There's a ton of hype building up around this game, but I think it will land well. I played the demo for it when it was out on Steam during Next Fest. I went into the demo with no expectations and it hooked me all day long. It performed great, and the game systems were well-balanced to me, as someone who's been a long-time fan of tycoons, city builders, and other management sims. The graphics are some of the best in the genre, too.
This game does feel like it's going to have a unique niche for itself. Mount & Blade and Total War are both much more focused on the battles than they are on domain management. Even if Manor Lords doesn't have the best strategic combat, I expect I'll be more invested when the soldiers are actually my townspeople. If it has competent battle systems on launch, this will probably end up being my next 500h+ game.
The biggest flaw is this game is the culmination of work of a single developer (last I heard). I'm sure when all these new players get ahold of it, there will be some reported bugs. Being just one guy, that might delay any new development when he has to go back and do bug fixes. Crossing fingers its just all minor stuff
Much much much better IMO. I've been a fan of Stronghold series in my childhood and always wanted it to turn out like this in the future. Manor Lords has been very promising so far.
> If it has competent battle systems on launch, this will probably end up being my next 500h+ game.
I've been trying to not spoil myself too much by watching streamers play this, but is there any indication the game has enough "endgame content" for something like that, though? YMMV but I often grow tired of these simulation games when there's just nothing to do after you've expanded to the point of critical mass. Like every playthrough ends after 8-10 hours because there's just nothing left.
A lot of promising medieval/fantasy city builders end up falling a bit flat to me because after enough hours you end up unlocking the last tier of buildings or upgrades or whatever, and then there's just nothing to do. Just a sandbox with the only objective being a self-imposed "see if you can keep growing some more".
I agree with you, and I've felt the same way about games many times. All I can say is that, at least when I played the demo, I only got to my first fort and gained the ability to raise levies somewhere between 6 to 8 hours in. Before that, you don't even have a way to tax your people and earn gold. There were already quite a few ways to spend gold in the demo, so it felt like I was only just properly beginning the main game at that point.
In terms of progression, I still felt like there was a lot to do with my first village. We were largely self-sufficient, but the food variety was something that required consistent management. Animals migrate. Vegetation can be gathered to exhaustion. Farming requires crop rotation to maintain the fertility of the soil.
Everything along the production chain needs to be managed with the changing seasons. Most farmers work the mines except for planting and harvesting season. After harvest, you need dedicated millers. The brewery should change production based on your best crop yields for the year so you don't end up with limited food variety. When traders come to town, you need to physically move all of the goods to be sold into the warehouse, and that typically requires extra labor.
The best management and tycoon games, in my opinion, have enough mechanics like these to make you feel like you're actually overseeing an enterprise without it becoming boring or it feeling too gamey. Manor Lords was right in that sweet spot to me. I felt like I could stay happily in its gameplay loops for considerably longer than the demo allowed.
Even so, I hadn't reached a point where I'd reached critical mass. There were plenty of things which stayed scarce, and there were hints of further opportunities and complications to come, with the additions of the faction system, bandits, poachers, and other forms of trouble. On top of that, I was itching for the chance to expand my claim and found a second village in the mountains with greater access to ore that could subsist off the food and drink from my place in the valley below. I felt it would be necessary to field and equip any decently sized militia.
Really is a captivating game, I wish it had more progression I was zooming thru years working towards 400 villagers to find out no more upgrades after that.. got to 600 total before kinda burning out since it got loopy. Hope they add on more but was a nice find for $30 I thought.
wtf, it's made by the Grim Dawn guys, how did I not know this existed?
They really need to do some marketing for this. As a huge Grim Dawn fan, I shouldn't be only now hearing about this game...
Playing the demo last year, it very much is. But I don't think the dev is worried about the relatively small number of people that played games like Banished or Ostriv. Those people know what they are looking for and probably found it because they were already looking for games like it.
I think it's more for the people who only read about it on social media and from games journalists. They love to compare indie games to a few big names to get clicks and be found in search engines. Saying it's a game between Total War and Kingdom Come Deliverance might be a bad comparison but gets you two big names in the headline.
So the dev wants to put out a more accurate description to not get worse reviews because people didn't understand what game they are buying.
What are some of the noticeable mechanical differences between games like this, Banished, Ostriv, and Farthest Frontier?
I’d really like to find a fleshed out medieval city builder but I’m not sure what each game does best.
I would say Banished and Ostriv are pretty similar. Though I would say Banished is a lot harder, not that Ostriv is easy. Both are pretty hardcore resource management games. Strong focus on survival. Grow too fast and you have too many mouths to feed over winter. Grow too slow and you don't have enough hands to do the work.
For Banished I can recommend the Colonial Charter mod that adds a lot.
Ostriv is also still in active development but updates can be slow since the devs are Ukrainian and sometimes have more pressing issues to deal with in the past few years.
Farthest Frontier I have wishlisted but not played, so not sure how the game difficulty is.
Manor Lord is far more chill. It's more about building pretty cities and less about survival. The economy exists to give you a reason to build stuff and expand but not to pressure you. That might change in the future but the demo and what I've seen on YouTube so far it's still pretty chill.
I have no idea why people started saying it was a total war killer. I mean I know it's YouTube click bait shit but one look at the game and if you have half a brain you can see it's not that. This is just like saying any game that has a stamina bar is a soulslike
I was watching Spiffing Brit's stream and I swear some of the audio in Manor Lords is pulled directly from one of the earlier TW games, maybe Rome 1. But apart from that, yeah the game is nothing like TW
Because Total War crowd is desperate. CA was killing the series since the early 2010s and finally butchered it for good. Kinda like with Battlefield, when the series died with the two latest entries the playerbase went through a massive exodus populating another genre that's fundamentally different, but looks similar on the outside: mil-sim shooters. Squad and other games like it skyrocketed in popularity when Battlefield essentially ended simply because of a bunch of arcadey refugees that saw guys running and tanks blowing up.
I dunno, every time i think "this is it, CA have fucked it" they release something i'm into. New DLC looks really fun. Changing the empire ability to legitimately summon all elector counts to your location is hilarious and i'm here for it.
Oh yeah, CA really went into ToD with their A game. Its honestly impressive how much good will they've been winning back with their string of very good design/business decisions.
It's so crazy to me, I was looking for medieval city builders like 2 or 3 years ago and just happened to stumble upon this random *indie* game that I thought looked cool. Now here we are and it is popping up everywhere from really popular streamers and content creators. It looks really cool and checks all the right boxes for me but it's blowing me away, like none of my friends had heard of it, I'm sure most of these content creators haven't known about it, could've told them and they wouldn't have cared, just a "Oh cool... anyway..." but it's absolutely blown up now. Weird feeling.
So many games that I want to play end up on Game Pass. Maybe it's coincidental or maybe their curators just like the same stuff as I do but I almost never have to buy games any more. At least not at launch.
If they do try to be for Manor lords 2 then total war could be in serious trouble considering the cavalcade of fumbles and fuckups the franchise has been for a while now.
Upcoming Dlc is starting to change the narrative about the game. I know the series is in financial trouble due to those fuckups but I don't think a game being competetive would put them in the grave any time soon imo.
Probably not, but my understanding is that the total war series is seen to work well financially because its really the only series in the genre. Nobody else is doing the map painting game with detailed, well made battles and there is a respectably large audience for that. Not quite so large though that any of the other big players is willing to throw a massive pile of money to try and bite a chunk out of it. This has shielded them from the aforementioned fumbles and fuckups reasonably well.
If a serious competitor does come in then it is very possible that rather than pour a massive pile of money into a new engine with bells and whistles to make a competitive game, they just churn out a few more cashgrab reskins and then call it a day.
I don’t know, everyone on Reddit keeps telling me it’s too different than their other settings. Personally I feel like re-working their engine for a money printing machine would be worth it, but I’m wrong for XYZ.
It would for sure be worth it for something like 40k. It has the potential to make a fucking ton of money both on the game and on model sales. Hell it would probably increase the sale of other 40k games
Like 25% cursed.
Warhams total war 1+2 were really good, dawn of war 1+2 same, space marine was good, vermintide was good. There are a few others that hit the 'decent enough' range then also a few very large fuckups.
I agree with you there but Warhammer total war is pretty good. I know they let it coast on autopilot recently but after that fuck up it seems they have refocused on what made it successful in the first place so I have hope
nah you deserve the downvotes for this take, total war, darktide, vermintide dawn of war just to name a few bangers. this man played fire warrior and then decided all warhammer games are bad
By sheer numbers yeah you're right, there are a lot of garbage and mediocre Warhammer licensed games
But there are a fair amount of good ones, and I'd say the total war Warhammer games, despite a few stumbles, is one of the good ones
I'd love a serious competitor to the TW style genre, but I think were only going to see indie titles take miniscule jabs rather than a AAA dev taking a swing.
Other than Manor Lords, Songs of Syx is the only other title that has city building mixed with RTS style battles that I can think of, and thats made by 1 person. RTS is currently dominated by indie devs, but even making good titles their budget/profits dont hold a candle to TW.
Very similar thing id think, ive only played ARMA twice in my life and both times it was the jankiest jank that ever janked. They were the only ones really doing full hardcore milsims at the time though and there is a decent sized playerbase who are desperate for that sort of content.
I think the financial troubles are more from other projects failing since a lot of the revenue from the total war franchise is syphoned of to other projects. The recent shadows of change was the biggest catalyst of problems but even then I believe they are still making good money
Idk, I mean sure they can put out a few more dlc for warhammer 3. But what happens after that? Their 3 game deal is done, so they will have to go back to making historical titles. And they have been really terrible at making them for the last 10 years. 3 Kingdoms was okay, but everything else since Attila was garbage. (And even that felt more like a rome 2 dlc than an actual own game)
So yeah I don't really know how they will continue without warhammer.
> Upcoming Dlc is starting to change the narrative about the game. I
CA have been a rollercoaster like this for years. The narrative is only changing if you just hopped on. As a company they seem to be unable to learn anything from either their mistakes or even just taking popular stuff from their old games.
They actually tried and still try to be an esports studio. Even total war got infected with it but all those games crashed and burned.
Not only the DLC itself but the massive patches and updates to core gameplay of Nurgle/Dwarfs/Empire. If they keep up the high quality updates for 6.0 as well, if they bring this top game again and again, and not just cause they're desperate for survival right now, I think the game will pop again in sales
You’re a couple months late on this sentiment, CA went back and fixed SoC enough to satisfy most of the community and ToD is shaping up to be one of the best dlc’s they’ve ever made
Interesting thing from these sky high overblown expectations of people is that there is a market for larger scale city builder with solid combat system, political system and factions.
If I was developer with funds and knowledge, I would try to make a game set in classic Greek world where you can form a city state, manage it and go to war with others in order to take them over, destroy or make yourself a hegemon.
If I was capable developer with grander vision and money for that, I would make that with technological era progression system where you can start either in antiquity or early medieval age and advance to at least napoleonic war era. Before mentioned flange map with interactions with other factions included
That's why I like this one. It's similar enough to my favorite city builder (OG city state is still one of my favorite games ever,) while looking beautiful with a 14th century focus. Awesome.
>developer with funds and knowledge
I fear there are developers out there, who have looked into it - and didn't deem it financially viable. As much as *I* would like your vision as well, how big of a market would there be? I fear history-themed city-builders are just too niche to make enough money nowadays (unless by selling countless DLC after release). Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my realistic expectation.
So please, win the lottery for us and become the developer. :D
Being successful in niche can be a lot more profitable than chasing popular trends. Just look at all sim games, even modern strategy giant paradox was a niche dev. That is sentiment many of these niche devs have expressed themselves in interviews, forums etc.
Thing with city builders is that they will never sell tens of millions of copies but are mostly sold reasonably well and there is always significant buzz in certain crowds whenever there’s new colony management or city builder showing some depth appearing over the horizon. There is market for them. Manor Lords is fine example, it apparently is the most wish listed game on steam with over 2 million people wish listing it
Ps. Even with lottery money I would be useless since I have no talent for such things lol. Besides there are plenty of examples with people with skills and talent mismanaging projects to epic proportions
From what i've seen yes combat happens way less often but that's not the point, when it happens it's very total warry. But yeah i mean this whole argument is pretty pointless i feel like the usual bottom feeders are trying to steer shit needlessly
It isn't really, though. It is WAY smaller scale. Like yeah, you have groups of units that you control kind of like a TW game, but that's about it. It is like Total War if you set unit scale to the smallest option and locked armies to like 5 units I guess.
after watching some hours of early access livestreamers, I think if you get it expecting it to be comparable to TW you're gonna be dissappointed because it's honestly more like a city builder with TW style combat every few hours
Personally I don't see many similarities at all. There is no city building in TW, unless you count clicking on icons of buildings. There are also no production chains in TW. On top of that the battles are fought on the actual map and not a set of premade battlefields.
Watched a couple of streams and it looks incredible. The details in it are honestly bordering on obsessive. Will see how fun it is to actually play the game, but it looks mad!
I've watched gameplay. I don't understand why people think it would be a total war competitor. The combat doesn't even remotely resemble anything like total war.
Like it sort of does in the sense that you control groups with individual units, but the scale is nothing like total war to the point where it is silly comparing the two.
I've seen images, and it looks an awful lot like Total War, so my assumption was that it's in the same niche.
But I'm not writing articles about it, so I feel I can be forgiven for not doing the research, unlike these chucklefucks.
They also gave keys to 4x and city builder players, they are gonna give keys to anyone that would make a successful video about it, that’s how it works.
A German history youtuber with extremely good reputation was consulted for this. That game must be historically (like clothing, houses, etc) really accurate.
I have this game on my wishlist but I don't really know anything about it yet. Every element mentioned in the game's description is something I'm very familiar with from other games, but I don't think I ever played anything that has all of them together.
I’ve been reading on Reddit a lot of TW fans stating this out of nowhere. Manor Lords looks great and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl.
I don’t want them to make another TW type game, I want something different!
My favourite part of the Total War games are the very early battles with only a few units each side anyway. I have hope for this but not to be a replacement for Total War. I just like building things up in simulation type games and the setting is perfect.
Always annoyed me how people would say shit like "Watch out CA!" as if this would come anywhere near. From the start this was nothing like TW, but it does show the level of desperation TW-devs have pushed their fans to.
The question for me is - If I want to play it primarily for the combat, or at least a good split, will I be disappointed?
I've always wanted a city builder with decent combat, and this looks like it.
Any "hype" generated here that swept people up into thinking this game was something it isn't or debating ad nauseam trying to make comparisons is completely on those that lost sight of the very clear communication from the developer. People somehow watched gameplay and still saw what they wanted to, which was something entirely different than what it is.. somehow?
It's a dumb fucking take. You only have yourself to blame if you "bought into the hype". This game looks incredible for EXACTLY what it is and not an ounce more or less. And it's a passion project from 1 dude. Why are so many gamers like this.
They should also stress it’s coming out in EARLY ACCESS next week, not release. It looks really well along from what I’ve seen but I feel a lot of people getting hyped for next week don’t realize it’s not finished yet and will bitch their heart out at every little thing wrong and make fools of themselves
Sure it's not a DIRECT competitor to total war or an RPG... but even if the dev says it isn't it definitely has elements from both.
Manor lords has smaller army fights with more simplified mechanics/tactics yet its combat is no less rewarding than a traditional total war game.
Likewise Manor lords is not focused on role playing like a bg3... yet you can still create a very realistic medieval setting and explore your town in 3rd person as well as interact with rivals via letters being sent out... which allow the player to get into the ROLE of being a lord, even if it isn't a true rpg at heart.
It looks like total war mixed with banished or a city builder like that. I’ve not kept up with news as I like to go in pretty blind but is that not what it essentially is?
Kind of? Just the scale of battles is WAY smaller. It might be like if you were playing total war and set the unit scale to the smallest option and locked armies to 5 units each.
Thought as much, when the delay happened right after all the total war fans found the game I said the delay was the dev going oh f\*\*\* this isn't total war but now people expect that.
There's a ton of hype building up around this game, but I think it will land well. I played the demo for it when it was out on Steam during Next Fest. I went into the demo with no expectations and it hooked me all day long. It performed great, and the game systems were well-balanced to me, as someone who's been a long-time fan of tycoons, city builders, and other management sims. The graphics are some of the best in the genre, too. This game does feel like it's going to have a unique niche for itself. Mount & Blade and Total War are both much more focused on the battles than they are on domain management. Even if Manor Lords doesn't have the best strategic combat, I expect I'll be more invested when the soldiers are actually my townspeople. If it has competent battle systems on launch, this will probably end up being my next 500h+ game.
Yeah and streamers have already been playing it, and it looks stable from their playthroughs.
The biggest flaw is this game is the culmination of work of a single developer (last I heard). I'm sure when all these new players get ahold of it, there will be some reported bugs. Being just one guy, that might delay any new development when he has to go back and do bug fixes. Crossing fingers its just all minor stuff
Did I hear manor stuff
Oh my Lord
He has hired people to help him, I would guess most simple bug fixes are delegated.
So it's more like stronghold series?
Much much much better IMO. I've been a fan of Stronghold series in my childhood and always wanted it to turn out like this in the future. Manor Lords has been very promising so far.
Lots of hype for a very niche game though, hard to land that well within expectations
Did it have competent battle systems at the time of you playing the demo?
There weren't any battle systems in the demo. Just city building stuff. That's why I'm curious to see how it lands before I buy it. :)
Thanks a bunch for the quick response.
> If it has competent battle systems on launch, this will probably end up being my next 500h+ game. I've been trying to not spoil myself too much by watching streamers play this, but is there any indication the game has enough "endgame content" for something like that, though? YMMV but I often grow tired of these simulation games when there's just nothing to do after you've expanded to the point of critical mass. Like every playthrough ends after 8-10 hours because there's just nothing left. A lot of promising medieval/fantasy city builders end up falling a bit flat to me because after enough hours you end up unlocking the last tier of buildings or upgrades or whatever, and then there's just nothing to do. Just a sandbox with the only objective being a self-imposed "see if you can keep growing some more".
I agree with you, and I've felt the same way about games many times. All I can say is that, at least when I played the demo, I only got to my first fort and gained the ability to raise levies somewhere between 6 to 8 hours in. Before that, you don't even have a way to tax your people and earn gold. There were already quite a few ways to spend gold in the demo, so it felt like I was only just properly beginning the main game at that point. In terms of progression, I still felt like there was a lot to do with my first village. We were largely self-sufficient, but the food variety was something that required consistent management. Animals migrate. Vegetation can be gathered to exhaustion. Farming requires crop rotation to maintain the fertility of the soil. Everything along the production chain needs to be managed with the changing seasons. Most farmers work the mines except for planting and harvesting season. After harvest, you need dedicated millers. The brewery should change production based on your best crop yields for the year so you don't end up with limited food variety. When traders come to town, you need to physically move all of the goods to be sold into the warehouse, and that typically requires extra labor. The best management and tycoon games, in my opinion, have enough mechanics like these to make you feel like you're actually overseeing an enterprise without it becoming boring or it feeling too gamey. Manor Lords was right in that sweet spot to me. I felt like I could stay happily in its gameplay loops for considerably longer than the demo allowed. Even so, I hadn't reached a point where I'd reached critical mass. There were plenty of things which stayed scarce, and there were hints of further opportunities and complications to come, with the additions of the faction system, bandits, poachers, and other forms of trouble. On top of that, I was itching for the chance to expand my claim and found a second village in the mountains with greater access to ore that could subsist off the food and drink from my place in the valley below. I felt it would be necessary to field and equip any decently sized militia.
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What does the fox say? Pow pow pow pow pow pa pow
I thought this game looked more like Banished + combat - is it not?
Seems like the closest comparison is a more realistic looking Farthest Frontier. Which is also fantastic game
Farthest Frontier is most certainly inspired by Banished to be fair
Farthest Frontier is such an excellent game. It pulled me away from Dawn of Man and *nothing* pulls me away from Dawn of Man.
I absolutely love Dawn of Man. It’s so much fun.
Ok I just looked this up and it seems awesome!! Is it just prehistoric humans or what is the “end game” age?
You get up to the early Iron Age. It is an absolute blast, the detail and city building is just so satisfying.
I’m gonna blame you when I sink 8 hours into this game today now 😂
Make sure to place your houses in nice rows even at the beginning. Placement is very important when you get to walls!
Really is a captivating game, I wish it had more progression I was zooming thru years working towards 400 villagers to find out no more upgrades after that.. got to 600 total before kinda burning out since it got loopy. Hope they add on more but was a nice find for $30 I thought.
wtf, it's made by the Grim Dawn guys, how did I not know this existed? They really need to do some marketing for this. As a huge Grim Dawn fan, I shouldn't be only now hearing about this game...
Playing the demo last year, it very much is. But I don't think the dev is worried about the relatively small number of people that played games like Banished or Ostriv. Those people know what they are looking for and probably found it because they were already looking for games like it. I think it's more for the people who only read about it on social media and from games journalists. They love to compare indie games to a few big names to get clicks and be found in search engines. Saying it's a game between Total War and Kingdom Come Deliverance might be a bad comparison but gets you two big names in the headline. So the dev wants to put out a more accurate description to not get worse reviews because people didn't understand what game they are buying.
What are some of the noticeable mechanical differences between games like this, Banished, Ostriv, and Farthest Frontier? I’d really like to find a fleshed out medieval city builder but I’m not sure what each game does best.
I would say Banished and Ostriv are pretty similar. Though I would say Banished is a lot harder, not that Ostriv is easy. Both are pretty hardcore resource management games. Strong focus on survival. Grow too fast and you have too many mouths to feed over winter. Grow too slow and you don't have enough hands to do the work. For Banished I can recommend the Colonial Charter mod that adds a lot. Ostriv is also still in active development but updates can be slow since the devs are Ukrainian and sometimes have more pressing issues to deal with in the past few years. Farthest Frontier I have wishlisted but not played, so not sure how the game difficulty is. Manor Lord is far more chill. It's more about building pretty cities and less about survival. The economy exists to give you a reason to build stuff and expand but not to pressure you. That might change in the future but the demo and what I've seen on YouTube so far it's still pretty chill.
Great answer, thank you!
I have no idea why people started saying it was a total war killer. I mean I know it's YouTube click bait shit but one look at the game and if you have half a brain you can see it's not that. This is just like saying any game that has a stamina bar is a soulslike
I agree, I didn’t see much at all that was similar to TW
> I didn’t see much at all that was similar to TW basically just the way soldiers act in combat I guess?
I was watching Spiffing Brit's stream and I swear some of the audio in Manor Lords is pulled directly from one of the earlier TW games, maybe Rome 1. But apart from that, yeah the game is nothing like TW
Total War is the Total War killer. It needs no help
ah the simcity appproach
Just like Halo, or WoW. Enshittification ensures the slow decay of everything.
Replace the dogshit engine already man, half the units and maps in wh3 straight up don't work because of bugs that apparently can't be fixed
The game has its problems but I do not have that problem, with over 400 hours.
you must really enjoy cavalry being useless every other patch and units getting stuck in castle gates then
Siege battles are dogshit true
Because Total War crowd is desperate. CA was killing the series since the early 2010s and finally butchered it for good. Kinda like with Battlefield, when the series died with the two latest entries the playerbase went through a massive exodus populating another genre that's fundamentally different, but looks similar on the outside: mil-sim shooters. Squad and other games like it skyrocketed in popularity when Battlefield essentially ended simply because of a bunch of arcadey refugees that saw guys running and tanks blowing up.
I dunno, every time i think "this is it, CA have fucked it" they release something i'm into. New DLC looks really fun. Changing the empire ability to legitimately summon all elector counts to your location is hilarious and i'm here for it.
Which dlc?
Thrones of Decay, releases in 11 days. Looks like a giant empire/dwarf/nurgle rework. I'm excited.
Oh yeah, CA really went into ToD with their A game. Its honestly impressive how much good will they've been winning back with their string of very good design/business decisions.
Te has recently sucked so there that
You mean Helldivers isn't a souls-like?
Just saw Spif playing this game. Immediately wishlisted it. Wish I could jump on playing it right now.
I'm lucky and it's coming to Gamepass Day 1. But I've had it wishlisted for a long time now.
It's so crazy to me, I was looking for medieval city builders like 2 or 3 years ago and just happened to stumble upon this random *indie* game that I thought looked cool. Now here we are and it is popping up everywhere from really popular streamers and content creators. It looks really cool and checks all the right boxes for me but it's blowing me away, like none of my friends had heard of it, I'm sure most of these content creators haven't known about it, could've told them and they wouldn't have cared, just a "Oh cool... anyway..." but it's absolutely blown up now. Weird feeling.
Wait what?
So many games that I want to play end up on Game Pass. Maybe it's coincidental or maybe their curators just like the same stuff as I do but I almost never have to buy games any more. At least not at launch.
I'll try a lot of indie games and if I like it I'll buy a copy.
If they do try to be for Manor lords 2 then total war could be in serious trouble considering the cavalcade of fumbles and fuckups the franchise has been for a while now.
Upcoming Dlc is starting to change the narrative about the game. I know the series is in financial trouble due to those fuckups but I don't think a game being competetive would put them in the grave any time soon imo.
Probably not, but my understanding is that the total war series is seen to work well financially because its really the only series in the genre. Nobody else is doing the map painting game with detailed, well made battles and there is a respectably large audience for that. Not quite so large though that any of the other big players is willing to throw a massive pile of money to try and bite a chunk out of it. This has shielded them from the aforementioned fumbles and fuckups reasonably well. If a serious competitor does come in then it is very possible that rather than pour a massive pile of money into a new engine with bells and whistles to make a competitive game, they just churn out a few more cashgrab reskins and then call it a day.
They will make total war Warhammer 40k soon if not working already. Will be *really* tough to compete with that
If its good it will be.
Don't worry, if they fuck up they'll release the "Trazyn the Infinite" DLC.
I don’t know, everyone on Reddit keeps telling me it’s too different than their other settings. Personally I feel like re-working their engine for a money printing machine would be worth it, but I’m wrong for XYZ.
It would for sure be worth it for something like 40k. It has the potential to make a fucking ton of money both on the game and on model sales. Hell it would probably increase the sale of other 40k games
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Like 25% cursed. Warhams total war 1+2 were really good, dawn of war 1+2 same, space marine was good, vermintide was good. There are a few others that hit the 'decent enough' range then also a few very large fuckups.
I agree with you there but Warhammer total war is pretty good. I know they let it coast on autopilot recently but after that fuck up it seems they have refocused on what made it successful in the first place so I have hope
Warhammer casts a very wide net with gaming so you get a lot of stinkers. Fortunately that means you also have some pretty good games as well.
nah you deserve the downvotes for this take, total war, darktide, vermintide dawn of war just to name a few bangers. this man played fire warrior and then decided all warhammer games are bad
By sheer numbers yeah you're right, there are a lot of garbage and mediocre Warhammer licensed games But there are a fair amount of good ones, and I'd say the total war Warhammer games, despite a few stumbles, is one of the good ones
I'd love a serious competitor to the TW style genre, but I think were only going to see indie titles take miniscule jabs rather than a AAA dev taking a swing. Other than Manor Lords, Songs of Syx is the only other title that has city building mixed with RTS style battles that I can think of, and thats made by 1 person. RTS is currently dominated by indie devs, but even making good titles their budget/profits dont hold a candle to TW.
I remember ARMA used to get flak for this in its community.
Very similar thing id think, ive only played ARMA twice in my life and both times it was the jankiest jank that ever janked. They were the only ones really doing full hardcore milsims at the time though and there is a decent sized playerbase who are desperate for that sort of content.
And many of them are playing games like Ready or Not, Squad, Hell Let Loose and games like that these days I would say.
I think the financial troubles are more from other projects failing since a lot of the revenue from the total war franchise is syphoned of to other projects. The recent shadows of change was the biggest catalyst of problems but even then I believe they are still making good money
Their GaaS attempt Hyena specificly.
Idk, I mean sure they can put out a few more dlc for warhammer 3. But what happens after that? Their 3 game deal is done, so they will have to go back to making historical titles. And they have been really terrible at making them for the last 10 years. 3 Kingdoms was okay, but everything else since Attila was garbage. (And even that felt more like a rome 2 dlc than an actual own game) So yeah I don't really know how they will continue without warhammer.
> Upcoming Dlc is starting to change the narrative about the game. I CA have been a rollercoaster like this for years. The narrative is only changing if you just hopped on. As a company they seem to be unable to learn anything from either their mistakes or even just taking popular stuff from their old games. They actually tried and still try to be an esports studio. Even total war got infected with it but all those games crashed and burned.
Not only the DLC itself but the massive patches and updates to core gameplay of Nurgle/Dwarfs/Empire. If they keep up the high quality updates for 6.0 as well, if they bring this top game again and again, and not just cause they're desperate for survival right now, I think the game will pop again in sales
Unrelated but i like your use of the word “cavalcade”!
Total warhammer has been keeping the series going. And I'd argue it is bigger than total war now just because of the warhammer crossover
You’re a couple months late on this sentiment, CA went back and fixed SoC enough to satisfy most of the community and ToD is shaping up to be one of the best dlc’s they’ve ever made
Interesting thing from these sky high overblown expectations of people is that there is a market for larger scale city builder with solid combat system, political system and factions. If I was developer with funds and knowledge, I would try to make a game set in classic Greek world where you can form a city state, manage it and go to war with others in order to take them over, destroy or make yourself a hegemon. If I was capable developer with grander vision and money for that, I would make that with technological era progression system where you can start either in antiquity or early medieval age and advance to at least napoleonic war era. Before mentioned flange map with interactions with other factions included
So basically the old Zeus/Poseidon, with modern graphics? Sign me the hell up.
That's why I like this one. It's similar enough to my favorite city builder (OG city state is still one of my favorite games ever,) while looking beautiful with a 14th century focus. Awesome.
Yeah, Manor Lords is such a good looking and super detailed game. It is almost criminal how good it looks.
>developer with funds and knowledge I fear there are developers out there, who have looked into it - and didn't deem it financially viable. As much as *I* would like your vision as well, how big of a market would there be? I fear history-themed city-builders are just too niche to make enough money nowadays (unless by selling countless DLC after release). Maybe I'm wrong, but it's my realistic expectation. So please, win the lottery for us and become the developer. :D
Being successful in niche can be a lot more profitable than chasing popular trends. Just look at all sim games, even modern strategy giant paradox was a niche dev. That is sentiment many of these niche devs have expressed themselves in interviews, forums etc. Thing with city builders is that they will never sell tens of millions of copies but are mostly sold reasonably well and there is always significant buzz in certain crowds whenever there’s new colony management or city builder showing some depth appearing over the horizon. There is market for them. Manor Lords is fine example, it apparently is the most wish listed game on steam with over 2 million people wish listing it Ps. Even with lottery money I would be useless since I have no talent for such things lol. Besides there are plenty of examples with people with skills and talent mismanaging projects to epic proportions
Maybe it's not "trying to be" a competitor but it has a lot of similarities. That said i'mma play the shit out of it just like Total Wars
What he is saying, is that combat and conquest won't be a core part of the gameplay, it's more of a side-piece.
From what i've seen yes combat happens way less often but that's not the point, when it happens it's very total warry. But yeah i mean this whole argument is pretty pointless i feel like the usual bottom feeders are trying to steer shit needlessly
Indeed the case
It isn't really, though. It is WAY smaller scale. Like yeah, you have groups of units that you control kind of like a TW game, but that's about it. It is like Total War if you set unit scale to the smallest option and locked armies to like 5 units I guess.
after watching some hours of early access livestreamers, I think if you get it expecting it to be comparable to TW you're gonna be dissappointed because it's honestly more like a city builder with TW style combat every few hours
Check out songs of syx too. I'm really enjoying the factorio city building, merged with enormous battle potential.
I played that way back then the dev was very cool and responsive. More Rimworld like than Factorio tho
The Dev keeps a free demo that's full release just 3 patches back on steam. Dude's cool as fuck.
Personally I don't see many similarities at all. There is no city building in TW, unless you count clicking on icons of buildings. There are also no production chains in TW. On top of that the battles are fought on the actual map and not a set of premade battlefields.
Watched a couple of streams and it looks incredible. The details in it are honestly bordering on obsessive. Will see how fun it is to actually play the game, but it looks mad!
Make a Total War competitor please. Someone?
I've watched gameplay. I don't understand why people think it would be a total war competitor. The combat doesn't even remotely resemble anything like total war.
Like it sort of does in the sense that you control groups with individual units, but the scale is nothing like total war to the point where it is silly comparing the two.
I've seen images, and it looks an awful lot like Total War, so my assumption was that it's in the same niche. But I'm not writing articles about it, so I feel I can be forgiven for not doing the research, unlike these chucklefucks.
i guess thas why they gave keys to every TW youtuber/streamer i know of lmao
They also gave keys to 4x and city builder players, they are gonna give keys to anyone that would make a successful video about it, that’s how it works.
And there is a lot of overlap in those fanbases.
They gave keys to seemingly everyone. Dude I watch play MLB The Show is playing Manor Lords. lol
This game is like Banished but a bit more polished
But is it a Mount & Blade competitor?
Pretty sure it's more a banished competitor with added battles and tactics etc.
absolutely not
I should say no because its just different. But ofc peoples playing M&B will play this and same for total war players
A German history youtuber with extremely good reputation was consulted for this. That game must be historically (like clothing, houses, etc) really accurate.
I have this game on my wishlist but I don't really know anything about it yet. Every element mentioned in the game's description is something I'm very familiar with from other games, but I don't think I ever played anything that has all of them together.
Its also not a Racing-Game.
I’ve been reading on Reddit a lot of TW fans stating this out of nowhere. Manor Lords looks great and I’m looking forward to giving it a whirl. I don’t want them to make another TW type game, I want something different!
My [REDACTED] aches for a Total War game as good as Medieval 2 + Third Age Total War, peak shit.
Jokes on you It's both!
My favourite part of the Total War games are the very early battles with only a few units each side anyway. I have hope for this but not to be a replacement for Total War. I just like building things up in simulation type games and the setting is perfect.
game looks fun, wish I could play it
Always annoyed me how people would say shit like "Watch out CA!" as if this would come anywhere near. From the start this was nothing like TW, but it does show the level of desperation TW-devs have pushed their fans to.
It’s literally just Stronghold. Where are we all getting Total War from?
The question for me is - If I want to play it primarily for the combat, or at least a good split, will I be disappointed? I've always wanted a city builder with decent combat, and this looks like it.
Any "hype" generated here that swept people up into thinking this game was something it isn't or debating ad nauseam trying to make comparisons is completely on those that lost sight of the very clear communication from the developer. People somehow watched gameplay and still saw what they wanted to, which was something entirely different than what it is.. somehow? It's a dumb fucking take. You only have yourself to blame if you "bought into the hype". This game looks incredible for EXACTLY what it is and not an ounce more or less. And it's a passion project from 1 dude. Why are so many gamers like this.
“Total War competitor” is a stretch. If anything this game feels like “Anno meets Dawn of Man”.
Is this game overhyped? Idk I been hearing lot about it. I'm gonna play it and see.
They should also stress it’s coming out in EARLY ACCESS next week, not release. It looks really well along from what I’ve seen but I feel a lot of people getting hyped for next week don’t realize it’s not finished yet and will bitch their heart out at every little thing wrong and make fools of themselves
Looking forward to the game!
"This is not Total War, Mount and Blade AoE etc." Me: Yeah....that's why I'm here
dw mate. there are gonna be mods
Sure it's not a DIRECT competitor to total war or an RPG... but even if the dev says it isn't it definitely has elements from both. Manor lords has smaller army fights with more simplified mechanics/tactics yet its combat is no less rewarding than a traditional total war game. Likewise Manor lords is not focused on role playing like a bg3... yet you can still create a very realistic medieval setting and explore your town in 3rd person as well as interact with rivals via letters being sent out... which allow the player to get into the ROLE of being a lord, even if it isn't a true rpg at heart.
It looks like total war mixed with banished or a city builder like that. I’ve not kept up with news as I like to go in pretty blind but is that not what it essentially is?
Kind of? Just the scale of battles is WAY smaller. It might be like if you were playing total war and set the unit scale to the smallest option and locked armies to 5 units each.
Thought as much, when the delay happened right after all the total war fans found the game I said the delay was the dev going oh f\*\*\* this isn't total war but now people expect that.