How to increase your Manor Lords population & approval rating
Increasing your population and approval rating in Manor Lords is the best way to grow your settlement, but there are a few steps to get the ball rolling.
Highlights:
- Your population will only grow once you place more Burgage Plots
- Approval rating determines your population growth, and is affected by supplies, housing, leisure, and more
A settlement without people to occupy it is no place to live at all, so you'll want to ensure that your population in Manor Lords keeps growing, alongside the all-important approval rating.
Increasing your population in-game doesn't just make the numbers go up either - it has plenty of different uses in the game. From increasing your workforce to unlocking new development areas, there are plenty of reasons why you'll want to ensure that your population continues to grow.
How to grow your population
You'll start off with five families in Manor Lords, but to increase beyond that you'll first want to build additional Burgage Plots or expand the space within your existing houses.
Unlike the starting populations, new people won't move into your village until there is housing ready for them. Furthermore, while space might be available, people will need to want to move into your settlement, which is dependent on your approval rating and general resource availability.
I found that staggering your growth is the best way to go, as building one or two new houses every season allowed by population to expand without going beyond my means. After all, a higher population requires greater resources, which you might not have, especially when heading into the winter.
How to increase approval rating
Many different things can affect your approval rating both positively and negatively, but you'll want to keep an eye out for your supplies and their variety, the availability of clothing, the level of your church, and the availability of housing.
I haven't encountered too many negative effects when playing myself, but I had quite a big decrease at the start of my first save as I took too long to build enough houses for my initial set of families. I was able to claw this back eventually, but that's a mistake that you'll want to avoid!
Things like taxation and various policies can also negatively affect your approval rating, but you will be aware of this going in, and it's often a cost to get something else.
We've got more tips and tricks on our Manor Lords homepage, letting you know how to get food and firewood, alongside my review and whether you can play it on Xbox Game Pass.
About The Author
Harry Boulton
Harry is a Guides Writer at GGRecon, having completed a Masters of Research degree in Film Studies. Previously a freelance writer for PCGamesN, The Loadout, and Red Bull Gaming, he loves playing a wide variety of games from the Souls series to JRPGs, Counter-Strike, and EA FC. When not playing or writing about games and hardware, you're likely to find him watching football or listening to Madonna and Kate Bush.
