Manor Lords gives you the reins to an uncharted parcel of land, tasking you with transforming it into a booming medieval settlement. As an intricate city-builder, it can feel daunting to get the resources flowing properly at first. Follow this guide to avoid rookie mistakes and establish a strong economic foundation for your humble hamlet.
Prioritize a Steady Timber Supply
Timber is the most vital early resource in Manor Lords. Almost every initial structure from houses to workplaces requires logs to construct. Before burning through your starting timber stash, make building a logging camp your top priority.
Situate it adjacent to a dense forest, assign a family to operate it, and you’ll have a steady supply of wood trickling in. Running out of timber is far from game-ending but will waste precious time as villagers deconstruct and rebuild using refunded materials.
Don’t Let Food and Goods Spoil 
Your settler families come stocked with modest supplies of food and building materials, but these spoil if left exposed for too long. Rapidly constructed both a granary to safely store perishable foodstuffs like grain and meat, as well as a storehouse for items like timber and iron ore.
Ideally, place these central storage facilities between your nascent workplaces like the logging camp and future residential zones. Assign a family to each to staff the structures and prevent spoilage. From here, build a marketplace at your planned town center where staffed stalls will vend the safely stored goods.
Establish Food Sources Immediately
Speaking of food, securing reliable sustenance sources should be an absolute priority when first settling. A steady stream of nutrition keeps your workforce happy, healthy, and productive.
Start by building either a hunter’s camp near abundant wildlife or a forager’s hut alongside berry bushes. Assign a worker family to whichever option is closest. For extra security, eventually, construct both food production buildings.
Once you have a solid stock of preserved meats and foraged goods, you can temporarily reassign those worker families to more urgent construction roles. Just be sure to replenish stocks before hunger strikes.
Layout Housing Smartly 
With basic resource pipelines established, it’s time to expand your workforce by constructing housing along roads. These “burgage plots” have deceptively nuanced placement requirements.
While packing homes densely may seem efficient, leaving ample yard space is crucial. Generously sized plots can be upgraded with productive backyard extensions like vegetable gardens, hen houses, or even crafting workshops.
A well-planned residential district with plentiful room for expansion will pay massive dividends down the road. If space is lacking, simply delete misplaced plots without penalty and try again.
Earn Gold Through Trade Routes
For all its resource abundance, Manor Lords doesn’t provide starting gold except for a tiny amount. To fund community upgrades and recruit militia troops, you’ll need to earn real money fast.
The solution? Establish trade routes as soon as possible by constructing a trading post along a road connected to the map’s border trading nodes. From the post, you can export excess local goods like pelts, stone, or iron to passing merchants for cold hard cash.
Just be mindful of trade route fees which can rapidly drain your limited funds if overextended too soon. Stick to exporting your most plentiful surplus goods and carefully manage your export budget.
With secure pipelines for timber, food, housing, and income, you’ll have a rock-solid foundation to grow your village into a booming medieval metropolis. From here, you can advance to deeper strategies like recruiting militia, building production facilities, and negotiating with rivals.
But for now, focus on meeting these core needs efficiently and you’ll be well on your way to reigning over a flourishing manor. Lords of the land, start your engines! Your kingdom awaits.
