Elie Gould
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A player has already managed to reach peak medieval suburbia in Manor Lords, with an outrageous population of 3,220 residents and just one market to sustain everyone, and somehow, it’s all working out well.
Reddit user desman2k6 posted a screenshot of just a section of their Manor Lords metropolis to r/ManorLords. “The aim here was not to build beautifully, but to push the game to the limit,” desman2k6 says in the thread. “In the end, the bottleneck will be the food and the trading post because they are not replenished quickly enough!”
It’s incredibly impressive to have a Manor Lords town with over 3,000 residents, especially with all the problems we’ve previously seen with trader traffic and harsh export and import prices. Feeding and organising a town of this size is no small feat. I thought that I was doing well with my small town of just over 400 people—it’s always good to be humbled every now and then.
But I can see how desman2k6 was able to achieve this ridiculously high population. In Manor Lords, you have a few options when building burgage plots for prospective civilians. There’s the simple plot that’ll just house one family, the burgage plot plus a workshop extension for farming or making goods, and then a burgage plot plus a workshop and expanded space for two families. Plus, once you upgrade your burgage plot to level 3, it adds a living space for an extra family. These add-ons mean that you can maximise efficiency from each plot, providing food for the family that lives there or squeezing more people into a smaller space.
Clearly, desman2k6 made ample use of these techniques as they have 1,055 plots at level 3, which houses 3,165 out of the 3,220 population. Like most city builders, success comes from maximising the efficiency and productivity of your citizens. But that being said, having just one market is a bold move, even with the additional food that burgage plots can provide.
“I only use one market with a maximum of 169 stalls,” desman2k6 says. “I supplied vegetables, berries, and bread myself for a long time (up to about 1500 inhabitants). At a certain point, you have to buy from the trading post! The next point is that warehouses and food stores have space right next to the market. So that only short routes are available for supplies! I have also specialized in them. For example, one warehouse is just for firewood, and one warehouse is just for clothing, so it only takes care of this supply. It is best if only these warehouses and food stores have a stall at the market.”
This really is next-level planning and management, and things should only get easier. The new Manor Lords patch helps soften trading tariffs and traffic jams caused by busy villagers ferrying goods to and from the market, among other great fixes and additions, so hopefully, that’s one area that desman2k6 won’t have to worry about when it comes to planning out the future of their megacity.