New Manor Lords update will rework dozens of the city builder's major systems

The last time we heard from Greg 'Slavic Magic' Styczen and the rest of the Manor Lords team, it was April. Pathfinding, the camera system, the user interface, and finer details like stone mechanics and castle pieces were all tweaked or overhauled, marking one of the most significant updates in what was then the game's history. Since then, the medieval city builder and spiritual cousin to the likes of Cities Skylines and Age of Empires 2 has been more or less silent. But now, Styczen confirms that a new Manor Lords update is indeed on the way, and that it is going to transform several of the game's fundamentals.

More than a year since it was first released, Manor Lords is still doing well, boasting 'very positive' reviews from Steam users and thousands of daily players. Some fans, however, may have been anticipating a greater number of updates - smaller patches, tweaks, and fixes at more regular intervals. Styczen explains that rather than working on these kinds of incremental changes, the team behind one of the best city-building games has been focusing on dozens of major overhauls.

"I know it's been a while since the last update, probably longer than most of you expected," Styczen says. "I wanted to take a moment to explain what's going on and show a bit of what we've been working on behind the scenes. I know you've been waiting a long time, and the reason for the delay is pretty simple. We're overhauling a lot of systems at once.

"It's not just a new feature or two. It's a full rework of how things like buildings, production chains, and environmental interactions function. Because we're working on all these big changes, we haven't been able to put out smaller patches. They would make things messy or break stuff that's still being worked on."

Several significant changes are coming to Manor Lords. Building cards are being reworked and there is a new map called Divided, where the east and west regions are separated by a mountain range. New shop fronts and artisan workstations are in development, and Styczen says the team has been "experimenting" with the possibility of see-through fortifications, to allow greater visibility and functionality.

The biggest change however is to the affinity system. Styczen says that the Manor Lords team has been trying to create a framework that has more complexity and that is also unique from other city builders or strategy games.

"We wanted a more in-depth relational system between buildings and other buildings, as well as between buildings and their environments," the Manor Lords creator explains. "We prototyped what building games usually do - effects applied in a radius, or in specific zones - but found out that the Manor Lords flexible plot system doesn't play very well with placing stuff in areas, especially when they are circular.

"Fitting rectangular plots into circles is not pleasant, and it reduces the creativity the player has. The solution we settled on is a system based on areas of different environmental types. The environments we have so far are meadow, woodland, farmland, rural, and urban. Buildings have different affinities. For instance, apiaries will benefit from a large woodland area in the region.

"Experimentally, we made it even more complex," Styczen continues, "and some buildings can buff the affinities of other buildings. For instance, having apiaries can increase the existing effect that pollination orchards get from meadows. For another example, placing houses or other structures will also increase urban affinity. As you chop down forests, your woodland affinities will start disappearing, so if you value forest-based industries, you may want to take care of your forests more."

While the next Manor Lords update will make major revisions to these core systems - and as such, its development time has been lengthy - Styczen concludes that the team will move to a different release cadence in the future.

"The plan is that once this update is out, we'll be able to shift to smaller, more frequent updates going forward," Styczen says. "That's something we couldn't really do before, but we've got a bigger team now, which should make that possible. First, though, we need to get this big update out. That's the focus, and we're working hard to make the wait worth it."

If you're a big Manor Lords fan, you might also want to try some of the best medieval games. Alternatively, make your idyllic creations look their very prettiest with the best gaming monitors available right now.

You can also follow us on Google News for daily PC games news, reviews, and guides, or join our community Discord to stay in the know.