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 and 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), while chickens and goats ignore size entirely — 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.