Manor Lords combat guide

✓ At A Glance

• Import weapons and shields to start
• Have a varied army
• Equip your soldiers with armor
• Monitor morale and fatigue
• Abuse the Backstabbing feature
• Hire Mercenaries to plug any gaps in your forces
• The Retinue is OP

Alongside a hearty main course of city planning and building, Manor Lords bundles in robust real-time combat that feels like a pared down take on what you’d find in Age of Empires or games of that ilk. Depending on the difficulty setting and scenario, bandits will set up camps and raid your settlement, while territorial claims can sometimes involve taking on a rival baron on the battlefield. Our Manor Lords combat guide should help you navigate the fog of war and come out the other side with your army more or less intact.

Import weapons and shields to start

To produce the weapons and shields needed for your army, you’ll need to have level 2 burgage plots with the Blacksmith’s Workshop (spears and sidearms) and Joiner’s Workshop (shields) extension, a decent stock of Iron Slabs and Planks. When you’re mainly worrying about having enough fuel and food to survive the winter in the early game, that can feel unrealistic. Don’t hesitate to spend a little Regional Wealth to import some spears, sidearms, small shields, and large shields to at least get a unit of Spear Militia or Militia Footmen up and running.

Mix it up

Though Manor Lords doesn’t have a unit counter system like many other real-time strategy games, a varied fighting force that’s positioned well can make the difference on the battlefield. We recommend having a mix of ranged and melee units, ideally two Archer Militia, two Spear Militia, one Milita Footmen, and one Polearm Militia unit. With that type of force, the melee units will encase most of the damage and keep the archers protected while they fire arrows at enemy forces. When taking on bandit troops, you’ll often find that two units of archers and one melee unit is enough to defeat a force twice the size.

Armor up

If you’re going all in on your military, make sure you set up a solid armor production chain. This starts by investing Development Points (obtained when you hit the next Settlement Level) in the Basic Armormaking, Advanced Armormaking, and Master Armormaking research in the tech tree, which allow you to produce Helmets, Mail Armor, and Plate Armor, respectively.

To produce armor, you’ll need one or several level 2 burgage plots with their extensions set to Amorer’s Workshop. Armor is made from Iron Slabs, so make sure you have a Mining Pit over an Iron Ore deposit and a Bloomery to turn that ore into slabs. Once the Armorer gets to work, militia soldiers will automatically equip helmets and armor, much like they do with weapons and shields. Armor vastly improves their resilience and survivability in battle, making them fight harder for longer. This becomes especially important during the last fight of the Restore the Peace scenario where you’re outnumbered.

Keep an eye on morale and fatigue

Military units in Manor Lords are governed by what’s called Effectiveness, which is a multiplier to attack, defence, and block capabilities based on several metrics, including cohesion, surrounded, soaking, climbing, fatigue, and morale. Fighting down hill means enemy units are hampered by Climbing, Soaking affects troops when it’s raining, Surrounded can be used on enemies by encircling them with your troops, and so on. Most of them are very situational and depend on the way the battle plays out, but you can game fatigue and morale to a certain extent to ensure they are high whenever you start a fight.

Fatigue is self-explanatory and to keep it nice and high, make sure your troops haven’t just run across the entire map before fighting. As for morale, this is governed by the overall Approval rating of the settlement where a militia unit is rallied (in other words, drafted). To keep morale high, we recommend getting your Approval to 75% or above before going to war.

Attack from behind

Manor Lords’ combat has a feature called Backstabbing, which essentially removes an enemies block ability if they are attacked from behind. Abuse this by keeping an enemy busy with one unit, then flanking them to get behind them with another. Backstabbing applies regardless of whether you’re attacking with a melee or ranged unit, so don’t hesitate to get behind enemy lines for quick wins on the battlefield.

Don’t forget about Mercenaries

In the early game, setting up the production chains required to pump out weapons and shields, not to speak of armor, can be tricky. This can leave you very exposed to bandit attacks. But, there’s always the possibility to hire in a band of Mercenaries more than happy to fight on your side in exchange for a monthly payment of Regional Wealth. Unless you’re pumping out helmets and plate armor for your own soldiers to equip, Mercenaries are better equipped and far better fighters. The monthly pricing really racks up over time, so we only recommend hiring Mercenaries while you build up your own forces or when you’ve got a particularly large force to contend with, like the final fight in the Restore the Peace scenario.

The lord’s Retinue

When you first put down your manor, you’ll receive a skeleton force called a Retinue. It’s a small, heavily armed gang of lower nobles and family members that serve you, the titular manor lord. Loyalty is synonymous with fighting prowess in Manor Lords and they are a valuable addition to your army. You can even increase the number of soldiers in your Retinue by tapping the Retinue Customization paintbrush button. They cost Treasury though, which is hard to come by, but it’s well worth the spend.