Single Malt Strategy: Manor Lords - First Impressions | Episode 84 - Single Malt Strategy

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello, everybody, Welcome back toepisode number eighty four of the single Malt
Strategy Podcast. I'm the historical gamer, but you can call me Matt.
In today's podcast, we are goingto be changing our format up just a
little bit. That's because today's episodeis going to be focusing on one of
the most anticipated games of all ofours for twenty twenty four, and rather

(00:20):
than spend an hour talking about allthe different things we've been playing, we
really just wanted to jump into thetopic. That means, of course,
we're going to be talking about thenew game being developed by Slavic Magic published
by Hooded Horse. That game beingManner Lords, a strategy and city builder
which takes place in the medieval erain Europe. Joining me for this episode

(00:44):
is my trustee co host Tortuga Power. How are you doing today, Tortuga,
I'm doing great, considering we're talkingabout Hooded Horse, which is I'm
sure a shock for everyone my favoritepublisher right now. Yeah, I mean
they've been they've been doing some greatthings. But in addition to Tortuga,
we've also got wolf Pack three fourfive once again. How you doing,
wolf doing good? Thanks for havingme on the pod once more, and

(01:07):
we also have last but not leastfinished. Yeah, or how are you
doing finish? I'm doing good.Thanks for having me around, Matt.
You're welcome anyway, I don't.I mean, I guess we're just gonna
jump right in right. Who wantsto give the elevator pitch of what of
what this is? I think TORtwo is probably the best one to do
that. But it's kind of likea medieval I guess, a medieval city
builder with combat. It's like ostrivbut uh, a little more graphical fidelity.

(01:32):
I'd say, yeah, Ostriv orI would say Banished is probably the
forefather of all these? Is itfor father four? Sister? What about
Age of Empires too? It isa game? You think it's related to
this? He's just asking Age ofEmpires two. It's a great game.
I don't think it's the same.Yeah, but I mean we can explain
why so that people understand why Imake that statement. So Age of Empires

(01:53):
two is a lot more about Thefocus is combat, but the focus of
this game is really building a beautifulcity and take a lot of attention that's
been paid so that you can buildwinding roads. I mean, it looks
really authentic if I was to closemy eyes and imagine a medieval village,
which is probably just what Hollywood hasplaced in my brain. But whatever that
image is is the kind of thingI can build when I'm in manor Lords.

(02:15):
Yeah, I mean, I willsay the basis for my entire village
is essentially Skyrim. All my villagesjust look like little villages straight out of
Skyrim. That's my knowledge of medievalvillages. And I'm waiting for someone to
mod dragons into this thing, soyou can just destroy villages with that,
if that's even possible. But takinga step back, so this is as

(02:38):
we said, it's a city buildertakes place in medieval Europe. I assume
you start off, as you dowith most city builders, with a very
small number of resources, a smallpopulation. You're the lord of this this
section of the map, which isactually there's like multiple different sections that you
kind of need to move into andexplore and sort of exploit. And depending

(02:59):
on the scenario that you've sort ofchosen or the rules that you've chosen,
you might have other claims that areyou know, in existent on the map
as well, from like a Iguess an illegitimate Baron is how the game
writes it up. But effectively,the goal is to build a build a
big city or build big town inmedieval periods, and you've got to deal
with a lot of challenges to doingthat. The basis of the game seems

(03:22):
to be families, is that right? Tortuga as in houses for a family,
right, even like a workforce.Well, just like how you play
what's the economic? The economic youexplain how that works. Yeah, I
would say that that's a good wayof saying it that the family is the
basic unit of production, of thebasic unit that moves to a production zone,

(03:42):
that lives in a house. Sowhen you assign a unit, a
working unit to like your lumberyard oryour tree cutting place, the whole family
is going to do that. Andthat may not mean that all of them
are working there. One of themmight still be at home picking up food
from the market or whatever. Yeah, you're assigning a family. No,
I think that's very like your populationis your resource. But to extend that,

(04:05):
like you have a little lodge togo pick berries in the entire family
just works in that lodge, Butyou do have an entire population that it's
separate and there are also different levelsof families, which I must say,
I am not entirely sure what thatall entails. Have you looked into that
much? Because there's like level one, two and three families. I know

(04:28):
Tortuga warned me away from artisans,which I think are those level two.
Well yeah, that's so. Yeah, We're getting into a little bit of
the details. But I guess thisjust goes to show you how authentic I
think the game is. Really.It's built on some backbone of trying to
be a very realistic medieval city builder, and it's something that, like,
right up front, I want tosay, I think it nails. I

(04:48):
would give this get like at aten out of ten for being able to
give me at least the feel ofa realistic medieval town or village. And
one of the things that does withthat is we are used to nowadays like
the industry is separated from your house, but back then it wasn't. So
what you can do is after yourpopulation, after your buildings advance a little
bit, your town's a little bigger, you can assign an advanced feature to

(05:13):
some of those buildings, such asyou could make a house into the blacksmith's
dwelling, and that converts the entirefamily there to just doing blacksmith work,
and that means that they are nolonger eligible for other work faith workforce items.
They're only going to be blacksmiths,and that can be a real problem.
By the way, that's why Iwarned you away is because I kind
of didn't really know what I wasdoing, and I was like, heyeh,

(05:34):
I want a blacksmith, I wantmore weapons. But I found myself
very quickly, I know workers toget iron, to give them iron to
make weapons with, you can runinto a problem. You have to be
pretty diligent about picking those like specializedjobs, because they still need all of
the basic resource gathering that leads upto that, and if you can't supply
that, it all just kind offalls apart. That was one of the

(05:55):
things that kind of stood out tome when I and I saw I was
watching some other folks playing this gametoday on Twitch as the we're recording this
as the embargo has lifted. Oneof the things that I kind of felt
Hooded Horse sent out kind of apamphlet that gave you an overview of how
to you know effectively, how toplay how to get through your first year,
effectively a manual, and it wasit was clear to me that like

(06:16):
some folks had not read that becauseI think one of the things a lot
is easy to fall into in thisgame, you only start at least with
it with the current set up.Maybe they'll maybe there'll be more options at
the release, but you only startwith five families when you set up your
map. And so what that meansis you can only have five people dedicated
to any one task, anyone occupation. And so the way the game works

(06:38):
is, you know, you builda farm, you probably want to dedicate
someone to do that so the workis actually done. You build a woodcutter's
you know, lodge or fire firewoodcutters lodge, you have to assign at
least one family to like each ofthose to get them to run. So
you only start with five families andyou don't have a lot of people to
go around at the start. Soit's kind of a slow starting game.

(07:00):
Like I would say, don't rushit, take your time. Make sure
that you have someone dedicated to gettingenough food for your families. Make sure
you have someone dedicated to getting enoughfirewood for your families, because those are
kind of the two main resources atthe beginning is well, I guess shelter,
food, and firewood. You needto have homes otherwise people will be
mad. You need to have foodotherwise people will starve. And you need

(07:25):
to have firewood because in the winter, this is a seasonal based game,
and if you don't have firewood whenit comes to the winter, your folks
can freeze and die. But morepeople won't come to your village unless you've
got an approval rating above fifty percent, and you won't have an approval rating
above fifty percent unless everybody is ahome. So I guess where I'm going
with is it's really easy to overbuildif you're not mindful of where you're assigning

(07:45):
folks, right Like, you haveto make sure that you're collecting wood and
food, and you have to makesure that you're building homes. And you
probably also want like some storage sothat your food isn't just sitting out exposed
to the elements, because that candestroy that as well. I think one
of the things that I struggled withwas I'm used to games like Tropico,
where basically your island just gets floodedwith immigrants to your land real quick and

(08:09):
workforce is not really a problem earlyon in the game. If you mess
things up, people will leave,people will die, people will be upset,
and then you can have problems.But with this I think it sort
of pays to not be overly aggressiveand expanding your town right off the bat,
because again, you only have fivefamilies to go around, and if
you assign all of your families todoing a specific job, well, you

(08:30):
need to have some unassigned families becausethe unassigned families are the ones who drag
resources around for you. So ifyou build a house, you actually have
to have the wood taken from yourstorage area brought to the house, otherwise
the house won't be built. Someonehas to do that. The house has
to be built, You have to. If you assign everybody to a job,
there's no one left for construction.So I do think it's one of

(08:52):
those things where it pays to bepatient in this game in a way that
I don't think is necessarily true ina lot of other city builders. Yeah,
I would follow that up just firstof all, it's true the way
what you're saying you have to bea bit patient. It is gameplay settings
related. If you go on withthe default settings. This is the case
for people who are new the game, they might consider engaging like the relaxing
quote unquote relaxing setting. You canactually customize anything. You don't have to

(09:15):
choose one setting. You can goto each one by yourself. I think
there's a setting for how many peoplecome, whether it's approval based or not.
There's an option to turn that offso that people will just move into
your town even if you don't havehigh approval. You can also ask for
more starting resources, so there's alot of things you can tweak to make
it a little bit easier. Butyeah, I think that this is a
problem. This is actually the biggestchallenge of the game as you grow.

(09:37):
And this related to what I wasjust saying about Arsons. You know,
the fact that I had made artisanstook aways from my worker pool, and
it's really about this worker pool balance. You don't want to overgrow if you
have ten families and you build afarm and you need that like at the
point when you're plowing the field,you need like three families, so you're
gonna have to take people off somethingelse. But if you take them off

(10:00):
berries, do you have enough foodto get through until the farm the crop
arrives. I think that that's veryinteresting, but it could also be very
frustrating, especially when you're just learningthe game. Well, I think another
part that's really interesting, like familymanagement. I think you've all made clear
is a very important thing. Butrotating your families through different seasons, Like
you don't need multiple families in thefarmhouse plowing fields and stuff, you know,

(10:22):
in the winter, for example.So it is cool managing your families
and having them do different things anddifferent times of the year to get them.
I guess maximize your resources at differenttimes when you really need them,
the stockpile for winter or whatnot,because winter obviously is a real killer.
Like THD said, you need firewood, but also food because it's harder to

(10:43):
get food in winter as well.But yeah, the family management is a
pretty cool aspect of it. SoI haven't used farms a whole lot of
mostly because my towns are still generallysmall, so I rely more on collecting
berries or hunting wildlife. I knowfarms don't grow. When the way do
you get more than one crop outof farms or is it just like because

(11:03):
what I remember what I remember readingwas like plant in the spring, it
grows in the summer and you harvestin the fall. So is it just
one crop per year per field.Yeah, and so it's like a lot
of resources all at once, butonly all at once sort of at the
end of the Yeah. Yeah,that's how it is. So it does
require some planning. I mean,one good thing about the game. I
don't know, maybe it's something they'llchange later, but it's an option that

(11:24):
I would prefer to stay this wayis that there's no food decay. You're
granary. Basically, it's like aperfect freezer. So that's that's a good
thing. I think you don't haveto worry about it once you have.
If you collect like five hundred berries, which I've done, you don't have
to worry about those decaying and theyjust sit there. That would be a
pretty cool hardcore option like food rottingand stuff. I think they may even
add it later, and I'll debateabout whether I want to turn it off
or not. I'll probably leave iton, but it's it's a I hate

(11:46):
those kind of things when you're justlosing something you've already spent all your effort
together. Yeah, I guess likeI'm not a big city builder player.
So the big city builder that Iplayed a ton of was like Faraoh and
Caesar, and I guess the onlyway this is similar is that it has
like you're building and then also combatas well, and the combat reminds me

(12:07):
quite a bit of Casar three.Oh yeah, I think it's a little
better than that. That's that's kindof slap in the face. It's definitely
better. But you have like yourlittle rally points and you send them off
or whatnot. I don't know.It was just it was just my first
thought combat was Yeah, it wasbetter than I expected. But I'm not
a big city builder guy. Ithink that's a good thing we should actually

(12:28):
do, though, we should probablytalk about our own backgrounds because city building
stuff, I mean, I bringit up a lot. It is something
that I like to follow and Ilike to do play some city builders.
But like Matt, how much citybuilding stuff have you done, I wouldn't
say I'm a big city builder.Like, I haven't played a lot of
stuff recently. I haven't played CitySkyline, which I feel like is kind

(12:48):
of the biggest modern city builder outthere. Cities Too Debacle. Aside,
my main background in the City Buildersis the Tropico series, which I played
basically one through four quite extensively.Four was the best, Well, I
have a I liked the first onethe most, but I would agree that
four is the best game. Likeif you're trying to objectively say what's the

(13:11):
best game, but one has anostalgia factor for me that the others don't.
Yeah, I should, I shouldclarify that I think that four is
actually the best one. Even thoughfive and six have come along, I
think I still like four the best. Well, they start getting different with
like five is when they introduced theeras right where it was like you start
in colonial times and then you proceedto like the Cold War era or something
like that, and then you proceedto like modern times. I think,

(13:35):
yeah, I mean I played it, but I don't remember. And two
was weird because it was like,hey, you're in a pirate You're basically
like a pirate's secret hideout. Butbasically Tropico was sort of the one I
played the most. I played alot of SimCity, like two thousand way
back in the day, a littlebit of sim Town, and Caesar three.
I played a lot of Caesar three, which was you know that I
would, so I would say likeTropico and The Caesar three are the ones

(13:58):
that I've played the most of,and then kind a sort of related but
not really a city builder. IRailroad Tycoon two, Oh heck, yeah
has city builder elements, I think, because like towns grow based on how
you connect them in Railroad Tycoon two, so there's elements of city building there.
I don't know if you want totalk about your city building background,
it all finished. I don't reallyhave anything more to add. I played

(14:20):
all these games that you guys havetalked about, like how focused on that
as a genre. Do you likethose games? Do you seek them out
or not? Really? I doseek them out. I played a lot
of city skylines, but I've notplayed any city skylines too. I guess
my main genre now is it definitelylike the civilizing civilization genre series Civilization started
with Civilization three. That's what Ilook for in a game, like I

(14:43):
want to I like those kind ofnation building and you're kind of building cities
but in a different way, soI like just like the economic development.
So that's what I look for.There's like a lot of city builders that
I've been interested in like the Workersand Resources that's the Soviet town city builder.
Like that one sounds really interesting,but it's looks so in depth and

(15:05):
it looks like there's so much goingon that I feel like i'd have to
put a lot of time to learnit. And Manor Lords is i'd say
pretty accessible for a city builder.I don't know how you all feel about
the accessibility of the game, butit's like one of those games that's kind
of pretty easy to pick up.Like I just picked up and started going
and I was like, yeah,I get it. I understand what's going

(15:28):
on more or less. Sure,they're like the mechanics are easy to learn,
but pretty deep and pretty detailed,depending on how much detail you actually
want to get from them. Wolf. Did you play Ostriv No? I
I've seen Ostrev Actually might have playedit a little bit for only a couple
of hours, so, but thatgame's pretty detailed. That's a that one's
hardcore. Another example of like Workersand Resources esque like level of detail where

(15:54):
it's like, man, I wouldlove to do this, but I don't
know if I have the time toreally learn all of these various mecann Yeah,
I tried. By the way,Workers and resources. You hit the
nail on the head. It's socomplicated, it's, oh my gosh,
it's awesome, but the supply thatlike it's basically a production chain management and
CD builder merged with nothing taken out, like the complexity of both matched together,

(16:18):
which makes the game almost unapproachable,like almost impossible to get into.
Right. It's a great game.I mean, I've played it a little
bit myself, but I just Iknow there's so much to learn and so
much time it would take for meto get there that I guess i'd rather
watch people play it than actually playit myself. Yeah, and that's like
a big thing. Like I've watchedpeople play it. I'm like, wow,
this is really darn cool. Butyeah, that learning curve is just

(16:41):
pretty intimidating. And you mentioned inAustro, but I would actually say that's
a really good comparison with Manor Lords. So I would say that we've been
talking about a lot of different games, and I would qualify Manor Lords as
dissimilar not similar to almost all theones we've talked about, except for a
little niche genre I would call colonybuilders or in new management games, which
is in my head it was startedby Banished, so Banished Ostria, these

(17:06):
kind of games like that, becausethe city Skylines to me is just very
different. And I can't really puta finger on why that is, because
mechanically they seem pretty similar. Idon't know. Maybe it's more about well,
I can't put a finger on it, like I said, but for
me, the feeling of like startingfrom this very small like outpost in the
wilderness and like gathering your resources likethat, it's something a little bit different

(17:29):
than starting like a city, eventhough I mean in residential zoning and maybe
they're the same, I don't know. I to think about this, I
can see how they're quite a bitdifferent. Like it's scale wise. I
mean you're starting with families of likehow many families do you start out with
in man Or Lords? Five?Yeah, good point, So it's scale
wise it's different. Yeah, insome city you're going to end up with
thousands of people and at the endgameof this you're going to have like maybe

(17:52):
two hundred, right, And liketransportation is a huge deal in more modern
sums as well, and more focuson efficiency, and I guess you want
to be efficient in Manor Lords aswell, But kind of But actually I
feel like the because like the gridsystem is almost like verbotin right. They
don't want you to use a gridsystem. Now I still do because I

(18:14):
just I can't get that out ofmy head. But I feel like this
game heavily emphasizes aesthetics look and feelright, And of course to do that
they have to minimize to a degreeat least or reduce the impact of efficiency.
Because a curved road it looks better, it is not going to be
traveled as quickly, So in orderto encourage people to use curve roads,
they have to make it so thegame functions well with that inefficiency. Right.

(18:38):
One thing I want from more citybuilder games is where you can start
with a small town or a villageor even a larger city that's already built
and then try to build and buildoff of that and fix it. I
like starting from scratch, but Iwant the challenge and the different kind of
gameplay with starting with something all likeespecially like you have like a modern city,

(19:03):
fix their infrastructure, fix their transportationnetwork, build some subway systems and
stuff like that, and try tofix what's already there instead of always building
from scratch. Yeah, instead ofalways building from scratch exactly. I'd like
it a little different challenge in thatregard. They definitely have that in the
oldest SimCity titles. I remember SimCityhad that. SimCity two thousand or two

(19:25):
or whatever you two thousand I think, and then SimCity three thousand, but
basically SimCity one, two and threehad those scenarios where it was like,
Okay, here's Detroit. It hasa problem with crime picking on Detroit.
This one one is from the realgame. First thing it comes to his
mind, He's like, Wow,what the city with crime the game.
Let's let's just yeah, let's crapall over, finish his hometown. Oh

(19:47):
no, oh, we're doxing him. Gosh, thank god, he's no
longer living on one two three FerryLane Lane. Yeah, but which gang
did you belong to? The onethat Eminem was in? We were pretty
tight, you know. Yeah,Well, Matt, you were going to
say something a little bit ago.I don't know if you want to jump

(20:08):
back in. I don't even Idon't even remember. The wheels have come
off very early. It's only intwenty nine minute mark. He's blaming Detroit
for it too. Didn't what Iwas trying to remember is I think Caesar
three had somewhere you like picked upa city that was like already somewhat created.
I don't know if it was likefix a broken city, but I

(20:29):
think I think that had elements ofthat as well. Yeah, I think
as you got later on in thecampaign, maybe yeah. But I would
say that works for city builders.I don't know if it works for colony
management games like this one. Idon't know if ostriv it makes sense that
you load into a you know,something is already formed and they say,
oh, by the way, they'reabout to all starve to death, fix
it. I mean, I don'tactually when I say it, I guess
it could be interesting. Yeah,that could be kind of cool. I

(20:51):
think as someone living in America whereall the cities like desperately need infrastructure,
it's interesting from that concept because it'slike a you know, it's I think
a lot of times when you whenyou see like the industrializing of a country,
it's like, oh, well,we don't have anything here, so
let's build it up out of nothing. That that always tends to seem less
daunting, even even at like totalwar games. My favorite total war games

(21:14):
are the ones where you already havean established empire and you're trying to hold
it together. So like total RoarRome Barbarian or Barbarian's invasion or Attila get
out of here. He had tobring it up. I knew it was
going you know those are those aremy favorite of that type of game too,
So i'd you know, I findthat appealing in a way that building

(21:37):
from scratch is not. Now Ican see the appeal to that, But
why don't we take a step back, Like so we talked about families.
I guess, you know, ifyou were to say, because one thing
I don't have as good as agrasp on at this point is the economy
as it gets more complex. Right, So, like you start off with
a with a basically an empty space, right, You've got like a couple
of homeless tents, You've got somefolks, and you got a small amount

(22:02):
of resources to start with. Wekind of talked about you need to get
you need to get food, andyou need to get timber so you can
survive through the winter after that,Like what's because I know Tortuo you were
having issues with bandits. I thinkit was in one of your towns the
other night, Like let's let's talka little bit more about the game as
you get a little bit more advanced. Once you've set up your town,

(22:22):
you've got enough food to survive,you've got enough firewood to survive, and
your folks have basic basic structures.What do you do. I think that
one of the things that they're definitelytrying to bring in more. I'm not
sure how fully fleshed out it is, but it's already interesting as is.
I think I think it'll be improvedthough. Let me just say that you
start on a map which actually haslike nine regions or you know, X
number of regions around ten, tento fifteen, and there's a little bit

(22:45):
of a room, not a room, but a total war type mechanic where
you go and you actually conquer thosedifferent regions and then you get to use
their resources. So I mean inthe middle, in the mid game,
you might be rated by bandits orraiders and you're gonna want to form of
militia. So if by that pointyou should have already have set up your
blacksmith and you should have a productionof weapons. Even if you don't,

(23:06):
by the way, you can getaway with just there's a trading hut.
So you can sell off your planksif you happen to have five hundred of
them, make enough money to buysome weapons directly. You can also just
use your personal wealth. I mean, this is another mechanics. I mean
we're getting down into the weeds here. But technically there's two sources of money.
There's your town's money and then youractual lord's money. Most of the
things you're going to want to doare with your manner's money, but if

(23:30):
you want to hire mercenaries, ithas to be with your personal lord's money.
And there's a way to kind ofmove one to the other through taxes.
You can tax the people and thensome of the Okay, so what
happens is as you go up andto hire housing tiers from level one to
level two, you'll start making regionalmoney. But if you have a tax
office, then part of that willbe collected as your lord's money. Okay,

(23:52):
sorry, we're getting into the weeds, but I had to explain that
because you might want to buy mercenariesinstead of actually consembling your army yourself.
And if you want to buy mercenaries, you need personal money. Okay,
So midgame I think, so Iknow, I didn't have any personal money,
but I wanted a second ox becausehaving one felt like a bottleneck to
getting anything built, huge bottleneck.So I imported a second ox. I

(24:15):
don't even remember how I did it. I didn't have a trading hub or
anything like that. I just wentinto a menu somewhere and bought another ox.
Yeah, you can buy oxes atthe hitching post and such. So
you have a hitching post and youcan buy oxes and horses and such through
there, and that uses a townmoney, if I believe, the regional
wealth. Yeah. Yeah, it'slike the total wealth of all of your
citizens, which made me feel realgreat. It's like, hey, everybody,

(24:37):
we're gonna use your money to buysomething that I tell you what we're
gonna buy. Oh, it's forthe better men of the entire community,
you see, for the greater good. That's what happens when you're a lord.
I guess. Yeah. Really,with the man with the manner,
that's the name of the game.I still got people like commenting on my
YouTube video about how we try todescribe manner lords. It's pretty funny.

(25:03):
Tortuga. Well, it's medieval era, so you have a manner and Wolfpack
said, and you get to bea lord and then said roll credits.
Hey, that's kind of what wejust did. O. Man, I
need to grab that, I needto clip that. That's funny. Oh
one thing. I this is justa random comment that I don't want to

(25:26):
sidetrack as too much. I lovethe ability to walk around your your manner.
I agree. There's this third personview where you go from the traditional
top down scroll and scroll out withyour mouse wheel of your city into like
a hey, here's your lord representedon the map, and now you can
walk around at like ground level.That is really cool. And I do
think you know you already mentioned theyput a lot of effort into the aesthetics,

(25:48):
Tortuga. This game is beautiful fora game that's made by one person.
Well, I think it started offas like a one person job like
this. They put a lot ofeffort into making this game look good,
and it does. I saw somecomments in another discord is in where people
were just basically in awe about likeprobably something folks don't normally think about,

(26:10):
but you know, a lot ofthese kind of games. The edge of
the map looks like trash right,Like it's like there's no good horizon view
in games like this, but thehorizons in this game look brilliant as well,
Like it looks real, like you'relooking off into something in the distance,
rather than some like fogged over abomination, which is what I think most
games like this have. Yeah,can I jump in and just say that

(26:32):
not only is is like it doeslook beautiful, but the weather is actually
a weather system. You can seeclouds off in the distance and then they
approach and then it's raining in yourtown, which is crazy, Like you
could like as a third person viewyou can see the clouds coming and like,
oh, it's gonna be rain,and then it's rain. I did
not know that. That is actuallyreally cool. I'm not sure what impact

(26:52):
it has because you know, thesepeasants will work in the mud, doesn't
matter rain or shine. Well no, but they they go inside and stuff,
like some of will go inside wheneverit starts raining. Right well,
not in my town. Oh well, maybe I'm just crazy. I thought
they were. I play from liketen mile up viewpoint, so I manage
everything. I don't always look atthe I don't stop and smell the roses.
It makes them even more impressive thatit is this detailed when, like

(27:15):
you said, a lot of peoplewill be playing from a very high up
point of view like you do.That's why it's really a labor of love,
right, I feel like a gamethat is not it is just done
to be sold or something like that. They would cut corners here. It's
very inefficient, Like it's probably awaste of production time that they put those
little touches of love in there,but it's something that we appreciate, so

(27:37):
you know, good on them fordoing it well. And like another thing
that I think is absolutely brilliant islike when you have seasons, change in
the landscape changes with it, especiallywhen you get into the fall and you
see the trees change colors. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe I'm just
a sucker because I'm used to likethe Midwest is a big place where people
go watch the colors if you will, like a door county. But like

(28:00):
I love that they they look good. It's not just like a uniform.
Everything's you know, whatever it looks. It looks legit. I think it
looks really appealing. I love whenyou cut a tree down. You've got
that that great sound effect of thetree coming down and it looks like a
tree coming down. Like. Ilove the way the game has you interact

(28:22):
with the map itself from a froma nature point of view, because it
just feels real and feels lived in. You know, you've got the logging
camps and the tree lines get pushedback, and you know you kind of
have to manage that. You alsohave to manage, you know, if
you've got resources like wildlife, ifyou put things that are encroaching on where
the wildlife would be, they willmigrate. You may push a herd out

(28:45):
of a out of a wood,you know, because you built things too
close to it, or because yourlog camps, you know, interfered with
that. So yeah, I meanI think I think it does a good
job of that and sort of thefine nature of resources, right, A
lot of games like this, it'llbe like, oh, you've got an
iron mind. You put your ironmind down and it's just gonna mine iron,

(29:07):
you know, for the forever.Actually, that's one thing I liked
about Tropico was the landscape would changebased on how long the mind had been
there and how much had been extracted. And that's the same thing here,
where you only have a certain amountof resources unless you have a rich deposit.
By the way, where if youhave a rich deposit, there is
an unlock you can do where you'llopen up like a deep mine, which
I believe has infinite resources, butmost resources will will be exhausted after a

(29:33):
period of time as well. SoI just really appreciate the way that sort
of the player and the city interactswith the map around it and how it
evolves over the course of a game. And you can see by the way
about the resources, that's the waythey're trying to like naturally tug you or
encourage you to expand from your initialregion to other regions. If you don't
have a deep mind for both stone, I mean, you can't have a

(29:56):
deep mind for stone, clay andiron, so from one of those,
when you run out, you'll needto move to another region. So I
mean there wants you to go andthen claim that other region. If you're
playing on a map with other playerslike their AI, but other people they
may choose to contest, you're tryingto occupy that new region, that's when
you need an army to back upyour claim. There's also some other mechanics

(30:18):
which are not implemented yet, butI just see them like King's Favor.
I don't know what that is orhow they're going to implement that for now.
The only way I know how toclaim a territory is to go in
there and to defend if anybody disputesyour claim, they do it by sending
an opposing army. The narrative behindthis is like the king has sent you
to this promising region to build atown, right, and there is a

(30:41):
game mode where there's some illegitimate dukewho already has claims on two of the
regions in this sector. And sothe end game of that version is when
you claim the territories he claims heexists off map and sends an army out
of the map and can fights you. So that's like one game mode.
So I'm assuming King's Favor has todo with you. Also, will owe

(31:03):
I know, based on like whatI've read through it, you'll owe the
king essentially tribute. You've got tosend money back to the king to you
know, obviously you're his agent here, right, you're building this town,
so he's expecting you're going to bepaying him, you know, the way
a lord would pay his liege andtribute, you know, I would imagine
that influences that, and I thinkyou can also use king's favor for diplomacy

(31:26):
and other things like that. Youknow, it can be leveraged as sort
of a resource that can help yourkingdom as well or your your town as
well. Although it's not fully builtout. Do you know what smell is
by the way, is that likea cleanliness type thing. It's not implemented
yet because the tannery should reek tohigh hell, but it does not smell
at all. And I assume it'sgonna be something like that that residential places

(31:47):
don't want to live next to atannery because that's how it is in your
life. Well, it's kind oflike Tropico, where like you can try
and beautify your island, but ifyou don't like you know, as you
as you cut down trees and buildmines and whatnot, I know it like
people are like you. I don'tlike that, you know. So it's
probably something like that. Have youeither of you guys engaged in combat yet
a little bit? I've only thoughtbandits unfortunately, So yeah, that's what

(32:12):
I thought too, is as bandits. But I have to say I was
surprised at like I feel like man, well, knock me off my you
know, surprisingly positive viewpoint of thisgame if it's necessary, but I feel
like they nailed it though. Ifeel like the combat was not It's not
too deep, but it's like theperfect amount of deep for this game,
which is still mostly focused on buildingup your colony, but it has like

(32:36):
cool options for different stances for yourunit. I feel like the combat it
looked a little junky the first timeI saw it, but actually when I
looked at it again, it's actuallypretty good. I mean, it's basically
what Total War looks like, ormaybe ten years ago would it looked like.
But yeah, no, it doeslook really nice, and like the
upgrading of your units is pretty cool. Like you said, you have blacksmiths

(32:57):
or people making armor in their littlecottages and equipping your troops that way,
and I guess not all of yourtroops will have, you know, the
same equipment. It looks good.It feels believable and realistic. So when
you're building a militia unit, doyou have to have a full compliment to
build it? Oh? No,they'll form with whatever you have. And

(33:19):
like I think, what's the maximumsizes? I think thirty six for at
least a spearman. I think it'sthirty six for all of them, because
I saw thirty six and I waslike, wait a minute, I've only
got like twenty swords or spears orwhatever in shields, and I don't even
have thirty six people yet in myvillage. How would I form a militia
yet? Because the game kind ofprobs you to be like, hey,
you need a militia, and Ididn't know if I could still build it
or not, but you're saying youcan. Yeah. It's actually really lucrative

(33:43):
too, as soon as you havemore than sixteen I think, I mean,
sixteen is the amount of units thatbandit camps usually have. I've been
successful against a bandit camp with onlynineteen spearmen. I'm not sure how much
how many fewer people you can havethan that and still win. But the
really good news is once you defeatthem, you can go take their camp
with your soldiers and it'll provide liketwo hundred money, which is huge,

(34:05):
I mean, and you can actuallychoose where that goes to by the way,
you can choose to take it yourselfpersonally, or can go to the
village. The first time I didit, I sent it to the village,
and then that was the way Igot like a lot of orchards.
I was able to get my blacksmithand all that, because it actually requires
regional money to upgrade those houses tohave those special add ons. Did the
people like that you gave them abunch of money? No, there was,

(34:27):
I mean approval wise, I don'tthink I remember anything changing. It
was just that the town had theability to spend those resources. But the
second time I took the money forpersonally is I use that to buy mercenaries.
And so the second time I wantto fight a bandit camp, I
didn't even have to raise my guys. I got like this mace group from
the mercenaries called Battle Brothers. Ilike the name of it. They cleaned

(34:51):
the floor with the other bandits.Oh that's awesome though, because the mercenary
units do look nice you despite theircosts. Yeah, I don't I remember
what the cost was. I thoughtit was only like eighty or something.
I thought it was actually pretty doable. Is it a one time cost or
is there an upkeep? Yeah?I don't remember. I assume that there's
got to be an upkeep, ButI just remember I dismissed them, so
I probably there probably was an upkeepwell, because there's also there's militia,

(35:14):
but then there's also a retinue,right, which would be like a standing
military. I think, yeah,there's also a revenue. I haven't used
that yet. When you build upyour actual manner, I mean, you
build up your castle all that,Unfortunately I haven't gone that far. The
manner is very expensive to build,so it's kind of like, yeah,
you need a ton of stone andsuch, which I guess like the initial
area when I've played didn't have enoughstone to really support it. So I

(35:37):
had to start importing it using tradersand stuff, which is a whole nother
Well, talk about that wolf,because that's another awesome I mean, look
at we've already talked about so manygreat things, but yeah, maybe we
should touch on that. You canset up traders and import different materials.
I primarily was exporting materials to makemore money, and that contributes to your
regional wealth, not your personal wealth. In a place that well, I

(36:00):
was cutting down trees left and right, so I was just exporting a lot
of timber and stuff because I hada big surplus of it. But then
you can also, like if youdon't have I don't know what's a like
dies for example, you can importdies or other various things. Does anybody
know what tools are for? Thisis a little bit weird, but I
and the first game I played,the bandits came and they stole all my

(36:22):
tools. This was my first selfdestruction. Was actually because I was trying
to get a blacksmith to make tools. That's how the whole legs, the
wheels came off the engine. Becausethere's another mechanic where you can have a
house with an attachment that's different thanjust a house, and it ends up
working as two houses. Basically twofamilies live there. Yeah, because you

(36:44):
can have houses with like farms orlike chicken coops or whatever. Yeah,
there's two different things for the houses. One is that they can have an
extension or like a production attachment,which can have like food or it can
be the blacksmith area. But there'sanother thing where so when you build out
your house grid, if there's aplus and minus there which allows you to

(37:05):
actually subtract the number of houses,and if you subtract enough houses, you'll
see you'll have the extension as onepart and the normal house. But then
next to the normal house you'll seelike a plus house. You can expand
that lot to have two houses onit and two families live there, but
they still have to share the oneextension. Now I use this for orchards
or stuff that I don't know.I make large orchards, and I don't

(37:29):
know if there's any game mechanic whichgoverns this, But because I see people
actually going out into the orchards andinto the vegetable vegetable farms, I feel
like I need two families to workbig places, so I use that.
But I also accidentally did upgrade mywell not accidentally, I just didn't know.
I upgraded one of my houses thathad the extended plot, so it
was two families to be the blacksmith, and now I had two artisans,

(37:52):
two families that were artisans. Sothis subtracted two families from my workforce,
which at that point was like thirteen. So it's a pretty big impact.
So that kind of hoes me.So just word to the wise, be
careful with artisans, because I don'tknow any way other than deleting the house,
you can get them back into thenormal workforce. Right anyway, I
would did that to make tools.But the long and short of that was,

(38:14):
I don't know what the tools werefor anyway, I don't know if
I had to do it. Yeah, just the export them, I suppose.
I have no idea. Haven't comeacross anything that really needs tools.
Halbirds are so efficient to export,by the way, when you want to
talk about trade, I think theymake like fifty a Halbard and it's only
I think one iron and one plank. So it's a really good feel.
Okay. But yeah, I meanwe've been going on on all these things,

(38:36):
like it just shows how many differentmechanics there are in this game and
how detail each of them are.I'm just said, I don't have a
manner yet. They should rename thegame manner Less Lords. Yeah. I'm
the same way. I'm pretty latein the game. It's just not efficient.
I you know, I do everythingfor efficiency. You both played the
demo right, because I did not. I did not. Oh okay,

(38:58):
wow, I wanted to, andI didn't get around to it. But
I don't feel like I don't,you know, other than a little bit
of confusion around the families initially,like I don't. I didn't see a
lot of things seemed fairly straightforward,Like, I guess fields are a little
bit weird, right, Like howto when you when you build a field,
do you have to build like asomething to turn the weed into grain

(39:19):
or bread or something like that.Yeah, yeah, so you need wind
mills and then uh you take thatflour and then you need an oven so
people can actually eat it and likemake bread and such. So it really
forces it forces that like production line, which is three buildings long. By
comparison, you have a one buildinglong chain to get berries, but you
know berries aren't going to feed it. Well, if you got a rich

(39:42):
deposit for berries, it'll literally takecare of your family, your your people
for like years I had. That'swhen I had the five hundred berries by
grainary. The rich deposits are justinsane. But you also have to have
a variety of food. There's oneway to get to the higher tiers of
houses is that they look for moremore than one item of food in the
market, and that could be achallenge. So then you know, now

(40:04):
you need to get or there's beesyou can do the apiary. I mean,
this game is crazy. Oh andlooks like who wants to just eat
berries? Constantly. I was justthinking of how miserable kind of cruel cool
settlement? Are you running over there? Oh? Not wanting to be near
their outhouses? My gosh, yeah, got the ships? What you complaining
about? You got plenty of food. Here's another pound of strawberries or something.

(40:29):
Well, I guess we should talkto the guy who's played the most
of this game here finish. Howare you feeling? What are you thinking,
buddy? I'm feeling great. Youknow. My first impressions were I
was super impressed with how the gamelooks, and that's it. Okay,
there we go. I watched Wolffill some roads and I was I thought

(40:50):
that was kind of cool. Isaw him displace the local deer population by
accident. I thought that was kindof funny. And then he built a
he built the worlds for Roundabout,which is basically just gonna be a mud
pit after it rains. I don'tsee a future in kind of civil engineering
and his, you know, inhis upcoming career path. But he's a

(41:13):
good submarine captain, so I'll givehim that, you know. I've I
think my my little settlement's really onthe up and up over here. It
looks nice. It does look nice. Yeah, I mean the roundabout was
purely aesthetic, and that's what Igo for, aesthetics over anything else.
And that's that's purely subjective too.Okay, every once in a while my

(41:35):
population will be like knee deep inmud. But do I have to deal
with that. No, I justget to look at it and it's beautiful
in the in the spring. I'mtrying to think where you live in this
situation, because you don't have amanner, So are you? Are you
just like living in the forest andyou come out and like tell people what
to do. Yeah, I havea sod dwelling kind of like a hobbit,

(42:00):
you know, really far away,because I really don't want to be
around any of these people. Theyare very far beneath me. I thought
you were gonna say that, likeyou've earned their trust and respect because you
live with them, and that's howsuccessful your town has become because you're one
of the people. Mmm. Isthat too radical for medieval Yeah, you

(42:20):
know, that's a thought. I'mglad. I'm glad my personal papers are
getting around because the propaganda's taking ahold. I like to think that I
live in a treehouse so that thepeople are literally beneath me. Yeah,
yeah, that's good. Oh boy, just actually just the local crazy person
who you think you're in charge andyou're telling everybody what to do, shouting

(42:45):
at them. Yeah. This gamehas like a lot of opportunity for role
playing too, and that's something thatI hope kind of gets flushed out.
Like if we can customize our littlecharacter and you can customize your shield,
you're like your coat of arms.Oh yeah, that's cool. It's really
good finish as good as Silaris,I would say, which I think Salaris
is the one. I've watched Wolfput it. He put a snail on

(43:06):
his shield. What but no,you guys just crazy. Just so you
know, like it's not just thein menu option. You can actually import
images into your into your coat ofarms, which is neat in itself.
So it's tortuo gas did he dothat? And is it a little turtle's
tgs? Yours? Just a bigold eight. I was gonna do a
butcher, but then I was likethat's a little too modern. You know,

(43:28):
coat of arms don't have these crazyred haired men with yeah there's oh
there's not a cleaver inside like apig carcass or something. What do they
do in that town? Or theyjust keep chopping up pork chops? You
know they're freaks. Yeah, Ireally love pork chops. Bacon was invented

(43:49):
in that town right there. Thisis how we get everybody to respect me,
though, because you know, like, oh that guy, they must
always have food, they must alwaysbe living the highlights. You know,
the prime cuts. You know,I just string them along right from the
prime cuts prime cuts in High Life. I want to try to I've been
very high on this game. Ithink I give this like a nine out

(44:10):
of ten, maybe a ten.Ten time to criticize it, yeah,
I think we gotta though, aswhat so, this is an early access
release and this segment will be calledRemoving the Hood from the Horse. It's
good. I like that. Idon't really. I don't really like that
anyway. I don't either, becauseI'm nervous about other people disagreeing. Okay,
okay, as you should be good, get them get in your place.

(44:35):
No, but seriously, we gotto have I mean, it's an
early access title that it could bejust perfect. It can't be well,
I don't so. I do think. I do think some of the Ui.
I think some folks, I've seenfolks struggle because they don't really understand
how the families work and how gettingthings assigned works. Yeah, because they
don't know how to read a pieceof paper. They don't. Yeah.

(44:58):
No, But I also don't thinklike I do think it if you just
throw this out here and people justjump in and play. I do think
like the family piece takes a littlebit of getting used to. It's just
not the the the difficulty in gettingmore people to come to your village.
Like I wouldn't have thought, oh, I need to make sure every everybody
starts on homeless. I wouldn't thinkI need to make sure every single one
of my people has a house beforeI'll get even a second, you know,

(45:22):
a sixth person to show. Wait, so you mean to tell me
you thought people want to come.You assumed your a little homeless camp would
attract a population. It does inmost city builders. It doesn't Tropico like
you just there's an option to turnthat on too. By the way,
That's what I was talking about earlier. You can turn I'm just saying like
it seems, you know, Ijust think there are things there that they

(45:43):
there's some assumed knowledge and some ofthese mechanics that you know, veteran the
city builder people probably will pick upon them. But I don't know if
everybody will. Okay, Okay,that's fair. So not everyone has common
sense. It's not a matter ofcommon sense. It's a matter of designing.
Assuming you can. Can't assume everybodywho's playing your game is. But
does it really need it? Okay, let me does it? Do you

(46:05):
really need a city builder to tellyou that for people to move into your
city, they want to live ina house. Well, when you put
it like that, you just askedyourself, would you go someplace that didn't
have a home for you? Iwouldn't go to the Middle Ages either,
So you know that's that's also anotherthing. These people don't have a choice.

(46:28):
I'd go get in one of Wolfe'sU boats before I before I,
you know, went back to themill. I would not do that.
I would not either. Oh boy, I'd rather have hop inside one of
those Japanese suicide torpedoes, one ofthe boy anyway, you wanted to say

(46:51):
negative things, I was trying tocome up with something, So why do
Why doesn't someone else? Yeah,what are Tortugas and Tortigo wanted to start
talking negative thing. I mean,oheah, let's hear at Tortigo. What
are your negative things? God damn, I really don't. I don't know.
I feel like, okay, thisis what I would say. The

(47:14):
negatives for me is the fact thatwhen I go to like the technology screen,
or if I go to there's someother ones like policies and all that,
that there's several things which say notyet implemented or you know, not
available in early access. So forme knowing that those things are to come
but they aren't here yet, andthen I'm effectively learning a game that will

(47:34):
be different months down the road.That's the early access battle. I mean,
that's what this is all about.But that's always I wish the game
was released as is today. Thisis a very softball way of saying I
don't have huge criticisms of the game. I really don't. I think that
as is, if it did notdevelop another day, it would already be
a game I would be very happyto play and would continue to play.

(47:58):
So I'm not the best person askabout criticism because for whatever reason, like
the wave links have aligned and thisgame just hit a home run for me.
I yeah, I mean I wouldagree, I have very few.
I mean, I'm trying to thinkof criticisms, and like my criticisms are
there's quite a few screens that saylike early access will be implemented later sort

(48:20):
of thing. I mean, that'sall I can really complain about right now,
and like I understand why that's there, right I mean, having torpedoed
tssues comment, I now want togo back and pretend like it's my own.
So I will say that I thinkthat people who can't pick up on
the game quickly enough, they mayneed it, may need to be more
clear that there's like a tutorial typeoption. Maybe they should implement tutorials types.
I mean, they actually have tutorialmessages, but they kind of do.

(48:44):
I mean, but I do thinkI do think it could be better.
I guess that's what I was justtrying to get at. Was it
assumes you know, I before Iplayed it, I read an eighteen page
document that was sent out with it, right like you did, I did.
I read through that so like Ihad a sense of what to do.
I don't think if I had readthat document that the UI in the
game would have told me as muchwhat to do. I would have probably

(49:06):
figured out the family thing before toolong. But even like the happiness meter
of the idea that like, evenonce you have everybody in a house,
if your happiness is below fifty percent, which it probably will be if you
don't immediately build five houses, itprobably will be below fifty no matter what,
because it'll take you a little whileto build enough houses for everybody.
Then it goes up because you haveif you if you have two types of

(49:27):
food, so if you're like huntingand then you've got the bread they give
you to start with, it'll slowlygo up. But like I think you
could very easily. I think alot of players will end up in this
an area where they're just sitting alittle below fifty percent. Their population isn't
growing, they don't know necessarily whatto do because the game doesn't really tell

(49:49):
you what to do at that point, you know, they'll they'll think like,
all right, everybody is a home, maybe I even have some surplus
homes. Why is no one cominghere? Oh, it's a cut off
at fifty percent. Okay, Iguess like that make make sense, But
it's just maybe the pacing is alittle bit is a little bit off for
for not for folks who aren't awareof it going in, because the base
game plays pretty slow when you're onjust the standard speed. Oh that's one

(50:13):
thing I would say though, thepacing of this game is a little I
play things very slowly, and evenI find myself running things on max speed
in this game. So I wouldsay that's even maybe even a suggestion for
people is if you're having this problem, because the fifty percent, once you
have everyone in the house, itstill takes if you rent it at then
the default like one x speed,it would probably take ten minutes for people

(50:36):
to start coming into your village.Well, and it's once a month,
right, Like I didn't know that. That wasn't clear to me. Yeah,
I think that might be in oneof the tutorial messages or even if
you rest your curse over the approvalsome Oh it might have been. There's
a help menu so you can actuallylook up topics on the help menu,
and I think one of them washousing. It's like zero, if it's
twenty five to fifty, they'll they'llactually leave your town if it's below twenty

(50:57):
five, and then one family willarrive fifty seventy five, and then two
families will arrive if you're above seventyfive percent. But yeah, it was
in the help comments, which I'msure that not a lot of people are
gonna look through those. I don'tthink it's a major issue. I just
if I was to say, likewhat scenario they could improve upon. I
actually think the uiux is really welldone, but I do think there could
be a little bit more handholding.If you're gonna be populating tutorial messages,

(51:21):
maybe they just need like an actualtutorial or it walks people through, like
here, build this, this iswhy you're doing this, you know,
like maybe that's what they need.I don't know. Again, it's early
Axis. A lot of early accessgames are way rougher than this is.
But if I was to say,like one area that could use some work,
it would be helping folks who whomaybe are not city builder of Hishionado's

(51:43):
who want to play this, likehave an actual standalone tutorial where it walks
you through building a house and maybecollecting some food on one of these maps.
That's funny. Have either of youguys played the first option in the
three scenarios you can pick from.There's like the left one which is relaxing,
the middle one which has the combatand the bandits, and then there's
the right one, which I didn'teven read. I'm assuming that's the hardest.

(52:06):
Like the left one is basically I'vebeen playing, Oh go ahead.
I was just gonna say. Theleft one is basically like sandbox mode.
There's it sounds like there's no banditsor very few, and you can play
as long as you want. Onceyou get to large town, it's like,
just keep playing if you want.The second one is the one where
you've got to take those two provincesfrom the neighboring baron, and the third

(52:27):
one it to me, it makesit sound like it's a land overrun by
bandits. So I'm assuming the thirdone is the most difficult option, but
I don't know if that's true.The reason why I was asking that is
just because if you played the originalone, the demo actually had a tutorial
type setup with objectives, so itreally held your hand a lot more.
And I wonder if that is stillin place in the like the relaxing mode

(52:52):
one, because I was actually surprisedto see that they remove that. I
think it was very good, andit might be helpful if they added that
back. So I've only played theright most one, where it's like overrun
by bandits and it doesn't really seemto be that bad and there aren't too
many bandits at all. It justI think it may be the easiest one

(53:13):
because it removes all of the othermechanics of like Lord's Favor and stuff.
It seems that stuff isn't even implementedyet. Okay, it probably is the
hardest one, so you're just goodon you that you're playing on the hardest
one having an easy time. Thereason why the middle one might be a
little easier is because although there area few, I think it's only like
one bandit camp at a time.The person you're eventually supposed to take on

(53:35):
the endgame, you know, asTissue was explaining earlier, that person will
actually go and stamp out the banditsfor you if you let them, which
can also be a bad thing.You don't want them to go stamp out
bandits because then you don't get allthe two hundred money from the bandit camp.
But if you were having a hardtime and you didn't have an army,
they will eventually go do that foryou too. Have either of you
tried anything with the diplomacy, becausethere's supposed to be diplomacy with that,

(53:57):
like neighboring baron and then also theband Your options for talking to the baron,
to the bandits is like oh hey, hello, greetings, and the
other option is you know, youfilthy scumbags with the And the effect of
these is not surprisingly nothing for thefirst one and negative ten relations for the
second one. They attack you eitherway. It's completely unfinished. It's it's

(54:19):
not even implemented, I would say. So it's like total war diplomacy.
It's not even that, it's justit's not existing. It's a shell for
what will hopefully be built later.Because even when you want to talk to
the baron, the only option youcan say is, oh, you're not
the rightful person here. And Ijust chose not to say anything because I
didn't want to get on as badside right away. I'd like to stab
people in the back. I don'twant them watching. So if you feel

(54:42):
a knife going your back and youdon't know where it's from, Tortuga's behind
you, I would blame wolf first, would you? I would experience yeah,
ICBM never forget burned into my memory. We didn't talk about other games.
We would play them a man,I gotta say this, So this
game Solium in front of them,it's we got to play this game together.

(55:04):
I think it's the new ICBM.Wait before we go to that real
quick, do you does your populationage out and die or is it like
they're indefinitely young? I have thinkthey definitely age and die. They do
it because I mean, you havea corpse pit, which I've never I
haven't needed to use, but Iwasn't sure what it was for. I've
had to use it after battles.That's after bandits though, right. I

(55:27):
think your own people don't go withthe corpse pit? Oh really, why
not do they? I figured youcould upgrade it to like a graveyard and
stuff. Oh can you? So? I don't know, I've never Maybe
I'm wrong. I've only lost asoldier. I don't know what even happened
to the soldiers I've lost. I'velost soldiers, but I guess we just
didn't bring their bodies home. Youknow what I would kind of like is
I'd like more information about my people, Like you've got a little magnifying glass

(55:51):
where you hover it over it andit'll be like this is a person,
and it won't. But like,what I want is the whole Tropico experience,
where like I can click on aperson, I can see their wants,
their needs, I can see theirage, you know all the details
about them. You know. Itfeels like the kind of game because of
the way that you manage your families. It feels like the kind of game
that should have that, but itdoesn't, So I guess I hope,

(56:14):
you know, obviously it's early access. I hope maybe they add that.
Yeah, I can see that beinga good feature. It's actually one of
the things I want to bring up, but I don't. I would not
personally be interested in like the needsonce and all that, but at least
being able to click on a person. It brings up a little tag and
then they have this nice mechanic wherelike they have white lines that like arc
to like their house or the arcto their workplace. The only way I

(56:36):
know how to access it is fromlike the people menu. When you're selecting
a building, it'll show you wherethe different people who work in that building
are. But I think it'd bevery nice if they added that for people
like, oh, this is myhusband, that's my daughter, this is
the house I live in, becauseyeah, it would be nice to be
able to at least to have theopportunity to role play more. Let me,
let me build a connection to mypeople. I am, after all,
benevolent and caring the lord I dofleing pieces at them from the trees.

(57:00):
Tortuga is just the just the crazyperson in the trees. Oh my
god, stay away from him,buried me and build me an army,
like okay, just just don't makethem angry. Yeah, well they should
have figured that out after I hadthem build the fifth corp Pit's corpse pit.
I'm imagining your character like like one, I'm imagining why keep digging this

(57:28):
massive holes? I'm imagining Tortuga's characteris like the character in Jamungi provid Williams.
Yeah, have you seen Jamunji withhim in it? Yeah, he's
got like the crazy beard, welllike after he's been trapped in there for
a long time. Yeah, yeah, okay. Or you can for more
modern reference, you can think of, uh lot, was it lost?

(57:50):
What's the one with Tom Hanks?Oh yeah, castaway? Castaway, that's
still like twenty years old, isn'tit? Is it even newer? I
hope it is. I mean we'reboth for a modern reference. What about
Gilligan's Island. Yes, that's it. Oh man, God, we're so

(58:15):
old. But yeah, just likeI do. One thing I want is
more role playing elements, like Imean we were talking about like our character
in this game is like that's Idon't know, more more stuff like that
would be like when you go whenyou go third person as your baron.
I want to be able to likewalk up to people and have a conversation
with them, like hit them witha wet fish. I want to go

(58:37):
into battle with my soldiers. Okay, man, maybe nothing like that action
RPG. Yeah, I'm actually kidding. I do not. I would know.
That's more like a mountain blade usk. I think, yeah, you're
right, but yeah, no,for sure. I like just more like,
oh, my lord, I don'tknow, he's really bad with money
or whatever, and then you canhave gameplay effects that, uh, like

(59:00):
he has a gambling addiction or somethingand you have gameplay effects with that.
I don't know. Stuff like thatcould be cool, like character traits and
stuff, because I like that sortof thing. But I understand why a
lot of people probably wouldn't want that. I keep going back to Tropico,
but that that has that as well, where like when you set your character
up, you've got like different traits. You can be like a meglomaniac or

(59:22):
other. Yeah, yeah, itdoes have that. Yeah, you had
like a certain number of points youget to pick, right, Yeah,
like some traits were better, theywould cost more points. You con pair
it with like a worse, worsetrait stuff like that. Yep, I
think, yeah, no, that'sat least that's how the first one worked.
I don't I don't remember if theystill do that, because then that

(59:44):
game originally it was like you're basicallycreating your own Fidel Castro effectively, like
that's the way they marketed the game. But I also liked how you could
just pick random people off the streetand execute him, Like where's the torture
chambers, where's the dungeon, where'sthe you know, this is the Middle
Ages, you know, let meburn the heretic at the stake. Yeah,

(01:00:04):
And like crime could be something that'sadded the well apparently, like there's
so there's if your public order dropsbelow a certain percentage, people will become
bandits and they'll like leave your leaveyour town. Well I don't know that
actually sounds so perfect. Nobody doesthat. My public order has never been
below like eighty. Everybody's incredibly happy. My town's the best town, I

(01:00:37):
guess. But you know, Ireally don't have any more to say,
by the way, about I can'tthink of anything else on mannor Lords.
Yep, that's the game. Goodstuff. I'm enjoying it. I did
not expect to like it as muchas I am. I am enjoying it
as well. Yeah, I thinkwe were just going to keep this one
short, keep it to a keepit to an episode specifically about manor Lord,

(01:00:57):
which is probably by the time thiserrors will be available on Steam around
them. So if you're interested inthat, check it out, wish list
it, buy it whatever it's overon on Steam. It's made by Slavic
Magic and published by Hooded Horse tortugasmister Hooded Horse. Well anyway, so

(01:01:23):
yeah, until next time. Thisis the historical gamer for Finish wolf Pack
in Tortuga. Thanks again. HeyI have one of those people. Yeah,
sure are good job, buddy.What is going on? I'm trying
to wrap this up assholes, soyou are of those people. Goodbye bye,

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Single Malt Strategy: Manor Lords - First Impressions | Episode 84

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Single Malt Strategy: Manor Lords - First Impressions | Episode 84