The one unit that matters
Manor Lords has no abstract "population". It has families. Each family eats one food and burns up to two fuel a month (double in winter), lives in one burgage plot, and works one job. The family's level equals its house's tier, T1 through T3. Your men double as the militia: lose them in battle and their jobs sit vacant until the family replaces them, so every casualty is also an economic wound.
Keep a family unassigned at all times. Unassigned families are the only ones who construct buildings and guide oxen. A village where everyone has a job is a village where nothing new gets built.
When a T2 house takes an artisan workshop, that family leaves the labor pool permanently and crafts one good instead. Artisans still pay wealth and still fight. But you can't reassign them, so convert houses deliberately, not eagerly.
§ II — The top bar, decodedSix numbers to watch
Unassigned families
Your construction capacity. Never let this hit zero.
Approval
Growth engine and militia morale. ≥50% grows, ≥75% grows fast, below 50% families leave.
Public order
Low order permanently turns your own citizens to banditry.
Wealth vs. treasury
Regional wealth imports goods and upgrades plots; your treasury hires retinue and settles new regions.
Supplies
Months of food and fuel left. The number that kills. Home fuel use doubles in winter.
Total vs. surplus
5 planks with a 5-plank building queued shows total 5, surplus 0. Build against surplus.
Flexible plots reward big rectangles
Burgage plots, fields, pastures and marketplaces are drawn free-form with four corners. Plot size decides how many houses fit. It also decides whether a plot earns a backyard extension (vegetables, chickens, goats) or an accommodation extension (two families in one plot, the cheapest housing in the game). Big enough plots get both.
Backyards are not equal. Vegetable gardens scale with plot size: bigger is better, but slower to work. Chickens and goats ignore size, so keep those plots small. Mark the plot "front" somewhere accessible; a road is ideal but not required.
Storage matters more than beginners think: granaries take food, storehouses take everything else, and their workers run the market stalls that feed your plots. Goods rot in bad weather without roofs. Build storage early and everywhere.
§ IV — Your first yearThe calendar that keeps you alive
Spring
Hitching post → ox → logging camp → granary → storehouse → one plot. Two families on logs, one each on storage, the rest building.
Summer
Up to six plots, then a well and food collection. Rich berry or meat deposits are a free growth engine.
Autumn
Firewood collector, and bank the winter stock: six months of food and fuel by October.
Winter
Nobody starves, nobody freezes, idle hands cut next year's timber. Imported cattle now eat Animal Feed monthly, or die.
Useful keys: X/Z speed time up/down (to ×16), ctrl+C cinematic mode, ctrl+shift+1 saves a camera, shift+1 recalls it.