Medieval indie city builder game Manor Lords by one-man-dev Slavic Magic does a lot of things differently, from its gridless approach to city building or its more intricate and complex farming system. Fans of the genre will find many familiar mechanics and systems in Manor Lords, but some like the farming system with its reliance on proper crop rotation will play out a little differently than in other, similar games.
Manor Lords: All Commodities & How to Get Them
Commodities in Manor Lords are high-value items that can appease citizens and serve as valuable exports.
In Manor Lords the choice of crop type is an important consideration, as is where to grow specific crops and when to grow them. Let's take a look at the best crops to prioritize when farming in Manor Lords for both food and crafting materials production.
7 Flax
Flax can be grown in Manor Lords and processed into linen, which can be used for making clothes, an important commodity in Manor Lords. As settlements grow citizens require more advanced goods, and flax can be useful in their production. As part of a crop rotation system, or in regions where flax fertility is high, flax can make a good choice of crop.
It's a great supplement to other sources of material for clothing, but it takes up quite a bit of farming space and manpower which could be devoted to other kinds of production. A small flax field along with hides from hunting or burgage plot extensions should suffice.
6 Fallow
Not technically a crop, since a fallow field is a field purposely left empty, fallow fields are an important part of the farming life cycle in Manor Lords. Repeated cycles of farming can reduce the soil fertility of a particular farm plot, and crop rotation only helps so much.
The best and fastest way to regenerate lost soil fertility is by leaving a field fallow. Citizens will ignore a fallow field, and a fallow field can even be set from the field management window as an option for the crop rotation cycle.
5 Vegetables
Not a crop type growable on a farm field, vegetables are instead produced by extensions to burgage plots after purchasing them with regional wealth. Vegetables are a great choice because they provide an extra type of food production without taking up too much space.
Unlike some other farms of burgage plot extension, vegetables aren't a passive resource gain, but they offer a good amount of extra food and the additional food type is very welcome. Vegetables can be a little labor-intensive, but the space taken up by burgage plot extensions is minimal when compared with a much larger crop field.
4 Apples
Produced in the backyard extension to burgage plots when purchased for regional wealth by the player, apples are a good crop type which can provide a useful source of food. Adding an orchard to a burgage plot costs 50 regional wealth, but it's definitely worth it as apples can be used directly as food.
Manor Lords: All Food Types & How to Get Them
There are seven types of food in Manor Lords, each with its own method of production and procurement.
However, building an apple orchard isn't a quick fix solution as apple trees take three years to grow and have reduced production until mature. Still, apples don't need as much villager attention as vegetables, so they're a good pick. The ability to grow apple orchards is gated behind the development system, so it's worth paying attention to how many points have been earned and where they've been spent.
3 Wheat
Wheat is staple produce in Manor Lords and is the earliest and easiest way for a settlement to produce its own bread. An essential component in the bread production chain, wheat is a very good choice of crop for earlier in the game where wheat fertility allows.
Manor Lords: How To Get Flour & Make Bread
Getting flour to make bread is a critical path toward a prosperous settlement in Manor Lords. This guide details how to get these valuable resources.
A growing settlement usually can't rely on berries and hunting for too long, so wheat offers a good and consistent supply of materials to create bread. Wheat has fairly good yields even on smaller sized fields, so it makes sense to use early on. In regions without a heavy farming focus, wheat can be the most sensible crop to grow.
2 Barley
Barley is a fantastic choice of crop in Manor Lords because citizens have a need for ale. Barley is used to produce malt in the malthouse, which is used to produce ale in a brewery. Taverns need ale to function so a proper production chain is vital.
Citizens go through quite a lot of ale each month so once food production is stable and meeting demand, barley is a great pick - depending on soil fertility. But barley can be grown from the beginning of the game and doesn't have any quirks or oddities to its production, so it's easy to use.
1 Rye
An alternative to wheat for the production of flour is rye. As a crop in Manor Lords, it is gated behind the development system and requires development points to produce. It's absolutely worth producing though, since rye is heartier than wheat and a little more tolerant all-around, making its production simpler and easier once it's unlocked.
Since it can be used to produce flour, all the existing infrastructure such as windmills and communal ovens work with it, making it an easy pick when it comes choosing it as a crop. Its downside is that it does require investment into the development system to grow, but for farming-focused regions, rye comes out on top.
Manor Lords
- Released
- April 26, 2024
WHERE TO PLAY
- Developer(s)
- Slavic Magic
- Platform(s)
- PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S
- Genre(s)
- Strategy, City Builder
