Boosting your Manor Lords Approval rating is one of the main ways you can get new people to live in your town, but there are many ways you can do this and it's not clearly laid out. Initially, building more burgage plots and houses seems like a good idea and is mentioned repeatedly, but the key is that villagers have to want to come to your town - increasing your Approval makes your town a desirable place to live! With that in mind, here's how you can go about increasing your Approval in Manor Lords to expand your town's population.
How to raise Approval in Manor Lords
Increasing Approval in Manor Lords is crucial to getting more people to live in your town. To improve this, and therefore grow your town's population, you can mouse over the little percentage with a hand on the left of the top bar. This shows your Approval rating and the various changes that have affected it. Green is obviously good, but red needs to be fixed - so if your Approval is low, check this to see what obvious fixes are needed.
You'll often be told you need to get more people in Manor Lords, with building more burgage plots to increase housing presented as the way to do that. However, if you're not paying attention to Approval it's possible to keep building houses without realizing the ones you have are empty - so even though you're doing what you're told, you're not getting the people you need.
People will only move into your empty houses when you have a good Approval. You might get a slow trickle around the 40%+ mark but you want it green to really draw in the crowds.
- Manor Lords patch adds new maps and a city builder staple, bridge-building, and also makes it so "taverns realize ale isn't magic – it's just ale"
- Manor Lords dev confirms "castles and sieges are now in the works" for the city builder, as well as a new map that could get its own game mode in the future
As well as checking your Approval stats for any red changes to fix, you can also check Burgage plots to see if they have enough amenities close by. This will not only let you level them up to do more, and occasionally boost occupancy, but also give you an idea of what your citizens need or want to be happy. Churches and taverns are always a good starter here to keep people satisfied.
So, while your town needs empty houses to fill, there's more to it than just providing rooms. Make sure you check your amenities and Approval, and build a town people will want to come to. You should see your numbers rise in no time then.
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