How to Win Restoring The Peace (& Other Game Modes)

May 9, 2024

When you start a new game of Manor Lords, you can choose between three scenarios. Two of them you can accomplish by building up a single settlement into a major town, but to complete the last one you’ll need to spread your influence across the whole map.

This last scenario, “Restoring the Peace”, is a challenge that will see you butting heads with a distant but influential baron, and not just with the bandits that consistently pop up in the unclaimed corners of the map. You can build your influence and fend off the baron’s forces with a well-equipped militia from a single settlement, but you’ll need to expand to multiple settlements and exploit your manor defenses if you want to beat the game.

Manor Lords All crafting materials & How to Get Them feature image

Crafting Materials are processed materials used to create commodities and military equipment in Manor Lords.

How to Beat Rise to Prosperity and On the Edge

The three scenarios you can choose from in the 0.7 build of Manor Lords are “Rise to Prosperity,” “Restoring the Peace,” and “On the Edge.” You can also create your own scenario by modifying the options listed below the three templates.

Of the three, “Restoring the Peace” provides the toughest challenge. “Rise to Prosperity” lets you build your cities in peace, and “On the Edge” adds extra challenges like raiders and bandit camps. “Restoring the Peace” features bandits, raiders, and an off-map adversary who will constantly try to expand across the map. In addition, while the first two scenarios end when one of your settlements reaches the Large Town milestone, the only way to beat “Restoring the Peace” is to claim every enemy region as your own.

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As such, the way to beat “Rise to Prosperity” and “On the Edge” is to simply build a strong town and meet all the Burgage Plot requirements demanded by the Large Town milestone. They are:

30 level 1 or higher
20 level 2 or higher
15 level 3 or higher

A level 3 Burgage Plot requires a total of:

Some of these requirements are straightforward, but a few can be challenging to get or maintain.

If you can handle all these issues, you should have no trouble growing your settlement into a Large Town and winning these two scenarios. “On the Edge” adds extra wrinkles with raiders and bandit camps, but a few good militia units and a retinue will keep your region safe enough to reach the milestone. As for “Restoring the Peace,” the first extra feature you’ll need to understand is Influence.

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How to Gather and Spend Influence in Manor Lords

Most resources are exclusive to each settlement, but a few of them are universal: Personal Wealth, Influence, and King’s Favor. King’s Favor doesn’t do anything in the 0.7 build, but the other two have many uses.

Specifically, Influence is how you press claims on other regions in Manor Lords. Once you have 1,000 Influence, you can claim an empty region on the map. These regions have a gray outline. You can also claim a region already owned by the off-screen adversary, Baron Hildebolt, but such a claim costs 2,000 Influence.

There are two main ways to gain influence: Tithes and raids. Once you build your Manor in a region, you can bring up its menu and check the Taxes tab. Only two kinds of tax are currently available: Land Taxes and Tithes. Land Taxes let you siphon Regional Wealth into your personal Treasury, while Tithes involve giving up a portion of the region’s food supply to the church. This gives you Influence based on the units of food you gave away.

Tithes are a steady way to gain Influence, especially after you start a second settlement and set up a new set of Tithes. However, a much faster way to gain Influence is to defeat bandit units, either by destroying bandit camps or by defending your settlements against raiders. Each time you force a bandit unit to go running, you get 400 Influence. In a single fight, you can get more Influence than a year’s worth of Tithing can generate.

Once you have enough Influence (and keep in mind that the game rounds up to 2k Influence, so you might not have enough until after you Tithe a couple more times), you can select a region from the map screen and hit the “Claim with Influence” button. The off-screen adversary will usually let you keep a neutral region, but they’ll always contest a region they own by starting a battle.

Featured image for Manor Lords showcasing Development Point tree and the settlement

Learning how to earn and spend Development Points diversifies settlements & helps tailor progression.

How to Beat Baron Hildebort in Manor Lords

Soon after you press a claim against a region the baron owns, he’ll declare war. At this point, you have 90 days to bring your forces to the battlefield, which is usually an open field between your closest owned region and the claimed region. You can see where the battlefield is by hovering your cursor over the magnifying glass on the war notice.

At least on the default difficulty setting, Hildebort always sends one retinue, two light-infantry militia units, one archer militia unit, and one unit of brigands to defend his claims, or to attack you if you try to defend your claims. Every unit has a full 36 members, aside from the 18 brigands. He also always uses the same tactics:

Send the archers out first to harry your forces.
If and when your army runs at the archers, they retreat behind the infantry and retinue units, who meet the charge.
The archers then fire at your forces from behind the infantry.
The brigands look for a chance to flank your forces and attack from the rear.

These are good tactics overall, but you can take advantage of their predictability.

Once the combat begins, you don’t need to stay on the starting battlefield. Instead of letting the archers approach your line, retreat back the way you came. Doing this can cause the archers to outpace the infantry line, giving you a chance to smash into them before they can hide behind their reinforcements.
Hildebort’s retinue has better armor and attack than his infantry militia, but they’re worse than your retinue if you spend the money to upgrade their equipment.
If you have more than three units, you can send the ones on the ends around the side of the infantry line to flank and envelop them.
If an enemy unit routs, try to move your nearby units around the sides of the remaining enemies. Flanking is a great way to destroy enemy morale and end a fight quickly.
Brigands have low numbers, bad armor, and poor morale. They only pose a threat if they manage to flank your forces, and even then they only make a difference if you’re already losing.
Your units default to the “Balanced” stance and have “Run to Positions” active. Always turn off “Run to Positions” immediately, because running reduces the unit’s Fatigue quickly. Instead, keep your units walking unless they need to catch up to the front line in a hurry, or until it’s time to charge into the enemy line.
“Push Forward” works best when you want to be aggressive, and “Stand Your Ground” is best for when you’re defending a position. “Missile Alert” can be useful when charging archers, but remember to switch to “Push Forward” once you reach them.

Manor Lords Best Items To Export & Trade

Players can find a lot of success in Manor Lords by trading and exporting the following commodities.

How to Win the Final Battle in Manor Lords

Baron Hildebort defends his claims (and attacks your claims) with the same five units every time. However, there’s one big exception: when you try to claim Hildebort’s last territory, he’ll send out 12 units:

2 Retinue
2 Spear Militia
4 Light Infantry Militia
3 Archer Militia
1 set of Brigands

At this point, it’s worth mentioning that you can only ever have six militia units, no matter how many settlements you control. You can go over this cap by building extra Manors and getting more retinues, but any retinues you have before you reach six counts towards this cap.

So how can you defeat a force that’s double the size the game expects you to have? The answer is in the name: Manor Lords.

Instead of fighting out in an open field, where Hildebort’s numbers give him an advantage, you should build a Manor near the expected battlefield and use the Castle Planner to build a wall around it. The wall can be as large or small as you like, but try to make sure there’s enough room for all your units and only one gate. You’ll need to build a settlement in the same region, but you can build the Manor fast by using Pack Stations to import planks.

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Once your defenses are ready, do the following:

Move your retinues and militia units into the Manor walls.
Claim the final region owned by Baron Hildebort.
Wait for his forces to reach the battlefield.
Send out one unit to start the battle and draw in the baron’s forces.
Head back to the Manor, but don’t go inside yet.
When the enemy archers get close enough to start firing, try to attack them.
As soon as the archers retreat behind the enemy infantry, turn your unit around and run into the Manor walls.
Set your forces to “Stand Your Ground” and have them attack the enemy infantry as they try to get in through the gatehouse chokepoint.

The narrow entrance completely removes the enemy’s numbers advantage, allowing you to slowly but surely destroy their forces without taking nearly as many casualties. Some friendly and enemy soldiers may clip through the walls as the battle progresses, but not in enough numbers to matter.

Once the main infantry routs, you should have no trouble defeating the remaining archers and any other units who avoided the chokepoint. After they all flee, you’ll see a short cutscene, and then the victory screen with a few statistics. You’ll also earn the rare achievement “Restore the Peace.”