Manor Lords nearly let you fight rebelling villagers, but the city builder’s dev decided against it as “something felt off with rallying militia to fight your own villagers”
“I remember testers making fun that they are basically torching their own homes ‘cause food variety was too low”
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The creator of Steam’s chart-topping city builderManor Lordshas revealed that a scrapped rebellion system that let you fight off your own villagers to quell an uprising had been trialed in-game.
The mechanic was “prototyped and discarded”, creator Slavic Magic said onTwitter, responding to a query about settler approval scores from userScarface9876. “Something felt off with rallying militia to fight your own villagers, like it wasn’t satisfying, and I remember testers making fun that they are basically torching their own homes ‘cause food variety was too low.”
As it stands currently in Early Access, not meeting your villagers’ needs and allowing your approval rating to drop below a 50% benchmark results in settlers packing up and leaving. It’s an annoying consequence, albeit not an inherently catastrophic one, since it’s fairly easy to keep yourManor Lords peoplehappy and earn their approval once you have the right structures in place.
Having heightened consequences for slacking in that regard, as suggested by Scarface9876, would certainly up the ante when it comes to creating pressure on the player to right their wrongs. Still, with yourManor Lords militiacomprising actual townspeople, it would be pretty strange to rally your troops to fight against themselves – though I’m sure a paid group of mercenaries or your personal lordly retinue would have no problem with giving those peasants what-for.
Manor Lords is still in Early Access on Steam and Xbox Game Pass for PC, so who knows if the rebellion mechanic might find its way back into the game for us to try out ourselves someday?
Manor Lords is shaping up to be one of thebest 4X gamesalready, but here’s a list of the very best when it comes to sprawling tactical sims.
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Jasmine is a staff writer at GamesRadar+. Raised in Hong Kong and having graduated with an English Literature degree from Queen Mary, University of London in 2017, her passion for entertainment writing has taken her from reviewing underground concerts to blogging about the intersection between horror movies and browser games. Having made the career jump from TV broadcast operations to video games journalism during the pandemic, she cut her teeth as a freelance writer with TheGamer, Gamezo, and Tech Radar Gaming before accepting a full-time role here at GamesRadar. Whether Jasmine is researching the latest in gaming litigation for a news piece, writing how-to guides for The Sims 4, or extolling the necessity of a Resident Evil: CODE Veronica remake, you’ll probably find her listening to metalcore at the same time.
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