How to increase Approval in Manor Lords

Want to increase Approval in Manor Lords? Approval is the metric in Manor Lords that dictates the overall satisfaction of your peasants. Happy villagers are good villagers, and if you let your Approval rating fall too low, your territory will slowly devolve as families leave or even resort to crime. Unfortunately, Manor Lords keeps the Approval system fairly opaque, and doesn't exactly tell you what you need to do to keep happiness levels high.

In this guide on how to increase Approval in Manor Lords, we'll tell you what you need to know to keep your Approval rating in the green, which is where you want it to stay in order to become a successful ruler over a satisfied settlement.

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How to increase Approval Rating in Manor Lords

Your Approval Rating should ideally always be at least 50%, which is the bar you need to reach for one new family to join your settlement per month. If it falls below that and enters the red, eventually you'll start to notice peasants shirking their duties, leaving your town, or even worse, turning into Bandits. Try the following tips to keep your Approval high:

• Make sure that there are no homeless families in your town. Every family should be housed in a Burgage Plot, and if for whatever reason your families aren't entering plots that you've already built, check to see if they're stuck in the Worker's Camp that you receive at the start of the game. (This happened to me once, and I had to demolish the Worker's Camp to get them to move into housing.)
• Meet the Amenities for your Burgage Plots. You can see what these are by clicking on a Burgage Plot and checking what items are filled in. On a basic level, every Burgage Plot needs to be in a settlement with a Well and a Wooden Church in order to meet the two basic Amenity requirements - Water Access and Church Access.
• Meet the Market Supply requirements for your Burgage Plots. You can do this by diversifying the market stalls in your Marketplace, which ideally should be bustling with a wide variety of goods as an indicator of how many resources you've got at your disposal. For instance, you need to have at least two types of food available in your market stalls to satisfy the Burgage Plot Food Stall Supply requirement. This means you can't just be selling berries from your Forager Hut - you'll need to sell meat gathered from your Hunting Camp as well.
• Don't let your supplies get ruined by inclement weather. At the start of a new Manor Lords game, you'll have various supplies strewn about your main building area. Construct a Granary and a Storehouse posthaste to keep these supplies from wear and tear, and make sure that you have enough Granaries and Storehouses to supplement your town's growing expansions. Also remember to assign at least one family to each storage building.
• If any of your townsfolk die in battles with Bandits or Raiders, be sure to bury their bodies. You can do so if you have a Wooden Church, which provides Hallowed Ground that lets you place the deceased to rest. Taking care of your dead will go a long way towards ensuring that the people of your town trust you as their ruler.
• Try decreasing taxes. If you've built a Manor for yourself, you've probably experimented with the taxation options available to you. Taxation is a reliable way to build your Treasury, but if you're in a pinch and need the Approval of the citizenry to improve, lay off on taxes for a bit. Manor Lords is sort of like real life - nobody likes giving their hard-earned coin to the government!
• Always upgrade the structures in your village when you're able. An ever-growing village means you aren't just sitting on your laurels. You should be always searching for the next upgrade, from elevating your Wooden Church to a Stone Church to increasing the levels on your Burgage Plots. Better structures equals more room for families, which in turn equals a happier, healthier place for your peasants to reside.

With this knowledge in tow, your peasants should be more than glad to stay within the confines of your bustling village. For more tips on Manor Lords, check out our guides to farming and trade - both of which are vital to the development of a happy, healthy town.