How to form a Manor Lords militia and settle things on the battlefield

Apr. 25, 2024

You’ll need plenty of villagers to create a militia in Manor Lords

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Forming a Manor Lords militia is a vital early step if you want to defend your territory, but you’ll need lots of weapons and townspeople ready to fight. The mechanic isn’t especially well explained, which can mean defending your land from bandits, or seeing off rival lords if you’re pursuing a more expansionist approach, can be a tricky aspect of this city-builder-meets-tactics game to master. Even once you’ve convinced some armed peasants to fight, you still need to order them around and increase their ranks. I’ve explained how to set up a militia in Manor Lords below so you’ll always be prepared for battle.

How to set up a Manor Lords militia

The basics of setting up a militia in Manor Lords involve having enough people, having sufficient weapons, and simply telling them to be an army:

To help you get started, you’ll get a certain amount of weapons just from your town existing but you’ll want to expand and level up aspects of your burgage plots to get more and mount a real fighting force, which I’ll explain in more detail below.

Alternatively, remember that you can entirley skip all the hassle of raising armies if you play the combat-free Rise to ProsperityManor Lords scenario. You can also check out ourManor Lords tipsfor general helpful advice on starting out.

There are four militia types in Manor Lords, each requiring specific weapons or shields:

In order to reach a minimum headcount for your militia you will need high enoughManor Lords approvalto get enough people living in your settlement. Then you can rally recruits for battle when you are under attack or wish to challenge rival lords for more territory.

If you see “equipment missing” when you hover over the militia panel in Manor Lords then you need weapons. Every default run of Manor Lords gives you some starter weapons but to get more, or access different types and shields, you must construct a backyard extension on aManor Lords Level 2 Burgage plotand turn the residents into artisans to make them.

However, you’ll first need to knowhow to build regional wealth in Manor Lords, as some backyard extensions do cost money to begin with. Luckily, most combat-relevant backyard extensions require resources instead of money. These backyard extensions give you more weapons in Manor Lords:

Note that blacksmiths need raw materials like Iron Ore, as well as a villager assigned to a nearby Bloomery to refine it into Iron Slabs to make weapons. If you’re not seeing weapon production once you have things set up, work your way through the production line to make sure that you have all the required industry structures artisans might need resources from, and that everything has a worker assigned.

You can also get weapons by establishingManor Lords Trade Routesvia the Trading Post. You can purchase polearms, warbows, and other weapons if you’d rather not restrict a family to being an artisan-only household, since you cannot reassign families once you turn their Burgage plot into one of the workshops listed above.

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