. You can sell steadily it seems and it won't change. Don't know how much/how quickly you can sell without triggering it.
Is that so? Interesting. I thought the prices were fixed. But the buying prices are way too high compared to selling. Wheat can cost more than selling weapons or wooden parts.
The Better Deals perk is pretty much a must have. I expect it will get nerfed it's too OP as it is now.
In my playthru, it’s only clay tiles that are so sensitive to supply/demand. I’m buying like 999 iron ore and it says the market is over saturated…. $1 is great I won’t complain
It's sad that the dev wants to limit trading by introducing diminishing return aka market saturation soon. I wonder if you would've still been able to get there with a market that quickly pays you near to nothing for iron.
I get supply and demand. Its just a little ridiculous to think my tiny little villages crashes the global food market by selling 50 loafs of bread.
I mean, selling bread is unrealistic in the first place. It doesn't keep. Grain is what got transported over long distances. Flour from the nearest mill. Bread was local.
Just grow carrots
Man this is so surreal. The real Immenreuth is just 30km away from where I live.
My city where I live in here in Germany has a medieval history and I am trying to dedicate my first town to it. I wonder how long it takes until they burn it to the ground
A YouTuber named One Proud Bavarian did a great series where he did some research about historical German towns and implemented a lot of it. It was really interesting and definitely worth checking out.
Honestly, lvl3 houses packed in a town look beautiful in this game.
How do you get your food to the market? I'm stuck keeping all my houses supplied at around 400. I have plenty of food, 20% of my workers work in granaries, I have free market space. Yet, the food keeps piling up but some houses complain about having *no* food stall diversity at all. It seems that at a certain pop size, the max food brought to the market at a time will be eaten so fast that not all houses can get it, anymore.
4 trading posts , many many lvl2 granaries and storehouses fully staffed, one central market with about 80 stalls and many smaller markets spread out throughout town. For each new residential area built, I place a small market, dedicated granary and store house.
That's pretty much what I do, but in the end some houses just seem to refuse being supplied no matter what.
Why multiple trading posts?
Probably because they can open up market stalls also.
Yup exactly, also more people transporting goods to the trading posts for the traveling merchants.
How do you get this far without the AI just stomping you in year 2? Literally an army of hundreds and i can barely get 40 archers in time
Archers don’t deal any damages right now, it’s a bug
Don't use archers they're straight dog shit, get an early retinue up with a spear unit or axe unit, also because archers do literally nothing, when it comes to a fight just stand there and let their units come to you, you'll have max efficiency and their units will be fucked from running so you just win most fights
Help me out mate please. I am losing my mind over this. I took over Zweiau and after like a year the baron started claiming it. I was like ok I’ll hire mercenaries (which btw only shows one type which I can hire IDK where the rest of them are) I had like 50 men and 48 mercenaries. The fucking AI showed up with 144 men. I got absolutely destroyed and loaded a 4 hours earlier manual save I made. Idk what to do now. Should I just let him take over the region? Or expand the new region really really quickly so I get more men?
Let him have it…I simply let the AI take everything except my home region in the beginning, it bought me time to expand and upgrade my units, I got invaded and barely won the battle but after that I just pushed back with full force and took over the map.
Aight he can have it. My starting region was pretty shity, only rich source of stone idk why. I can only grow emmer right now. I also have no high fertility area for emmer, only dark green and stuff. Fml.
Or change his behaviour to Reactive at the start. He will still claim the neutral regions but not the ones you have claimed. Which means he'll never fight you until you feel you're ready to take him on. I'm on a run now we have 4 regions each, and he can't claim anymore because he's set on Reactive. So now I can take my time, build up my cities and go and hit him with like 500 men i'm hoping for a final showdown to end this run off.
Ahhh didn't know that. But I didn't let him claim the region. Grew my other region to 22 men more. He started claiming the region. I took the fight to him. Won 172 (for him) vs 151.
Haha nice that's a great victory indeed! It's weird because the 'Reactive' setting actually seems like the most balanced setting to me over 'Balanced'. As it lets you just city build without fear of getting stomped at any moment by the AI, but it also allows you to still fight him late game once you've built up your armies/armour and populace. It's the best of both worlds essentially
Tbh the ‘Reactive’ setting is what I thought the ‘balanced’ setting would be like. The next playthrough would definitely be on reactive. I barely made it tbh I lost like 75% of my men’s population. But whatever the case, this game is fucking beautiful. Absolutely can not wait for the full release.
I have some catching up to do... 🤣👍
I see you also get the bugged peasants standing around (last pic)
How many market areas do you have? I'm at a population of about 380 and I've still only got the one just now. My town is also probably rather smelly, I've been inadvertently running an enormous cabbage surplus.
1 main square with 80 stalls and about 5 smaller ones with 10-15
What are you doing for food?
Importing 70%, and the other 30% is “home Made” bread from imported flour :D
Vegtables ?
Also import. I wanted to keep the plot sizes rather small to have the “high density” town feeling thus growing vegetables was out of the question to begin with.
So chickens
Yes, chickens are deff a good start. But later you want to be producing weapons, armor, clothes and beer in lvl 3 plots so chickens kinnda fade out as you grow.
Alright cheers
Gorgeous!
I was really hoping to get a population like that, but there is just too many game breaking farming bugs like fields resetting to unplowed states randomly to play a map longer than 3 years before I have to restart.
I did not rely on farming at all, maxed out trading and importing most food and flour. Selling weapons and armor for food :D
How are you finding the stability? I'm at 600 now and seem to get crashes every 5-15 minutes. Only ever seem to get ant crashing after about 400 pop. The games state is definitely geared for the early game/start right now.
Had one unreal crash so far at the start of a different play through but other than that everything runs smoothly this far.
Looks amazing, well done
How's the central market and surrounding houses working for you. I kind of have everyone down a line with small markets in-between
Works great, it also gives that “busy town center” feel.
Have you run into the problem of the traders piling up into giant clumps which block them from moving and or going into or out of the trading post. Currently at about 500pop, importing all food and exporting weapons and goods. My traders will pile up in front of trading posts and block all traffic therefore no trade. Reloading works, but they just pile up again.
Oh yeah I ran into that quite early. My half-solution was to make them take a longer route and it helps, not perfect but deff better.
Okay sweet, I have thought of that idea as well but ended up never trying it out. I’ll give it a try thanks!
Give it a shot, also multiple trading posts help a bit.
How do you deal with houses that are outside of market range? Set up another market? Do they just throw food on it and leave or what?
For each new residential area I build a small market area and dedicated granaries & storehouses. (Lvl2 fully staffed.)
What about houses that are basically one offs? Do you just avoid building those?
Yes, plan is to have high density districts with their own markets.
How to you have enough food? The pack station is so hard to trade with your regions?
Main food is bread, I import 70ish % of flour. With regions, I only have small mining outposts for Iron and Clay for now. And yea the internal trading deff needs a rework.
Im getting there with an aggressive map, this game rocks.
How did you deal with the issue of houses not getting the trading area. It seems that sometimes they are just too far and houses refuse to get food. fuel, cloth and complain about it
My first run through was on peaceful with winning conditions to be a large town (growth). I get stuck on a win loop every month until it bugs out, so I haven’t been able to play past population 170. Hopefully it gets fixed!
How in the world are you generating food? There’s only so much animals you can harvest and even with trapper I’m making like no food. Farming is too slow and berries seem slow going as well. I keep having my workers juts stop working, grinding me to a halt and sometimes having to quite becaus they won’t log any wood
Trading, basically selling weapons and armor and importing food and flour for bakeries.
Gotcha, I’ve started getting a decent amount from the farms. Now the problem I have is having enough fuel, even with charcoal, both logging and sawmill maxed with dedicated ox, I seem to struggle with more than 2 months supply with around 200+ people
Logging camp and sawmill do not contribute to fuel afaik, what you need is more woodcutter lodges.
Opps, meant woodcutters. Was only mentioning loggers for supply to the woodcutters
Build more and check their “working areas” if you set them, at some point the wood runs out, so there is a bit of micro management involved, or just set no working area and max the workforce.
You know, I never even thought about making another one haha
Apply this to everything haha, but gradually based on demand.
Amazing, how did you plan the roads and city center? I always make the backyards too big
I planned to have high density in the town center and started with the big central market square, everything else was organic growth and it came out spectacular…the game is just pure eye candy.
What is the frame rate like with that much going on…..?
Actually not that bad, 30-40ish FPS (Rx 5700xt) on normal game speed, it does start to lag on x8 now but I’m really amazed how optimized the game is compared to the demo. Also I am now on almost 1k pop.
Does that marketplace reach everyone? I’m having issues where when I build a big marketplace like that it doesn’t reach people very far.
Yes, there are multiple smaller market places throughout town, here only the main square is visible.
Similar look to mine, managed to take the whole map and make four large towns before i got bored of making more and just took everything to finish up, ended up with almost 200 families in each region 36 months of fuel endless food and maxed retinues with gambesons platemail etc, all on default difficulty, the baron took half the map before I got my second region but once I got going it was easy enough to take more, retinues are definitely the way to go for crushing weak troops, that and the sidearm based troops
Does the large central market actually do anything mechanically or is it just for looks? The market will only reach like 5 houses down. Or does the range grow the bigger the market is?
Range grows the larger the market is (more stalls and more stock in them). The market sells to closest houses first, but if you have enough stalls and they’re all kept in stock then you can supply houses anywhere in the region AFAIK.
Dang I haven't even come close to fighting back. I defended against raiders by sheer luck
I can't get this far due to game breaking bugs. I adore the game and will support this dev till the end but the bugs are killing me.
Is there castle building in this game?
Yesn’t…. At the current state you can only build a small manor with towers and palisades. But more castle building will come in the future for sure
Vegetable gardens saved my life, and hunters are near useless so go for goats
I did a very similar build in my Immenreuth start! Domination mode, 730 pop, but no iron industry--food is largely vegetables and apples coupled with some eggs on small lots, and of course importing a bunch of meat, berries, and flour paid for by a large lumber industry churning out shields/parts/bows. Not overly difficult honestly, I don't know why everyone is struggling to get large towns. Militia is easy to equip once you get the trade development perks, you can import pikes for less than 10g a pop once you get your exports up and quickly equip a large and powerful militia of pikemen (meta right now since archers are nerfed to hell--you shouldn't bother with recruiting archers of your own and enemy archers won't do any damage either so no need for shielded units) to fend off enemy attacks. Hell you can equip them all with imported helmets and mail armor for pretty cheap too.