Manor Lords: How to grow your population

Nothing happens without a thriving workforce

Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

In medieval city-builder Manor Lords, the factor limiting you from expanding your town the most at the start of the game will be a lack of workforce. Each building in Manor Lords needs a family assigned to it in order to function – this family will harvest resources, transport them, and sell them on the local marketplace, if it’s eligible to be sold. However, you’ll also want at least one unassigned family in town to act as builders – otherwise, construction projects drag on forever.

Attracting more people to your town in Manor Lords is thus one of the most important tasks you face – but fret not, it’s an easy one thanks to our guide showing you how to grow your population.

How to grow your population in Manor Lords

Population growth in Manor Lords is decided by two factors: Free living space and approval. 

The first one is easy enough to handle, as all you need to do is ensure that you have ample room for new arrivals to move into by providing them with empty residences. This is also the best way to have control over your town’s growth – if you don’t want any more people, because you may not be able to feed a larger population, you simply need to make sure that there are no empty houses to be found in your settlement.

Approval can be gained several ways, but the most reliable and important one at the start is to have different food sources – in practice, this is mostly going to be meat and berries. Another way to gain approval is to have textiles offered at the marketplace. Early on, it’s a good idea to build a Tannery to produce leather from the hides generated by the Hunting Camp.

As you can see, things like taxes can also negatively affect your approval and slow down growth. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Once your approval is above 50% and you have empty living space in your town, the population will automatically grow and you’ll attract additional families to live in your settlement. A boost in population growth speed can be achieved if you manage to get your approval above 75%.

Having more people means having the ability to produce more goods and recruit more soldiers, but don’t overextend yourself: A higher population means having more mouths to feed. Always make sure you can support your population growth by adding more food production or importing it through the Trading Post.

Manor Lords has this handy UI element showing you how long your current supplies of food and fuel will last you. / Slavic Magic / Hooded Horse

Building large residences with ample space for backyards and placing Chicken Coops or Vegetable Gardens in them can greatly increase your ability to sustain a larger population.

For more on this fantastic game from Slavic Magic and Hooded Horse, check out our Manor Lords beginner tips.