Manor Lords: Which starting scenario and difficulty should you choose?

Which is the best scenario for new players in Manor Lords? Slavic Magic's gorgeous and hotly anticipated city-builder Manor Lords gives you a fair bit of freedom for customising your new game setup. After you hit New Game and create your Lord and coat of arms, you'll be treated to a Game Setup screen where you can select between three scenarios, and customise the difficulty with three templates or a host of individual game options. But which is the best scenario for you?

This guide is aimed at first-time Manor Lords players who aren't sure which scenario or difficulty to choose. Below, we'll walk you through each of the three starting scenarios and the three difficulty options available, and offer our thoughts on where you should start with your first Manor Lords playthrough.

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What is the best Manor Lords scenario for new players?

In our opinion, the best starting scenario in Manor Lords for new players is Restoring The Peace (the second option). This scenario offers a balance between relatively risk-free city-building, and later skirmishes with bandits, raiders, and the illegitimate Baron's regions.

However, if you're less interested in Manor Lords' Total-War-style combat and just want to play it as an endless city-builder, then Rise To Prosperity (the first scenario) is a great option which turns off all enemies, allowing to to play at entirely your own pace.

Below we'll explore each of the three Manor Lords scenarios in more detail so you can make an informed decision about how to spend your first playthrough.

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Rise To Prosperity (easiest, no combat)

Rise To Prosperity is the first scenario in Manor Lords, and it is designed to familiarise players with the various city-building aspects of Manor Lords. In this game mode, combat is essentially turned off; there are no bandits stealing your livestock, or illegitimate lords pressing claims on nearby territory.

The sole focus in Rise To Prosperity is expanding your settlement. The end-goal is to reach the "Large Town" settlement level, which is the highest settlement level in the game. The order is as follows:

• Settler's Camp
• Small Village
• Medium Village
• Large Village
• Small Town
• Medium Town
• Large Town

Once you reach the "Large Town" level, you'll have the option to continue your game in Endless mode, without any goals except the ones you create for yourself. It's a great scenario for players who aren't interested in combat, and don't want annoying obstacles like wars or banditry getting in the way of their towns.

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Restoring The Peace (balanced, some combat)

Restoring The Peace is the second scenario in Manor Lords. This scenario introduces bandits who will occasionally steal resources from you, and whom you must attack and defeat in order to scatter them. But the main challenge is the Baron, a hostile AI ruler who begins the game with claims on two of the eight regions on the map.

At first, this scenario doesn't feel much different from Rise To Prosperity, with only the occasional bandit theft marking any difference. However, later on, once you're at the level of a Medium or Large Village, you'll have to start raising armies to defend yourself against periodic raider attacks from the Baron. The eventual goal is to conquer every region of the map, thereby freeing the entire land from the Baron's influence.

This is personally my favourite game mode to play. While combat is not the main focus of Manor Lords, it's still a key selling point that differentiates the game from most other city-builders, and I personally find it adds to the challenge without adding too much pressure (unless you crank up the difficulty, of course).

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On The Edge (hardest, lots of combat)

The final and most challenging scenario in Manor Lords is On The Edge, and it's suited more for experienced players, or those who have perhaps come from more combat-focused strategy games. The aim, as with the first scenario, is to expand your settlement all the way to the "Large Town" settlement level. But it's far more difficult here, because from as early as your second year, you'll be plagued by the kinds of raider attacks that befall you only in the mid-to-late game in Restoring The Peace.

The focus in On The Edge is very much on building up your town, resources, and army reserves as quickly and efficiently as possible so you can repel the first invaders. This scenario, when cranked up to the hardest difficulty, is an extreme challenge that requires a bit of luck and a lot of experience with some very particular strategies and build orders. As such, it's not what we would recomend for players new to Manor Lords.

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Which difficulty should you choose in Manor Lords?

There are three difficulty levels for each scenario in Manor Lords: Relaxing, Default, and Challenging. But it's important to understand that these difficulties are only templates, and you can configure the difficulty of the game in much more specific and granular ways by interacting with the various settings just below the difficulty settings in the Game Setup screen.

Here's what each of the difficulty settings mean for each scenario:

Rise To Prosperity:

Effect	Relaxing	Default	Challenging
Starting Season	Spring	Spring	Winter
Starting Supplies	Double	Standard	Standard
Happiness Requirements	Low	Standard	High
Impact of disapproval on population growth	Low	Standard	Standard
Well placement	Anywhere	Underground Water	Underground Water
Rain destroys supplies	No	Every 2nd rainfall	Instant
Droughts and Fires	No	Yes	Yes

Restoring The Peace:

Effect	Relaxing	Default	Challenging
AI Aggressiveness	Reactive	Balanced	Aggressive
Raiders	No	Yes	Yes
Starting Bandit Camps	0	3	3
Starting Supplies	Double	Standard	Standard
Free weapon delivery	Yes	Yes	No
Happiness Requirements	Low	Standard	High
Impact of disapproval on population growth	Low	Standard	Standard
Well placement	Anywhere	Underground Water	Underground Water
Rain destroys supplies	No	Every 2nd rainfall	Instant
Droughts and Fires	No	Yes	Yes

On The Edge:

Effect	Relaxing	Default	Challenging
End Goal	Conquest	Growth	Conquest
Raider frequency	1 per 2 years	1 per 2 years	1 per year
Raider free years	2 years	1 year	1 year
Starting Bandit Camps	0	0	2
Bandit Camp limit	3	3	5
Starting Season	Spring	Spring	Winter
Starting Supplies	Double	Standard	Standard
Free weapon delivery	Yes	Yes	No
Happiness Requirements	Low	Standard	High
Impact of disapproval on population growth	Low	Standard	High
Rain destroys supplies	No	Every 2nd rainfall	Instant
Droughts and Fires	No	Yes	Yes

For your first playthrough of Manor Lords, we would recommend you start at the Default difficulty level for Rise To Prosperity and Restoring The Peace, or Relaxing for On The Edge (to give yourself some more time and starting resources before the raiders arrive).

But if you don't want to stick to Default, you should ideally make use of the individual game settings to create your own challenge, rather than simply using one of the three preset difficulty options. You can hover over the text of each setting in-game to find out what it does.

That's our breakdown of the different scenarios and difficulty levels in Manor Lords concluded. If you're interested in playing with a friend, unfortunately you won't be able to do so yet; but you can check the full details in our Manor Lords multiplayer guide. Take a look at our Manor Lords beginner's guide for additional information on your first in-game year.