Growing your population in Manor Lords is important so you can tackle new jobs and continue fulfilling the many needs of your people. If you want to get more people, you’ll need to know how to increase approval. This mechanic revolves around keeping your people happy and avoiding annoying negative modifiers simultaneously.
As long as you stay at 50% approval or higher, you’ll gain one new family per month. And if you’re lucky enough to get to 75% or higher, you’ll gain two new families per month. Just make sure you don’t suddenly drop below these amounts at the last second. It’s easy to not realize your approval changes in real time. Which can hurt or help you depending on your situation.
The big thing to be careful about when managing your approval is to not upgrade your Burgages too quickly. If you can’t keep up with their needs, your approval will drop rapidly. I’ve played around with this when I’m trying to squeeze out a few level 3 Burgages to unlock a new Development Point. So you can definitely get away with it but try not to have too many unhappy families.
Positive Modifiers to Approval in Manor Lords
- Church Level – This is a strong positive that gets even better once you upgrade it.
- Clothing Market Supply – As long as you fulfill the clothing needs of each Burgage level, you’ll regularly gain approval.
- Market Food Variety – The more food variety you have available via the marketplace, the happier families will be.
Negative Modifiers to Approval in Manor Lords
- Homelessness – Upgrading your Homeless People’s Tents to A Worker Camp at the start will fulfill these needs.
- Hunger – If you don’t have enough food for your people, they’ll become unhappy and potentially leave. This can end your run if your colony starves.
- Not Enough Firewood – If the marketplace doesn’t have enough Firewood, your Burgages will become unhappy. If you have this issue but have enough Firewood, dedicate more workers to the Storehouse or Woodcutter’s Lodge.
- Not Enough Food Variety – If the marketplace doesn’t have enough food variety, Burgages will become unhappy. Similar to Firewood, dedicating more workers to the Granary or food buildings will create more workshops. This only helps if you have the food to provide.
- Taxation – Collecting taxes to gain Treasury money for mercenaries will lead to a negative modifier. The impact is dependent on how high your taxes are via the Manor.
- Lack of Entertainment – This negative happens when you’re not providing enough ale to your upgraded Burgages. You can either create a supply chain for Ale or trade for it. If you have enough Ale but your Burgages aren’t getting it, dedicate more workers to the Tavern.
- Unburied Bodies – This only happens if there are unburied people close to a village. You can resolve this problem by dedicating Church workers or Corpse Pit workers.
- Strict Fasting – This policy doesn’t seem to impact approval currently. It supposedly reduces food consumption while decreasing approval.
It’s worth noting that Manor Lords is currently in Steam Early Access so there are bound to be new mechanics as the game develops. Over time, this will likely lead to new modifiers for both increasing your approval and decreasing it. If you’d like to see more guides, check out some of the ones below I’ve recommended.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, survival games, roguelikes, and more.