How to increase population in Manor Lords

Grow your village into a major town.

Image credit: Eurogamer/Hooded Horse

Guide by Emma Kent Former Intern and Reporter

Published on May 2, 2024

Increasing the size of your population in Manor Lords is essential if you want to expand and level up your settlement. Placing new buildings will create jobs that need to be filled, and you’ll need a steady flow of immigrants to step into these roles. You’ll also need a fairly large population to create a fighting force of militia units.

In some cases, however, it might be best to take a more cautious approach to increasing the size of your Manor Lords population. Read on for tips on how to increase your population in Manor Lords so that your starter village can develop into a major town.

How to increase population in Manor Lords

There are a number of factors that affect population growth in Manor Lords. We'll explain them all in turn below, but they mostly boil down to:

Maintaining an Approval rating of over 50%
Building new Burgage Plots for them to move into
Producing enough resources and materials to keep them all happy

Increase your Approval to attract more citizens

When looking to increase the size of your population, the main factor you’ll need to worry about is your Approval rating. This measures how happy your citizens are, and is determined by factors such as access to water, food diversity, clothing variety and proximity to a church.

To check your Approval rating, hover your cursor over the ‘thumb’ symbol on the bar at the top of your screen.

The Approval menu in Manor Lords — Approval will determine the speed at which new citizens join your town. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Hooded Horse

You will need an Approval rating of at least 50% for families to continue moving into your settlement, so it’s vital to keep your Approval at this level if you want your town to expand.

Your Approval rating also determines the speed at which new families join your settlement:

50-75% Approval (Neutral): results in low population growth
75%+ Approval (Positive): results in high population growth

Keep building Burgage Plots so new arrivals have somewhere to live

Along with an Approval rating of over 50%, you’ll need some empty Burgage Plots for the new families to move into. If you want continuous growth, you should regularly build Burgage Plots to accommodate new arrivals, or level up Burgage Plots you already have to create space for extra families. Upgrading a Level 2 Plot to Level 3, for instance, will allow another family to move into the building, and won’t take up any extra space in your town: a real win-win.

Remember that you’ll initially need to increase your population quickly if you want to fill your militia units. These units each require 36 male villagers - and with bandits and raiders on the horizon, you’ll need to be prepared for a fight - including knowing how to make weapons for them, too.

An army of soldiers stand guard between large houses in Manor Lords — You'll need a large population to supply your armies and militia units in order to fend off raiders and bandits. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Hooded Horse

Increase your population slowly so you don't outstrip your resource production

For the most part, you’ll want to continuously increase the size of your population in Manor Lords, however, there are times when you’ll want to put on the brakes. If you’re running low on vital resources such as food or fuel, you might want to think twice before inviting newcomers. This is particularly true in winter, when there are fewer sources of food available and fuel consumption is doubled.

A good rule of thumb is to build new Burgage Plots gradually, so that if a new family changes the balance of your town, you will have time to adapt to this. It’s easy to place several Burgage Plots at once before realising your settlement is not yet ready to accommodate all of them, so be careful when doing your town planning.

It's also a good idea to ensure you have a steady food supply that can support your growing population, and there are several ways to get food in Manor Lords, particularly if you know the ins and outs of farming. If a low supply of food is preventing you from growing your population, you might want to consider importing food by trading at the Trading Post. In order to generate Regional Wealth for this, you can sell off any spare resources that you don’t need.

At a later point in the game, you may need to temporarily reduce or halt your Taxes in order to improve your Approval rating and grow your population. This is because any form of taxation causes a loss in Approval, and if this dips below 50%, you may have to reduce your personal intake in order to restart immigration to your town. You can alter your Taxes by clicking on the Manor building.

A view of a well developed Manor building inside wooden walls in Manor Lords — Occasionally, you may need to halt Taxes to help keep your villagers happy, and you can do this via your Manor building. | Image credit: Eurogamer/Hooded Horse

Seeing your settlement grow from a small village into a busy town is one of the most rewarding elements of Manor Lords, so don’t be afraid to increase your population quickly. This will allow you to continuously add new buildings and industries - and the faster you grow your town, the more prepared you’ll be to deal with raiders and foreign armies. Just keep an eye on your stocks of vital resources, and you should be good to keep expanding.

That's everything you need to know about increasing population in Manor Lords. For more help getting to grips with the game, read our beginner's tips and tricks guide on what to do first, as well as our advice on the best development points to unlock early on.