Manor Lords is turning trade into a weapon — if the AI behaves

Why this matters: trade as strategy, not background noise

This caught my attention because Manor Lords is one of the rare city-builders that managed to feel both intimate and brutal – and the team is proposing to make your economy a battlefield in its own right. After a quiet 2025, Slavic Magic and publisher Hooded Horse are promising a steadier stream of updates in 2026. The next patch pairs sensible housing progression fixes with an experimental trade rework that explicitly encourages economic competition between rival Lords.

• New burgage plot level slotted between ranks two and three to smooth housing progression.
• Housing and workshop upgrades adjusted (baker and cobbler moved to level three) and burgage expansions rebalanced to always add one living space.
• Trade rework built around merchants, route-specific exports/imports, and buyouts so rivals can contest key resources.
• Slavic Magic is soliciting community feedback before locking in trade perks and monetary values.

Breaking down the gameplay changes

The housing tweaks are the easy-to-like, low-drama half of this update. Adding an intermediate burgage plot level between ranks two and three is explicitly designed “to more smoothly bridge the gap between early and late-game housing.” Practically, that should take some of the grind or sudden spikes out of the mid-game while preserving the sense of progression that makes Manor Lords satisfying.

Slavic Magic is also changing how burgage plot expansion works: instead of doubling living space, the expansion will always add a single extra living space. It’s the sort of small numerical change that can have outsized effects on city planning and population pacing – less boom-or-bust, more steady growth.

Workshop progression is being experimented with, too. The team plans to move baker and cobbler extensions to level-three burgage plots. The baker change nudges players to use communal ovens earlier, while the cobbler shift acknowledges that shoes aren’t essential until a slightly later stage. These are sensible nudges that reshape early logistic choices without rewriting the game.

The real headline: trade as contested territory

Where this update could genuinely change how people play is the proposed trade overhaul. Slavic Magic’s idea is to make merchants the backbone of foreign trade and tie trade routes to specific locations – each city would import and export a handful of goods, and routes would be handled by up to three merchants you can hire. Hired merchants visit your trading post every three months and move goods according to your supply settings.

The spice is the buyout mechanic: rival Lords can outbid your merchants, steal them, raise the next hire fee, and trigger a cooldown before you can rehire. Merchants will finish any outstanding deliveries before switching employers, but on high-value routes this promises real conflict over resources. The developers explicitly imagine scenarios where a Lord might monopolize iron slabs to force rivals into diplomatic deals, price gouging, or territorial expansion.

There are built-in caveats. Families you’ve placed at trading posts can handle inter-regional commerce but are excluded from foreign merchant duties. If you’re unlucky — no regional wealth and your merchants all bought out — you might have to rely on passive plot income for a while. Slavic Magic cautions this is an experiment and wants player feedback before committing to exact perks and pricing.

Why this could be great — and where it could go wrong

Trade is one of those features that either sits quietly in the background or becomes the most fun emergent part of a game. On paper, contested merchants create meaningful decisions: do you spend to secure a resource, negotiate with rivals, or invade territory to secure supply lines? That kind of economic leverage can produce memorable moments and diplomatic gameplay that isn’t just marching troops.

My skepticism is practical: much of the system’s success depends on AI and tuning. If rivals either never compete or endlessly grief you by snatching every merchant, it’ll feel broken. If buyout costs, cooldowns, and merchant frequency aren’t well balanced, players will find either a trivial exploit or a constant frustration. I also want to see UI clarity — players need to understand routes, tariffs, and merchant loyalty quickly, or this becomes an opaque bookkeeping chore.

Slavic Magic knows this — they’re showing the idea early to get feedback on whether trade perks and policies should affect hiring fees, buyout costs, route availability, and goods’ values. That’s the right move: trade systems often need iteration while players poke at emergent exploits.

TL;DR

Manor Lords’ next update smooths housing progression and experiments with workshop placement, but the headline is a trade rework that makes merchants and routes a contested resource. It’s an exciting direction that could turn economies into another arena of conflict — if Slavic Magic gets the AI behavior and balancing right. The team is asking for player feedback before finalizing perks, and this is exactly the kind of feature that needs community stress-testing to succeed.