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Without Influence in Manor Lords, you’ll have to put your ambitions of territorial conquest to rest and contend yourself with growing a single region. That’s no fun in our book and more critically, won’t allow you to beat the Restore the Peace scenario, which requires conquering neighbouring regions to win. As with so many aspects of Manor Lords, honing in on what does and what doesn’t generate Influence isn’t all that obvious.
We’ll walk you through how to increase Influence in Manor Lords, which works a bit differently to Regional Wealth and Treasury, one being your regional coffer and the other your personal wealth as feudal lord.
Understanding Influence in Manor Lords
Manor Lords is basically a metric of your standing on the map, accrued in several ways as we’ll detail further down. You can check your current stock of Influence by hovering over the first icon in the top right of the screen next to your lord’s avatar. Its sole purpose other than bragging rights is that it’s used to stake claims to regions on the map that aren’t currently under your control.
Each regional claim costs 1,000 Influence and can be triggered from the Map screen (tap the map icon on the toolbar at the bottom of the screen). Click on the region you’re interested in, then hit Claim with Influence at the bottom of the screen. If there are no contesting barons, you’ll claim it automatically, otherwise prepare to call up your army as you’ll need to hit the battlefield or bribe your way out of conflict.
Increasing Influence in Manor Lords
The single most efficient way to increase Influence in Manor Lords is to first get your village up to the Small Village Settlement Level, which unlocks the Manor building. From there construct a Church and a Manor. Once the Manor is up and running, click on the building, then on Taxes. Here, you’ll see a list of taxes you can set to rake in Treasury and, more importantly, Influence.
The Tithe tax (second in the list of taxes) will send surplus Food stocks to the Church and give you a steady source of Influence in return. Tithe doesn’t have an impact on overall Approval unlike other taxes like Land Tax, so we recommend setting it at between 10-20%. You could push it higher but you risk dipping a little too enthusiastically into your Food stockpiles with disastrous consequences down the line. As we note in Manor Lords tips and tricks, Food is your most valuable resource alongside Fuel.
Aside from the Tithe tax, there are several other ways to increase Influence in Manor Lords. Firstly, every time you raise your Settlement Level, you’ll receive a generous helping of Influence. Settlement Level requires meeting certain housing criteria, specifically a set number of different level burgage plots.
Next, defeating bandit armies in combat (only available on the Restore the Peace and On the Edge scenarios) grants you Influence. Furthermore, after defeating a bandit camp, you’ll have the option to send pillaged goods to either your personal coffers or the nearest settlement. We recommend choosing the settlement option as this gives you a big bag of Regional Wealth. Lastly, upgrading your Wooden Church to a Small Stone Church also gives you a small bump to Influence.
The tooltip that pops up when you hover over your Influence also hints at Policies awarding Influence. But, as far as we can tell, there are no available policies that affect Influence in the current Early Access build, so one to look out for as Slavic Magic pushes out fresh updates in the months and years to come.
