Manor Lords’ Approval Rating is a system that measures how much your citizens like you. The better the rating is the better morale and population growth. The more neutral or lower it goes, the worse those metrics get. Essentially, be nice to your people, and the people will be nice to you. There’s some nuance to it, and so, this approval rating guide goes over the approval rating brackets, general ways to increase and decrease it, and other management tips for the feature.

How Approval Rating Works¶

Approval Rating is a percentage measurement that you can find towards the top left of your screen. It will give you a percentage indicating your population’s current happiness in the settlement. Depending on the measurement, you will either have:

• Low approval: -50% (red font)
• Medium approval: 50%-74% (light green front)
• High approval: 75%+ (heavy green font)

Depending on the bracket of approval you’re in, you will get different modifiers to morale of armies, and population growth stats.

• If your approval is low, your men will have low mood to fight and break much easier, while your population will not grow.
• If you have medium approval, then your morale is fine, and you will gradually grow your population when you have spare Burgage Plots.
• Meanwhile, your men are enthusiastic about fighting when you have a high approval rating, and you will almost immediately fill any vacant housing you have and grow your population.

Increasing and Decreasing Approval Rating¶

The Approval System in Manor Lords often is synonymous with the Burgage Plots they live in. Each Burgage Plot has its own level, ranging from 1 to 3. The different levels require different metrics to hit. In general, having the following metrics constantly supplied and active will increase approval ratings:

• Wooden Church - level 1 requirements
• Small Stone Church - level 3 requirement
• Market Stalls - Needed 1 through 3
• Stocked Stalls - Constantly supply maintains burgage plot happiness
• Stalls with Variety - Food variety for level 2 and 3, and clothing variety for level 3
• Active Tavern for Entertainment - level 3
• No Taxes - You can set taxes after creating a Manor.

Level 1 Burgage Plots simply need a Church and basic market stalls. Meanwhile, level 2s require more fuel, food varieties and clothing, while level 3s require an upgraded church, tavern, two sources of clothing, three sources of food, and so on.

You must have enough market stalls, with constant supply and demand to meet those needs. The same goes for Taverns with their supply of Ale to keep the entertainment approval buff active. You can read more about how to supply taverns all year long here.

Burgage Plots the most distant away from serviced stalls can experience stock shortages. You will be notified of any properties failing to get the goods they want via the thumbs-down icon at the top of your HuD. Mouse hover over the icon, and it will put the same icon over the plots affected.

If this consistently happens, make sure enough families is working in the storehouses and granaries to make logistics easier. This should fix issues like the not enough fuel at the marketplace issue. If that’s addressed and the issue still occurs, make a small main market, and create small markets around ten stalls in size to the furthest away burgage plots. This should evenly distribute your goods around so all around town. You can then expand market sizes as and when required to keep up with the supply and demand of your citizens.

Managing Variety when your population gets big¶

One of the design issues with the early access of Manor Lords is that when your population gets big, you’ll find that a limited supply of materials gets harder to secure. This, naturally leads to issues with food production as Berries, Vegetables and Meat will start getting harder and harder to find.

To solve some of these issues, our best tips are to do the following:

1. Deliberately make Burgage plots with large extensions for Vegetables.
2. Spam small extension buildings with Chicken Eggs and Goat Sheds.
3. Buy alternative food stocks from Trading Posts

Goat Sheds will provide passive Hides and Meats to your population all year long, as will Eggs. Vegetables are planted in March and harvested in September, with the quantity depending on the size of the extension.

These methods are important for keeping somewhat of a supply to variations in the diet at the markets. If that’s not enough, you will need to trade some of your surplus stock in your industries to purchase more food for your population. Managing this upkeep of food and fuel is important for maintaining a basic happy population.

The other thing you need to do is ensure you’re making around 400 Barley a year. 400-500 Barley is a good measurement of the amount of Ale a large town needs a year to keep a steady supply and demand of Ale at a Tavern. If there are stock issues, then the tavern goes offline, and you take an entertainment penalty.

Your farmers also want to put sheep to pasture for Wool and Yarn, and have around 200-300 Flax planted a year to keep a healthy amount of Linen produced. This should help keep your industries working, and keep clothing stalls supplies with items and crafts from the Tailor’s Workshop artisan building.

This concludes everything you need to know about Approval Rating management in Manor Lords. You now know the steps you need to take to keep it as high as you want, and ways to mitigate issues as your town population expands.