If you’re building up a successful village in Manor Lords, you need to think about options to defend your people from invaders and other threats in the world, including building a powerful Retinue to defend your lands.
Although you will probably build up a majority of your military with forces manned by your own villagers, Retinues are the cream of the crop when it comes to armed combat. They are highly trained individuals whose job is solely to fight for you, whether that’s waging war against your enemies or defending your settlements from incoming foes.
Unlike militia, however, a Retinue requires a bit more resources and a good amount of patience, but the outcome is a strong unit that will sweep through any battle at the snap of your fingers.
Building a Retinue in Manor Lords
Create your first Manor
In order to create your first Retinue, you need to build a Manor in your village. This is done by having your village reach the Small Village level and heading to the Administration tab in the Construction menu. You can easily reach the Small Village level as you expand your land with different buildings, such as multiple Burgage Plots for your growing population.
To build a Manor, you must have:
- Five Timber
- 20 Planks
- 15 Stone
Once you’ve built out your Manor, you should automatically receive a small Retinue. You can also increase the size of your personal Retinue by building a Garrison Tower onto your Manor to expand your Retinue size by 12, although this tower is limited to one per region.
How to add more soldiers to Retinue
To add more soldiers to your personal Retinue, head over to the Army tab by pressing V and clicking the Retinue option in the menu. This should open up the Retinue Customization screen, where you can change the name of each soldier, the color of their armor, and the equipment they are wielding into battle.
You can add more soldiers to the Retinue by paying from your own personal Treasury for 50 gold apiece. The game is in early access, which means that this is the only way to build your Retinue for now. There is, however, another option that could become available soon, which allows you to promote one of your citizens to your Retinue for less gold. Note that you will need at least five soldiers in your Retinue to deploy them to the battlefield.
