A new update for the medieval city-builder and real-time tactics game Manor Lords is here, bringing with it some major changes and much-needed fixes. The game was a smash hit when it was released into Steam Early Access in April, but players have since found many frustrating issues with the title, providing heaps of feedback that the dev team has taken into consideration.
Along with plenty of bug fixes, the largest change comes in the form of an upgraded engine. Having previously run on Unreal Engine 4, Manor Lords now runs on Unreal Engine 5, eliminating tons of bugs and crashes and improving the game’s resolution.
Additionally, fishing ponds will now spawn around the world, and food will now spoil, adding some more difficulty to the title.
Check out the full list of changes in Version 0.7.987 of Manor Lords below:
Major Changes
-Upgraded Manor Lords to run on Unreal Engine 5:
a) A lot of old engine bugs and crashes should no longer occur, including random crashes during loading a saved game or certain resolutions breaking the game
b) [Experimental] A new “virtual shadow map” system that produces very sharp, high resolution shadows
d) New volumetric clouds and atmosphere rendering
e) GPU based LOD for Instanced Components
-Added a trade overview in the development screen which lists all the previous transactions done by the region
-Food spoilage mechanic:
a) Each food type decays at a certain rate per month, for instance fish decay faster than bread
b) Certain buildings affect spoilage, for instance storing in a granary is better than storing in the workplace’s pantry
C) Weather events can affect spoilage rates (droughts make food spoil quicker)
-Fishing:
a) Added a new resource node: Fishing pond,
b) Made so that the ponds freeze in the winter
c) Added a new development branch: Winter fishing, that enables fishing all year round
e) Added a new food resource: Fish
f) Added a new workplace: Fisherman’s hut, with new job (fisherman)
-Crossbows:
a) Added a new military resource: Crossbows (made in bowyer workshop)
b) Added new unit types: Light Mercenary Crossbowmen and Militia Crossbowmen
c) Added a new ranged low tier mercenary group: “The huntsmen”
-Butchers
a) Implemented the butcher artisan conversion. Butchers take surplus sheep and lamb and convert them into meat
b) Added new deposit (salt) and readded the salt resource which is mined with the surface/deep mine
c) Added a new resource: Sausage (1 salt + 1 meat = 2 sausage). It is made in the Butcher workshop and has much lower spoilage rate than Meat.
-Added a system of production limits and reserves for workplaces crafting goods
-Removed the individual limits (construction limit, hunting limit) and rerouted everything to the new reserve UI in the “advanced” tab. This way, Fisherman huts now also get a fishing limit to avoid overfishing.
Gameplay & Balance
-Adjusted deposit spawning, should be (per region): 1 clay, 1 iron, 1 deer, 1 berries, 1 stone + 1 random, then either 2 of them or 1 and farming fertility get promoted to a rich deposit
-Brought rich deposits closer to the starting camp on first spawn (if possible) to make the starts a little bit more balanced
-Added a Pantry to the Malthouse
-Malthouse now actually requires refueling
-Advanced Skinning development branch doubles the Meat from butchers as well
-First butcher workshop built will set a sheep & lamb reserve automatically to a half of the population in order to avoid butchering the whole flock
Minor Changes
-Rewrote the random node algorithm to reduce cases where it fails to find an appropriate spot and spawns an object in a wrong location (eg. spawning a bandit camp on top of a pond)
-Added multiple paragraph breaks to wiki descriptions
-A setting was added to display Resource Node (Deposit) icons in construction mode only.
-Made “advanced” tab highlight every time an artisan workshop is created so that the player notices the new settings of production focus and reserve for butchers
-[Experimental] A new way of spawning bandit camps that is more randomized and should now avoid spawning them on top of ponds
-[Experimental] Moved production focus to the “advanced” building panel tab and livestock assignment to the “livestock” building panel tab
-Added missing Lambs icon
-Wiki text and tooltip updates
-Fish pond water level should lower during droughts
-Added drought impact to the spoilage tooltip
-Added new coat of arms symbols
-Added new character portraits
-Lowered the interface scale on smaller resolutions to reduce the top region panel overlapping with the lord’s panel & screen edge.
-Improved collision avoidance if two characters are already extremely near collision distance or in collision
Optimization
-Added advanced culling for transform updates (should make high population sessions run much faster)
-[Experimental] Fireplace light simulation LOD added
-[Experimental] Optimization of surface checks and fire reaction checks
-[Experimental] Optimized unit rotation smoothing far form the camera
-[Experimental] Ground height checks optimizations
-[Experimental] Locomotion velocity & animation speed calculation optimizations
-Unit static collision system optimizations
-Grass system optimizations
-Significant crowd animation system optimizations
-[Experimental] Distributed unit motion calculations over multiple frames to make the framerate smoother
-Optimized calculation of push forces in combat
-Reduced stutter after loading a savefile by moving the loading of the construction assets into the loading screen (in consequence making the loading screen a bit longer)
-Pathfinding optimizations
-Optimized memory usage
Crashfixes
-Fixed a crash when the player deleted a squad by RMB during the rallying tool being active with that squad
-Fixed a crash when relocating a forager with a herbs garden while one of the workers has a task related to the garden and then reassigning the worker in the relocated building
-Fixed a crash for saves that had a bugged 0 yield field because the player placed such a narrow plot it couldn’t be triangulated properly
Bugfixes
-Fixed the deer not migrating back to their lair location if the camera is far due to optimization introduced in 0.7.975
-Coat of arms editor “field E” not displaying text properly
-Fixed saving erasing ownership data of items in the inventory, leading for instance to woodcutters transporting log pieces to the storehouse
-Fixed: Rounding up influence value shown in UI may give an impression that claiming territory is not working correctly
-Fixed: Placing a road over carts permanently remove them from game
-Fixed: Limiting Farmhouse’s work area does not prevent workers from gathering already harvested crops from fields
-Fixed: After destroying the well, buildings do not lose water access
-Fix attempt for militia potentially not unequipping their military gear if they are disbanded while still inside their houses, leading to “animData not found” errors for civilian actions happening when dressed in military type body
-Fixed bloomers overrefueling their workplaces
-Fixed castle modules costing too many resources (To confirm whether it was already present in the public build)
-Fixed the extension/conversion sound signatures not applying the volume settings
-Added a temp workaround for snowflakes not displaying on AMD GPUs
-Fixed black shrubs occurring during a drought
-Fixed “snap to roads” checkbox not doing anything when placing plots
-Added a fix attempt for players being to place fields that are almost self intersecting, leading to them being unselectable and/or having 0% fertility
-Fixed “save game” and “load game” header texts getting mixed up in the load menu
-Fixed deer getting stuck if bandits are near
-Fixed deer getting scared of birds and running away, potentially forever (fun one)
Cosmetics
-One-handed combo animation polish and two-handed idle pose polish
-[Experimental] Changed back the deposit icons to be all flat-shaded for unification
-Made drought transitions smoother
-Added turning animations for oxen so that they appear less stiff when moving
-Spring color palette tweaks to overall appear less yellowish
-Main menu scene reworked for better historical authenticity
-Two-handed combat animations cleanup (attack-defend-attack-defend combos)
-Further Field material art direction & specular variation
-More precise height calculation on landscape deforming meshes like mines
Manor Lords is a city-builder set in 14th-century Franconia, including real-time tactical warfare. Players can choose from three modes: Rise to Prosperity, Restoring the Peace, or On the Edge. Rise to Prosperity and On the Edge emphasize city growth and conquest, while Resoring the Peace gives players a more balanced gameplay experience.
Manor Lords was released in early access on April 26. It was the most anticipated game on Steam at the time, with over there million wishlists.
