Manor Lords dev reminds everyone that it's not a 'Total War competitor' or a 'fast-paced RTS like Age of Empires'

Ahead of Manor Lords' early access launch on April 26, developer Greg Styczeń aka Slavic Magic wants to clarify what the city builder actually is and manage the expectations of prospective players. The game is currently the most-wishlisted title on Steam and, while this is a nice problem for any developer to have, it does mean anticipation is high, so Styczeń wants wannabe nobles to know what they're getting into. 

While Manor Lords is a city builder through and through, the inclusion of real-time battles and a mode that lets you wander around your settlements has invited comparisons with games from other genres. Styczeń wants to set the record straight. 

One of the games it's been compared to the most is Total War. In screenshots and quick clips, the rows of warriors charging into battle is quite evocative of Creative Assembly's beefy strategy series, but the similarities don't go much further than that. 

«Manor Lords is not a Total War competitor,» says Styczeń. «It's a city builder with battles. Yes, battles are there, but not as huge or as frequent as some of you might expect. The majority of gameplay is focused on city building and management.»

In those rare moments when you're duking it out with other armies, you have a few commands you can dole out, but simplicity is the name of the game here. «A lot of the game mechanics focus on aesthetics of your town and resources take some time to be transported around the map,» he says. «This results mostly in a more of a relaxed experience, with high intensity moments spicing up atmospheric city building rather than the game being at high intensity all the time.» It absolutely is not, then, «a fast-paced RTS like Age of Empires or StarCraft».

Don't let the big map, split into different regions, make you think you're dealing with an empire management game, either. «The map has regions, but you won't be able to conquer the whole [of] Europe, nor have marriages or anything like that,» he says. «The game is designed to