Huge Manor Lords update blesses the strategy game with three fresh maps, two new modes, and a partridge in a pear tree, probably

Merry Christmas, Manor Lords players - a huge new update has just arrived, packed with fixes, improvements, new content, and more options for building and growing your ultimate medieval city. If you've been snooping around Manor Lords' beta branch for the last couple of months, you'll have potentially seen or even tested some of today's new additions already. But this colossal update brings everything together and drops it into the main build of the game, giving one of the best strategy games a welcome refresh.

When it comes to setting up the Manor Lords experience you want, the new update gives you some extra preset modes and a handy new feature. The two new modes are Duel, a 1v1 experience where it's just you and a rival family vying for dominance on a map, and Fractured Realm, a "four lord free-for-all." Across all modes, you can also make use of a new setting that lets you pick starting points on a map for both your clan and any rivals. If you want to increase the chances of early conflict and territory control, you can squeeze yourself right next to the enemy, or alternatively you can spawn yourself as far away as possible in your own corner of the map.

The map pool also expands with today's update, with three new areas now available. Devil's Hill, Lake Lemm, and Jagged Cliffs all debut.

There are loads of new or reworked features and mechanics arriving, too. You've got more flexibility when it comes to commanding and moving your forces around castles - there's a new system for positioning units on walls, and they can now climb up ladders to reach higher vantage points and upper levels. Castle gates can also now be opened and closed individually, and each individual module you use to build your fortress can now be upgraded to level two.

There are also some new jobs and building types. Your clan can now benefit from a Quarry, Stonemason, or Lime Kiln, and they each come with new connected resources: Rough Stone, Dressed Stone, and Mortar, respectively.

Another interesting change involves environment types - now, each region is divided up into different classifications of land, such as Meadow, Woodland, Farmland, Urban, and Rural. Different buildings can now earn an Affinity with their relevant environment type - for example, "the Animal Pen has a 'Pannage' Affinity which decreases the time to yield for Pig Pens relative to the Woodland area."

There are so many other changes to core systems and small but significant additions buried in this update, too. Reworks to food and regional development, tweaks to the yield system, fishing nodes on rivers, a maintenance requirement for workplaces, and so much more can be found in the full patch notes here. Put the coffee on and pour yourself one before diving into these, they're pretty hefty.

The new Manor Lords update is now live in the main version of the game. Remember to backup your save files and uninstall any mods you've got running before updating the game, just to be safe.

For a period in 2025, it felt like Manor Lords was slipping a little - it's small team has a lot on its plate, but there was definitely a lack of new content and meaningful updates for a long while. Well, it's now seeing out the year in style, and hopefully even more big things are on the way in 2026.