Manor Lords: How Market Supply and Demand Works

Manor Lords: How Market Supply and Demand Works

While this guide is intended for playing on Challenging difficulty, its content can benefit any play-through. I’ll keep this as a simple numbered list instead of a drawn out essay for ease of information access. You are here for the data, not a rant. Information is subject to change as Early Access develops.

Basic Mechanics

• 1) Markets have unlimited range, but closer bugages get resources first if there is not enough for everyone. Plan for the burgages you want to get to level 3 to be the ones closest to market.
• 2) Whether or not you have enough of a resource is PER INDIVIDUAL RESOURCE. For example; having a market stall with enough coal for half your pop and enough firewood for half will NOT work. That will result in the closest half of your burgages having both coal and firewood and the other half having none.
• 3) Having the goods is not the same as them being available in a market stall. Having 500 firewood doesn’t matter if none of it is in the market. Having the resources but not meeting needs means you have a logistics problem. Assign more families to granaries and storage. It’s best to assign families that live in burgages with vegetable gardens. There is only one of the 3 family members with a cart to work logistics, so the others can be full time gardeners.
• 4) If you are still having trouble meeting needs despite having tons of resources but have extra population, construct extra granaries/storehouses that only allow one specific resource. That will ensure a worker there sets up a stall with enough of that one resource to meet a need. Once your burgage count is over 50 you will need an additional family working each of those granaries/storehouses.
• 5) You can still get a need benefit from coal but it’s easier if you make sure it is not in the same storehouse as your firewood.
• 6) Foods are eaten in a specific order, starting with berries. The exception to this is if a market stall is set up that does not have access to them (ex: from a granary where berries are prohibited).
• 7) If you put extra people on harvesting berries while they are still growing you can amass hundreds and they will act as a buffer to the foods you produce less of. That will help maintain food variety since the other foods wont be eaten as much.
• 8) If you want to sell a resource but it’s one that is helping meet burgage needs, ensure that the minimum surplus you maintain is enough to supply that need in the market. As your population grows you will need to increase the amount you maintain in surplus.
• 9) Since meeting needs is a priority based on distance to market, don’t put burgages you don’t plan to upgrade near the market (chicken coops and goats). They will take up resources and make it harder to upgrade burgages you want to be artisans. Vegetable gardens do benefit from extra families and internal storage space, so they are a non-artisan burgage worth tiering up. The extra families are also not tied to a job, making for more freely assignable workers.
• 10) Don’t tier up burgages too early. It will increase the needs you have to fulfill and tank your happiness if you can’t. That will tank your population growth. One of the first burgages you should tier up would be the brewery, so you can immediately meet the entertainment need that upgrading it will require. You don’t want to do this until after you already have some barley. If you don’t have the spare population to work farms and dedicate to things like producing clothing, as well as enough to handle logistics at granaries and storehouses, then you are not ready to tier 2 anything. If you have weapon needs before then, seek them out at the trader.

Bonus Tips

• 1) You can upgrade 2 burgages to tier 2 just to meet the requirement for the development point, then pick the Better Deals development and destroy those burgages immediately. That will give you access to everything you need via trade without increasing the happiness needs. This is the most important development selection you can make.
• 2) For the same reasons listed in Basic Mechanics #10, don’t build your first burgages until after you have basic needs met (church, firewood, market, well, leather, food). The only need before you build the burgages is housing. Once they are built all the other needs kick in and your happiness will plummet below 25 and your game will end before it starts. This is primarily for challenging difficulty where need requirements and punishment are more severe.

Market Efficient Large Town Layout

Think of these as general suggestions rather than hard and fast rules. It’s a game, so play it however you want. This method is focused on efficiency, but you can mix in some style without sacrificing much benefit. The following is a mid-to-late game goal to achieve by the time you have 50-70 families. With enough spare workforce it’s not difficult to remodel a town layout to improve efficiency, so don’t stress this too much in the beginning, though having a blueprint in mind as you expand can save you a lot of trouble later.

• 1) Try to make your market central and a reasonable long-term size (or at least the reserved area for it). Roughly the size of a lumberyard, so you can place one, trace around it with a road, then delete it and use the space for the market. It can really be whatever shape you want, I’m just trying to give you an idea of ideal size.
• 2) Granaries (4) go on the side of the market that is closest to food sources and storehouses (3) go on the other side. Have individual granaries, each dedicated to 1 of your 4 most produced non-berry food types. If one type runs low, adding berries to it and another family will reduce consumption of the other food and maintain supply. Berries are your main food buffer since they get eaten first when in the same market stall. 4 granaries with 1 family each is better than 1 granary with 4 families.
• 3) Place burgages with vegetable gardens on the other side of the granaries and have the families work in those granaries.
• 4) Tavern goes on another side of the market and an extended housing burgage between it and the nearest storehouse. Use that burgage as a brewery with a malthouse behind said storehouse. Save space behind the tavern for a 2nd extended housing burgage that you will need once your population goes beyond what 1 brewery can supply.
• 5) Production/artisans go behind the other storehouses. Limit the variety of items in each storehouse to maximize the quantity of each item going to market for meeting needs. Don’t have more than one item from the same category allowed in the same storehouse (note the coal and firewood example in the previous section). An example would be a storehouse for shoes and coal and another for leather and firewood, with 2 families working each. This will mean a different family assigned for each demanded resource and a another for production resources kept in a 3rd storehouse (only clay, tiles, iron, ingots, barley, malt, planks, and hides. The rest don’t need storehouse space.). Specializing storage in this way allows you to shift production workers around without eliminating essential market stalls and prioritizes need fulfillment.
• 6) Place burgages for goats behind your artisan burgages and chicken coops behind vegetable farms (furthest burgages from the market since they don’t need to be upgraded). Workers from the storehouses, malthouses, lumber, firewood, etc will come from goat herding families, while families with chicken coops will be builders, farmers, windmill workers, and communal bakers. Since these will be your assignable workforce, plan to have a lot of each of them. These will be over half of your burgages. Use only single family burgages to maximize the number of eggs and hides per family. The goal here is to have families live close to where they work, and what they supply close to where it needs to go.
• 7) If you pick the Orchardry Development, place one large orchard burgage on the final side of your market. Assign the families to granaries just like vegetable burgages. If you don’t pick Orchardry Development, this would be the ideal location for your trader. Otherwise just place it close to your production/storage for items you intend to sell.