Dipped into Manor Lords to see how it’s coming along. Game is in a decent spot overall with a lot of minor annoyances. You can make a stone castle now, although you have a limited number of parts. Production chains have been updated and new goods introduced since I played last, which I am quite enjoying. They also are redoing the settlement perk/specialization system into I think a more streamlined, but interesting one. Instead of piecemeal unlocking buildings or abilities, you choose from a variety of development cards representing the nature of your town at each level (only the first is implemented yet.) Each card has a set of bonuses and a malus, which I think is a fun way to encourage specialization and gives you different ways to consider what your particular region is best suited towards. I haven’t actually managed to progress to level 3 burgages in this version yet, so although I’ve been experimenting with the difficulty, the game is I think more challenging now. One interesting new challenge is on-map opponents. They’re not especially dynamic yet, but I did have a really massive and extended battle with one of them that resulted in over 300 dead by the end of it. The opponent then waited a year or more while I went into debt and neglected rebuilding my military trying to get a second settlement set up to automatically trade a bunch of required resources between it and my larger town. Just as I got everything set, they made another push for the territory and I was caught without a levy or money for mercenaries. I reloaded to try again and jacked my town’s taxes all the way up to afford some while prioritizing producing more spears and shields. We’ll see if it’s enough to win this next fight!

Most of my gripes with the game are bugs or fiddly UI elements and mixed organization. Probably my biggest irritant in the game right now is that logging certain areas produces broad swathes of brush and small trees that don’t grow or get cut, so just sit there indefinitely. You can clear them yourself by building over them (pastures work very well for this) or you can attempt to reforest the area, but the computer players do neither of these things, so their towns end up with a radius of this weird scrubland around them that just doesn’t look quite right. It seems like, at the least, these areas would be gone over for firewood at some point rather than felling giant oaks much further away.

But overall I think the game is a lot of fun and actually has a fairly compelling production chain management side with plenty of sinks for your surplus. Also gorgeous, also has a good soundtrack.