Manor Lords Army Guide: Building and Equipping a Retinue
How to raise militia, gear up a retinue in plate, pick formations and stances, keep an army fed, and beat bandits and the Baron.
Fighting in Manor Lords sits in a strange spot. One minute you're fussing over ale stalls and carrot gardens, the next you're marching 80 farmers into a field to settle who owns a valley. Your army is your workforce, your own wallet pays for the fancy stuff, and a march handled badly can starve a village you just took. So here's the full picture: mustering militia, gearing a retinue, what "formations" actually are in this game, keeping troops fed far from home, and clearing out bandits and the Baron.
One heads up before anything else. The game's still in Early Access and it takes big patches - the 2026 updates alone reworked castles, pathfinding, and squad controls. The core systems below have held steady, but exact prices creep around a little between versions.
Recruiting Militia From Burgage Plots
How mustering works
Open the army menu on the bottom bar (hotkey V, the crossed weapons icon) and hit the plus sign over a unit type. The game reaches into your male villagers, hands out whatever weapons and armor the town has lying around, and forms the unit. Each militia unit caps at 36 men, and it'll run short if you don't have the stock - a "spear militia" of 14 guys just means you own 14 spears.
Rallying happens from the same menu. Pick the unit, drop the rally flag on open ground, and give them a minute to walk in and gear up. Right-click moves them, right-click on an enemy attacks.
The part people miss: these are your farmers, woodcutters, and bakers. A rallied spearman isn't threshing wheat. Leave the army standing around for a month and you'll feel it at harvest. Disband the moment a fight's over and they walk back to their jobs.
The four militia types
| Unit | Gear needed | Attack | Shield | Charge | Anti-Armor | Impaling | |---|---|---|---|---|---|---| | Militia Footmen | sidearms + small shields | 2 | 3 | 0 | 0 | No | | Spear Militia | spears + large shields | 1 | 8 | 0 | 0 | Yes | | Polearm Militia | polearms | 2 | 0 | 2 | 2 | No | | Archer Militia | warbows | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | No |
Spears are the early workhorse, and it's mostly that shield 8 talking. Impaling is the hidden gem: a spear unit standing still and facing the enemy cancels the enemy's charge bonus and flips it into bonus damage for you. That's why unarmored spearmen wreck charging brigands.
Polearms go the other way - anti-armor 2 and a real charge of their own, but zero shields, so arrows chew them up. Footmen are the flexible middle, decent attack with a little protection. Archers hit for 2 from range and fold instantly if anything touches them, and rain cuts their output.
Where the gear comes from
Everything's built in backyard extensions on level 2 burgage plots, and each workshop pulls a family out of your general worker pool:
- Blacksmith: 1 iron slab + 1 plank makes 2 spears, 2 slabs make a sidearm, a slab and a plank make a polearm
- Bowyer: 1 plank per warbow
- Joiner: shields from planks
- Tailor: 2 linen per gambeson
- Armorer: 2 iron slabs per helmet, 3 per mail suit
So a full 36-man spear unit wants 36 spears and 36 large shields. Count backward from that before you rally anybody, and remember every workshop family is one fewer pair of hands in the fields.
Burgage levels gate the armor
Armor isn't assigned, it's grabbed. When a unit rallies, each man takes the best body armor his own house can store:
- Level 1: helmets
- Level 2: helmets plus gambesons (the upgrade costs 2 timber and 8 planks, and each family there pays you 1 regional wealth a month)
- Level 3: helmets plus mail (25 regional wealth, 3 timber, 12 planks, 4 rooftiles, and 2 regional wealth per family per month)
Plate never shows up on this list. That's retinue-only, which is the next section. The practical takeaway is that upgrading plots is an army upgrade in disguise - a town of level 3 burgages fields a militia that walks through gunfire-free versions of the same fight.
Armor and shields stack, and only leveled houses hold the good stuff. The levy is exactly as tough as its housing stock.
Armor and Weapon Tiers for Retinue Troops
Getting your first retainers
Build a Manor. You need Small Village status plus 5 timber, 20 planks, and 15 stone. The day it finishes you get 5 retainers free, and they outclass the levy badly: attack 4 (double a spear unit), armor 12, shield 32. Five guys who fight like fifteen.
Growing the unit
The cap is 12 men, and each Garrison Tower module bolted onto a Manor raises it by another 12. Every soldier past the first five gets hired by hand in the retinue screen for 50 treasury apiece. Replacing combat losses works the same way, so a wiped retinue is a rebuild bill, not a permanent loss.
Know your two wallets here. Regional wealth belongs to the town - it pays for imports, backyard extensions, burgage upgrades, and oxen. Treasury is your personal cash, raised through taxes at the Manor, and it's the only money that buys retainers, mercs, or armor upgrades. A rich town with an empty treasury can't field anything fancy.
The plate jump
| Unit | Attack | Armor | Shield | Charge | Anti-Armor | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Retinue | 4 | 12 | 32 | 3 | 1 | | Retinue in plate | 4 | 82 | 62 | 3 | 1 |
Armor 12 to 82, shield 32 to 62, same attack. That's the single biggest survivability jump in the game and the whole reason to save treasury.
Buying it happens in the retinue customization screen, one soldier at a time: 34 treasury imported, or 17 if you've got plate crafted locally. Cooking it at home takes an Armorer's Workshop eating 6 iron slabs a suit (mail is 3, helmets 2), with a bloomery turning ore into slabs to feed it. Helmets want the Basic Armormaking development and mail wants Advanced on top of that. Older guides claim plate needs a master armormaking perk too - recent patches have loosened that, so check your own development tree before budgeting for it.
The customization screen also lets you repaint each man's colors and rename the unit. Pure cosmetics, but it's your barony, dress it how you like.
Weapon mix tweaks the stats
Retainers carry a spread of sidearms, spears, and polearms, and the mix moves the unit's numbers. Load up on polearms and the charge and anti-armor values climb. Strip the polearms out and anti-armor sits at zero. For general use leave it mixed - the anti-armor only starts mattering once the Baron's mail-covered retinue shows up, and that day always comes.
Formation Types and When to Use Them
Honest correction first, because the subheader oversells it: there's no formation picker. No shield wall button, no wedge, no preset battle lines. What the game actually gives you is depth control plus five stances, and together they do the same job.
Depth control
Hold the right mouse button while placing a unit and drag. Drag wide for a thin line - maximum men fighting at once, flanks hanging out in the open. Drag narrow and the unit stacks deep - fewer men in contact, but it soaks a charge instead of buckling, and it shoves harder in a pushing match.
A spear unit 3 to 4 men deep with Stand Your Ground on is the closest thing to a shield wall this game has. It will eat a frontal charge and ask for another one.
The five stances
| Stance | What it does | |---|---| | Balanced | Default, no bonuses or penalties | | Stand Your Ground | Doubles defense, halves attack speed | | Give Ground | Slowly steps backward, pulling the enemy along | | Missile Alert | Doubles arrow blocking/avoidance, halves melee defense | | Push Forward | Full-force forward push |
Stand Your Ground is your anvil. Give Ground is sneakier than it looks - drag a fresh enemy into chasing a unit that's backing up and they spend fatigue chasing. Missile Alert is the button you mash when archer volleys start flying, then you turn it off for the melee.
Facing decides damage
Shields only count from the front. Any hit from behind does double damage, melee or arrows alike. That one rule runs the whole battle layer: guard your own flanks, attack his. Retinue and mercs get an extra spread-out command - harder to hit with arrows and slightly faster, worse in melee. Archers have a toggle for whether they'll fire when friendlies are in the way; leave it cautious until you trust your positioning.
Fatigue, morale, and the ground
Running burns fatigue, and every point of fatigue lost cuts effectiveness point for point. Standing still recovers it slowly. Here's the kicker: fatigue drain is multiplied by armor and shield values, so your plate retinue gases out faster than it looks like it should. Rain drops archer effectiveness, fighting downhill helps, and a surrounded unit fights worse from every direction.
Morale is the willingness to fight. Militia get a morale bonus in their home region, which is a real argument for fighting defensive battles on your own dirt. Break a unit's morale and it flees the field regardless of numbers.
A worked fight
Set spears 4 deep on a hill with Stand Your Ground. Archers behind and off to a flank, firing freely. Send one cheap unit forward as bait - the enemy chases, tires, and drags itself uphill into your spears, whose impaling trait punishes the ones still charging. Once they're locked in, hit a flank or the rear with polearms or the retinue and bank the charge bonus on that first contact. That's the hammer-and-anvil, and it beats stacks that outnumber you.
Supplying an Army on Campaign
Armies eat where they stand
A rallied army draws food from whatever region it's standing in. On neutral or hostile ground it pulls from your nearest friendly province instead. Watch the months-of-supply readout when you march - it drops fast when a couple of units trudge through empty country.
This bites hardest in freshly claimed regions. Players have traced "mystery starvation" in new settlements straight to garrisoned retinues: park 40 or 50 professional mouths in a village with five burgage plots and they'll hollow out its stores in a season while the actual settlers starve alongside them. The fix is boring - stock a granary in the border region before you garrison it, or rotate the garrison home between threats.
Militia time is economy time
Every season your levy stands rallied is a season nobody farmed, smithed, or logged. A two-week march during harvest quietly costs more than a merc company. Rally close to the target, fight, send them home. Campaigns in this game are meant to be short and sharp, not standing occupations.
Two wallets, again
- Treasury pays: mercs (monthly), retinue hires at 50 a head, armor upgrades, settler camps for new regions at 250
- Regional wealth pays: weapon and armor imports, workshops, burgage upgrades, oxen
Land tax at the Manor fills the treasury. Keep it low, 1% or so, in normal times and spike it when a war you can see coming is a few months out. Approval takes the hit, so let it climb back down afterward. Tithe food through the same menu while you're in there - that builds influence, and influence is how you take regions without fighting for every one.
Feeding a far war
If the forward region's land is poor, import food through its trade post before the army arrives, or ship surplus in from your heartland. And disband mercs the second a fight ends - they arrive rallied and draw pay monthly, but dismissing them just returns them to next month's market. Standing forces are a money fire no matter how you staff them. The game rewards mustering, winning, and going home.
Fighting Bandit Camps and Rival Barons
How camps work
Bandit camps spawn at random through the game - you get a notification and a tent icon on the map. Unlike raiders, bandits never march on your town. They sit at the camp and swipe goods from the region at intervals, which sounds tame until a hard winter arrives and your food stores keep shrinking.
Walk your army over and they'll form up and meet you in the field. Win that fight, then click the camp itself to conquer it. The loot's a choice: the nearest town's regional wealth, or your treasury. Early on, take the treasury. Retinue hires and merc contracts all run on it, and regional wealth refills itself through trade and leveled burgages anyway.
Clearing them early
Sixteen to twenty spearmen clear camps comfortably in the first year, and on default scenario settings you start with an armament delivery that covers most of that gear for free. Stand Your Ground on decent ground, let the brigands crash into the shields, collect the loot. Don't overthink year-one camps, and don't sit on them either - every month a camp lives is another month of stolen goods.
The Baron
In Restoring the Peace the rival is Baron Hildebolt. He spends the first year claiming regions and hunting camps, and every time a camp spawns or he makes a claim, he hires another merc company - sometimes keeping it for good. Left alone he'll quietly buy out the whole merc market.
His standard stack, as players have catalogued it: one 36-man retinue in mail, two 36-man footmen units in gambesons, 36 archers, and 18 brigands. Call it 160-odd soldiers, with mercs on top if the market's open. Contesting one of his claims brings a popup with a battlefield marker and a countdown - get a unit into that battle circle before the timer runs out, or the fight simply never starts and you eat the consequences. In his final region he can field 400-plus, so you want him beaten down and broke before it comes to that.
The mercenary war
Three of roughly eight companies are on offer each month. The wiki's roster runs from Local Thugs at 15 treasury for one brigand unit up to the Ravenous Vultures at 110 for three infantry units, with mid-tier picks like Battle Brothers at 50 (a swords unit plus a spears unit) and Flock of Crazy Geese at 90. The Vultures are the best value in the pool and the first thing the Baron grabs.
That's the real trick to the whole war: buy the good mercs before you need them. Secure the market first, then lay your claim. Show up to a claim fight with the market untended and you'll face his own army plus everything he hired that same morning, because defending lords reinforce with whatever's still for sale.
Ending it
Keep tithing for influence and keep winning contested claims - each win pays influence and strips a region from him. At 2000 influence you can claim his home regions outright and force the final battles without waiting for him to overreach. Beat the field army, the region flips, and once his last territory falls he's off the map.
Worth doing the math before that last march: a full 12-man retinue with local plate runs about 550 treasury - 350 for the seven extra hires, 204 for the suits. That plus the Vultures at 110 handles his standard stack nine times out of ten, and it's still cheaper than a month of buying out every company on the market to keep them out of his hands.