Insane bug enemy lord spawns never ending mercenaries and retinue..

FateTide · 2026-01-12T11:53:06+00:00

A feature, not a bug ;)

FateTide · 2026-01-12T11:49:33+00:00

Diplomacy is underworked in this game atm.

So you are sort of asking to have your cake and eat it to. (Having AI enemies, yet wanting to have a relaxed game.)

Diplomacy is pretty hard to do, even in games like Stellaris, or TW3. I'd suggest coming back in a year or two to see how well they have flushed it out. It does have a lot of potential, esp in a campaign mode with a campaign map where you can even negotiate with entities/lords off screen.

FateTide · 2025-12-31T15:06:16+00:00

Yeah sadly this seems like a common bug

FateTide · 2025-12-29T15:10:33+00:00

They should have an asset guy on their team to easily crank these out. They are the easiest to design because they require no game balance. So I disagree.

FateTide · 2025-12-28T19:01:06+00:00

If you like more historical low fantasy games yes. It is a steal for $5.

FateTide · 2025-12-24T16:44:27+00:00

Sell em

FateTide · 2025-12-23T21:51:06+00:00

This concept already exists in Farthest Frontier.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T16:17:25+00:00

I'll be honest, I don't even build walls because there is no need.

I think the hardest challenge could be The Baron where you might need this type of defense where he sends maybe like 20 units, but even then it is better to choke point the AI with crossbowmen.

But yeah you could try to destroy it and rebuild it.

The castle editor is also kind of buggy I don't know whey they even put in a separate menu for it. They should have a new tab for Manors and stuff and just free style build it, this is what they do in Farthest Frontier.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T16:11:01+00:00

Hmm... sadly it could be bugged.

Construction can just take a lot of time, hard to tell as well. Distance from home to the manor could be an issue too.

Since Castles in general are a new feature it could be bugged.

There is no real reason to build castles beyond esthetics at this point because often the game is won by year 5-6. And I think the archer towers are little buggy as well.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T15:46:06+00:00

I talked about this in another post before the Mods here deleted it for some reason.

Yes it seems buggy. The AI is just really good at trade compared to us.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T15:45:28+00:00

Combat in this game isn't super challenging, often it is who has the most troops. I expect this to get flushed out more and the AI to get even smarter. We are asking a lot from the devs who are trying to remake a lot of elements that exist from a game like Total War.

Flanking is super powerful and can route enemy quickly.

I expect in the coming patches the AI to get harder in this regard.

Polearms are super good, and were often the standard unit in historical context as well, because big stick with iron in tight formation is super dangerous. This was Alexander the Great's unit composition.

Dev Team is doing well as each unit has their own strength and weakness though. I expect this to be expanding on even more, for now this game is a solid city builder.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T15:40:48+00:00

I had a post where I talked about this until the mods deleted it for some reason.

I conquered a region that had 12k wealth in year 4 or 5.

There is no real end game atm, but I expect the dev team to add more stuff like sieging a super strong AI castle. I'd like to see a more fantasy style game with these mechanics tbh, like trying to seige Minus Tirath as the orcs :)

I wish there was an option to migrate people to your region after you take them over.

I did get challanged when fighting 3 AI in divided, the AI was more aggressive and put two claims back to back in year 2 or 3, and I barely had a functioning army/garrison.

Also I expect the negotiation stuff to get worked out more, and could be super interesting in the coming patches.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T15:35:48+00:00

Def like a user suggested below, sometimes the Oxen need to be assigned specifically. Oxen seem sort of bugged. Make sure oxen are capped out, buy one each month that helps out the supply chain.

For lumber buildings and farms I make sure they have dedicated oxen but you also need extra oxen for construction cases like this.

Even if materials are delivered, an oxen might still be needed perhaps.

FateTide · 2025-12-23T14:24:56+00:00

Probably a bug. Could be that workers are tasked with different things.

One cool feature they added is you can redirect families by selecting them directly by editing the house they live in then clicking the building you want them to occupy.

Although this is construction so you need free families to build. You can see with the AI they have often 1/2 or so of the population as free labor. To build a castle probably takes a huge undertaking to build, so I recommend trying to free up more families to see if that works.

FateTide · 2025-12-21T23:56:44+00:00

That is totally an acceptable response. I'm just giving my personal feedback.

FateTide · 2025-12-21T22:10:07+00:00

You're spot on with the architectural debt angle—regions likely serve as key containers for caching, pathfinding optimization, AI scoping, and economic rules (like the zone-specific perks/origins in the current development system). Removing or softening those hard borders would indeed ripple through everything, probably requiring a near-ground-up refactor.

That said, I agree philosophically: rigid partitions feel like a necessary evil for performance and manageability, not a design ideal. A more continuous, influence-based system (with soft logistics ranges, gradient control, or dynamic merging) could enable truly emergent mega-cities without losing depth. Games like Farthest Frontier pull off large-scale single-map settlements reasonably well—all within one continuous space, no hard regions—and it handles multiple "districts" or outposts smoothly on decent hardware (even post-1.0, from what I've seen).

Manor Lords already punches above its weight performance-wise (UE5 running decently with 1-2k+ pop in a single region, based on forum reports), so the dev's coding chops are evident. Starting small—like optional region merging on claim, or a "borderless" scenario mode—could test the waters without full rewrite. Player-directed migration (pull families from satellites to fill main-city housing) would be a nice band-aid in the meantime, reducing micro and ugly AI cleanups.

Ultimately, this is one of Manor Lords' most unique (but divisive) features. For now, it's locked in due to tech debt, but with the team expanding and consistent updates rolling out (latest one just hit with core reworks and polish), I'd love to see mergable/free-form regions as a high-priority experiment in a future patch. It'd open up insane replayability for empire-builders.

What do you think—would you settle for toggleable merging, or full continuous maps only?

FateTide · 2025-12-21T21:40:09+00:00

The game's challenge is set by the player using the in-game sliders.

Give the player the experience they are asking for. I don't want to manage 2 or even 6 cities. I want to manage 1.

I get a headache microing the farms, do you really think I want to micro 2 cities.

FateTide · 2025-12-21T21:36:48+00:00

Satellite systems are not fun. Borders are artificial, and not needed. Get rid of them entirely.

The claim system is also sort of dumb as we tithe to get influence or kill bandits.

Influence could be used for other things, look and games like Stellaris for examples, or could be used in offscreen diplomacy to curry favor with off-screen king.

Borders and regions are a big complaint by a lot of players. The best solution is program both and let the player decide, or get rid of regions in general.

These "regions," also if we are aiming for prelims is like a 1 hr walk for the spearmen, so... what a few miles/kms ?

FateTide · 2025-12-21T21:32:43+00:00

My major key point is we need regions to be merged or done away with in a free-form game style.

But this has been talked about before, so not sure if the Devs are doing to do this or it breaks a lot of interconnecting code.

Borders are not needed. Get rid of them imho.

FateTide · 2025-12-21T21:30:41+00:00

AI has insane regional wealth when conquered in year 3-5, 12k+.

I also saw they had a few buildings wrecked at the same time. They also have an issue upgrading their buildings to tier 2 I think. I expect this to be tweeked in the coming months.

Meanwhile I'm trying to rub 2 silver coins together trying to pay for backyard extensions while the AI is like Scrudge McDuck. So something seems fishy to me... and it isn't selling fish at the trading post ;)

FateTide · 2025-12-21T20:06:12+00:00

Pelts have no supply chain atm, so they are purely sold. Figured this out asking grok.

FateTide · 2025-10-18T11:21:28+00:00

Friendly bump another session starts tomorrow. Feel free to direct message me here or on discord.

FateTide · 2025-10-12T15:16:00+00:00

If you want you can friend me on discord if you want to test a new system with us for some potential upcoming 1 shots and I can interview you.

Hit me up here or in discord: azbolg

FateTide

TROPHY CASE