As a Lord or Lady in Foundation your Lord Manor is an essential piece of your Medieval village! This is where some of your quests will initiate, your Bailiff will reside, and your Treasury expands. Of course you can also house Tax Collectors here too! In this guide I will walk you through everything you need to know about the Lord Manor in Foundation.
How to Build the Lord Manor
Open Build menu and find the Lord Manor under Administration. Click to place a post on the desired build spot. Think of this post as the center for your manor, you can build all around this peg.
Mandatory parts are 1 Core and 1 Door, anything beyond this will increase the splendor and weekly maintenance cost of the building. If you’re just starting out keep the cost in mind!
When you have the resources and coin, expand the Treasury and add a Bailiff Office, then a Tax Collector. Some pieces of the manor are simply decorative, you can see the maintenance cost of the pieces individually as you add them.
You can delete parts of a building at anytime by clicking on the building and then the List icon, locate the piece and select the red shovel icon. If you’re in the process of building simply right-click the object to remove it.
Tip: Select the peg to pick the manor up and move it around to reposition before you press the Build button.
Can You Have More Than One Lord Manor?
Yes! You can have many Lord Manors spread around your map, there is no limit. This is where you can get really creative and build multiple villages, castles, and whatever you can think of.
Assign the Great Hall
The Great Hall is where Envoys will be hosted and allows villagers status to be promoted each month. You can assign the Great Hall to any of the buildings marked as core, extension, or tower pieces of your Lord Manor.
Relocating your Great Hall you can host it at a different building in the Manor or move it to a Keep, Tavern, or Monastery.
You can not promote your villagers class ranks without the Great Hall, be sure to build this right away. Learn about villager status.
Be sure to add the white arrow item near the Manor. The location of the arrow is where the Envoy will appear and the direction the arrow points will be in the way they are facing.
Appoint a Bailiff
Assign a part of your Lord Manor as a Bailiff Office, then click the Select a Bailiff option. You will be presented with three random villagers to choose from. Each one can offer an Effect for the village in the way of a bonus. Such as learning skills faster, gaining more from trade routes, villagers happiness, etc.
What is the Bailiffs Job?
The Bailiff is an appointed official that can be sent on Mandates to gain Influence from the Estates. Quests come available every month and you can send the bailiff to “Gain influence with one Estate” by selecting Labor, Kingdom, or Clergy for 25 coins. The Bailiff will return with Influence currency needed to unlock items from the Estate. Do these quests as often as they are offered.
As you build your village and obtain more Territory you will receive a notification of minerals nearby. Your Bailiff will receive a quest to discover nearby mineral deposits. You pay 100 coins to send them off to discover what type of mineral is available.
Your Bailiff will also research any Unknown Blueprints you bring back from Military Missions to unlock additional monuments.
If your Bailiff becomes unhappy, they can leave the village and you will want to appoint a new one.
Like the Great Hall, the Bailiffs office can also be relocated to another Lord Manor or even a Tavern, but there can only be one Bailiff per map.
An Envoy Requests An Audience!
When you receive the notification that an Envoy approaches or requests an audience you can click on this to take you to them. The Envoy will arrive at your Lord Manor (or where you placed the white arrow for visitors) for a limited time to offer you a quest.
These quests will ask you to supply one of the Estates, Labor, Clergy, or King with some Resources. Select an option to begin one of the quests, when you have the required Resources in storage click the quest to complete it. This will reward you with the chosen estate influence currency and some gold coin. If you fail the quest, 5 influence will be removed from your chosen Estate.
Similarly, the Monk Requests An Audience quest works the same way as the Envoy quest.
Learn more about Estates, Influence, and Splendor.
Expand Your Treasury and Gold Coins
To grow your treasury and increase the number of gold coins you can have, expand your Treasury by adding more building pieces to your Lord Manor, a Keep, or Monastery. To do this, build the new pieces onto your Lord Manor, click the Manor and select the Parts List, here find the buildings that need to be assigned. Select Treasury to as many pieces as you like and watch your gold cap rise.
You can receive more coins than your Treasury allows however the funds will rapidly deteriorate if you don’t act quickly to spend them or upgrade your Treasury.
Assign Tax Collectors
The Tax Office can be unlocked when you spend Influence with Labor Estate once your village reaches 10 Citizens and 50 Labor Splendor. Tax Offices can be assigned to the Lord Manor building only.
Similar to the other buildings, you can expand your Lord Manor and assign Tax Collectors. These are jobs your villagers can be assigned to collect taxes from your villagers. The amount of tax collected is pretty minimal but can be helpful when you’re trying to grow your population.
You can have as many Tax Collectors as you want, and when you upgrade your Lord Manor to the stone version there is a Tax Office that can have a worker assigned to it. I found it funny this office has a red negativity ring around it when you place the building, therefore reducing the nearby areas desirability.
How Do Tax Collectors Work?
I spent a good deal of time following my Tax Collectors around my vanilla Foundation village and what I observed is when the Tax Collector is in the status of “I Am Working” they will first head to their assigned Tax Office, after checking in they will walk to 5 different villagers houses and collect 10 gold coins from each house. The houses Tax Collector’s visit can be half way across the map from their Tax Office. They will even pass by other Tax Collector’s while out working.
Once they have collected the 50 coins (my that coin purse is getting heavy!) they walk back to their Tax Office and this is when the 50 gold coins is reported on your Budget sheet as Income in the Book. The Tax Collector will then go through their needs routine for Happiness visiting their home for comfort, food, water, etc until they repeat the process of “I am working” again.
To assign a villager as a Tax Collector they must have some history with the village and be ranked as a Commoner or Citizen. Serfs are better suited for other jobs, specifically producing Resources which are needed at a faster rate ultimately producing more income.
Upgrade Your Lord Manor
You unlock the Stone version of your Lord Manor with the Labor Influence currency once you have 20 Commoners and 20 Splendor in the Labor Estate. You can gain Labor Influence by sending your Bailiff on Mandate quests, be sure to select the green Labor symbol.
Mods for the Lord Manor
If you want to add a complex dynamic to your game the Authority for Foundation mod by Batyushki (ID: 171911) might be of interest. The mod changes the Promotion and Territory systems and adds new jobs and building pieces to the Lord Manor providing a more challenging gameplay. You can also assign villagers to be the Lord and Lady of the land!
