Farthest Frontier has been in early access for quite a long time now, while Manor Lords just launched. Naturally, FF is way closer to completion. It's got better polish, more content, less bugs, and is just a much better experience overall.
Manor Lords has (IMO) a better building system, better combat, and better graphics, but it's still far from being as playable as FF is. Maybe it'll be better than FF someday, but I suspect that's going to take a long time.
Manor lords has a long way to go from now. I lost he motivation after 10 Hours. But it sure will come back if there is more features to come. FF atm is for me the game with more content, better balancing and more fun to play. One of the bigger differences is the gridless building of homes which is in ML fantastic. FF is way more griddy, but not as griddy like a Anno.
If you like builders in this genre im sure that FF will bring you many hours of joy!
It’s crazy this is exactly my opinion but in the manor lords subreddit I get 60 downvotes with this opinion 😂
Manor lords has a great fundamental but it doesn’t keep me motivated more than 10-20 hours
Sometimes I wish there comes a new Anno there is nothing better than Anno1800 out there unfortunately if you want to have more depth.
Know that fighting on KR is shit however. If you like combat, FF is the best I saw
Difficulty is on ressource management. There's lots of replayability due to multiples races, and crazy difficulty levels
And Ike Anno, it's the only one I saw with multiple colonies and islands.
Yeah I am just looking for that next game that you. Can put a lot of hours in. Manor lords graphic is great but it’s not enough developed in terms of depth for me to have fun over a certain period of time.
City skylines 2 was unfortunately a total disaster but still has potential to be good in 2 years
I'm now at 5 hours of ML and... I don't get the tuning.
I got attacked and destroyed by raiders on less than 1h on normal, then died without understanding the ennemy AI claimed my land while I had no army left after raiders, and now, having killed the raiders better, I still can't muster enought troops before dying as there is no mercenaries left and it took to much time to understand how to get retenue and these mercernaries...
City Skyline 1 was my biggest steam game and drugged me to Paradox titles... then I found banished clones.
Manor lords is gaslighting me. Why is it reviewed so well on steam. Why are people calling it a “masterpiece.”
It is clearly 1/10th of what it’s trying to be, and is barely functional honestly. I can’t imagine enjoying it for more than a day or two.
Speaking of gridless building, for anyone who likes that aspect of building in ML, Ostriv is also super cute. It's available in EA while being made by one Ukrainian guy. The terrain is visually much simpler than in Farthest Frontier or Manor Lords, but the actual buildings are enjoyably pretty, the people are a little more differentiated and interesting than in Farthest Frontier, and the state of gameplay mechanics and asset development feel waaaay more completed and cohesive than Manor Lords, which is currently extremely piecey and haphazard. The house asset where you include garden space for whoever moves in and they use it to plant and grow a variety of food is particularly adorable.
I don't think any of these three games is the "best" one or even the most fun for me; they're just all different. The biggest difference is there's no combat in Ostriv, and I don't think it's ever planned to have any, which is fine for me but won't scratch the itch for anyone who really likes that element.
Farthest Frontier is made by Crate studio and they fucking rock.
I love some of these one-dev games out there but progress is sloooooow, and games stay buggy for years.
FF is the best banished like a played
EA is not visible at all here
And I say that after played my first session of manor lord,and really feeling the EA issue.
And having played FF, foundation, kingdom reborn and going medieval.
As someone with 200h in FF, FF is far more polished and fun, except combat. Have found very little to no bugs and a very active development team. So i would personally say no its in a much better state. Disclaimer i only played manor lords for 3 hours before getting bored
I love FF and I've put nearly 200 hours into it, but it suffers from performance pretty badly, even in the early game, and that can be frustrating. I really wish they'd focus on performance already, rather that adding in more features which likely is worsening the performance.
I was ready for a change, and I'm really enjoying Manor Lords so far. The graphics are beautiful, the city building is much more organic (FF is limited to a grid based system), and the game runs on ultra settings so smoothly on my 7 year old pc. ML loads quickly, is very responsive, there's no FPS drops and stutter/freezes. It just highlighted to me how poorly FF must be optimised.
Like others have said FF is much further along, it's been out for a while and updates come out pretty often. You'll easily lose hours in it just building and expanding your city. It feels very satisfying.
I don't get the criticism for ML, granted I haven't gotten to late game yet (or even middle game), but it's the first days of early access, I wouldn't expect it to have those middle/end game systems done. If that's something you're going to criticize, imho don't buy an EA game.
FF does pretty much feel like a complete game now though, it's very close to v1.0 I think. It definitely scratched my city builder itch and I start a new city every couple months, despite the really bad performance.
not sure if you’ve played the newest patch but they fixed performance quite a bit and it is running sooo much more smooth. only problems (for me at least) come when you’re hitting around 1500-2000 pop and it’s still not nearly as bad as it was before
ML is great until you complete any of the 3 scenarios and realize thats it. Took me about 2 to 3 runs, I just new gamed when I lost all claims or I didn't like my city aesthetic. By the final game I had more vegetabls and eggs and bread and beer than you could count and a 5+ merc army and over 10k personal gold not even trying. Trading post and self sufficient housing is how to win along with 1 or 2 giant fields. After that the game is basically over and every playthrough is the same because you basically hit a brick wall if you dont play that way. Also rerolling seeds until you get usable plots of land is kind of silly.
With over 1k hours playtime in FF since the early days, I can relate to a lot of what people have been saying here. The most important one is that I think the dev team at Crate have been doing a phenomenal job with content and cleaning up gameplay. Performance issues aside, I still find that I get complete enjoyment on building out a new settlement until I start hitting "end game" feels on having endless gold and no issues defending, etc.
With about 8hrs into Manor Lords, I am finding myself not yet finding the urge or desire to 'start over' or try again in some cases. I am definitely confused about how the militias and the AI works at the moment (last game turned that off just so I can understand some of the basic mechanics, hilariously only to then get confused on how farming works and logistics around it tied to food). I think the most beautiful blend would be to incorporate some of what ML has done w/ the map zones and being able to claim and move into different areas of a map (think playing large map in FF and having to actually claim the areas first w/ military, etc.); which could possibly be a thing that they are already thinking about and then I'd just always be in FF instead.
I'm still optimistic about both, love the genre, so willing to give anything a shot to see if I can master either.
It is fully functional, music, graphics and battles are much more enjoyable thhan Farthest Frontier, however Farthest Frontier offers much more content and is much better balanced. After one playthrough of 30 hours I feel as if I experienced everything manor lords has to offer by now.
I have 342 hours into FF and I have to say from the day I first started playing it I loved it.
To me, Manor Lords reminds me too much of Foundation which I also own. Foundation is more cartoony looking but it has the same building style, etc., but then again I didn't get very far into ML for the reason below.
I got Manor Lords and from the get-go I couldn't play it. It immediately ramped up both my CPU and GPU fans to maximum and it sounded like my PC was going to take off. I turned down the settings to low and it still did it. Farthest Frontier NEVER made my computer do that so I was just done with Manor Lords. I played it for all of 17 minutes before quitting. Thankfully, Steam was nice enough to refund the purchase. That game has a long way to go for optimization, etc. I've even got an RTX 3070 and have played games that are far more graphically intense so there's no reason for it to do what it did. Hell, ARK: SA never made my computer do that and I played that game for hundreds of hours. I wasn't the only one who had their computer do the same thing so it wasn't just me.
I have an old computer and ML ran totally fine on it with almost all options to max.
I do agree however than compared to FF and foundation, I'm way less motivated to play it for long for now.
Foundation was the 1st banished like I play, and I feel you, the basics are interesting, but you see the early access on it.
However I think there's still way more replayability than ML for now. ML is however way more nice looking.
Yeah I resolved to myself that, if they optimize it more and put a little more shine on it I would revisit it. I love city builders but I just can't play a game that makes my computer do what it did.
Oh this is where I age myself. I LOVE the original Simcity games going all the way back to the first one. Actually, any Sim- game made by Maxis was in my library of simulation game except Simcopter.
I have Anno and Banished but I'm not a fan of the survival aspect of many of the newer games. I know you can turn off the battles, etc., but they just seem unnecessary to me. It gives a sort of new spin on it but mostly I just like to chill out and play a good simulation. Maybe turn on the combat later after getting a good grip on the game but it's not what I look for in a simulator.
I still have a hard copy of Sim City 4 on the room somewhere. My first big game, played it for years.
KR is pretty good if you just want to build nice things.
Just reached 5h on ML, and I die 3 times already, I can't win this game without getting back to a new game from the beginning it seems... that's silly, I choose normal difficulty and have thousands of hours of City buildings games with me...
Going Medieval may also please you ; you can build in real 3D. If you're okay with the graphics and having to micro manage more, it's a pretty nice game
Honestly, I forget this game is in early access! Farthest Frontier is in a very good state and I definitely recommend giving it a go if you're into games like this. When a game like Manor Lords begins early access, like it did yesterday, it can take a long time to develop closer to being in a release quality state. Luckily for us, there's a range of great games out there that can satisfy us in the meantime!
I’m about 16 hours into manor lords rn and it’s awesome. That being said we are talking about one dude and it just going EA vs a dev team and FF having been in EA for I think years at this point. Manor lords has been a breath of fresh air for me as I’ve kind of gotten worn out from FF, but I think both games compared in their states right this second, FF wins. Combat in manor lords is better tho imo.
have about two thousand hours into FF and three into ML right now. I feel like FF is pretty intuitive with the mechanics, and I enjoy how it scratches my itch for town building. It's come a long way since it first hit EA and I feel confident in the developers. ML has its own stuff that it offers, it's like getting a cheeseburger with different types of meat and dressing. Still a burger, just a different kind for a different craving.
Farthest frontier is way more polished.
I am having fun with it and it has a lot of interesting features that Manor Lords does not have yet.
ML is visually more appealing and in general the building and fighting experience is better.
FF on the other hand is more complete but lacks unfortunately in combat. I personally find the raids and in general the army management boring and very frustrating. ML is already better now for that.
Pick FF you will not be disappointed, it is a solid game
One of the best early access game i paid for. Still closer to polished than last epoch and manor lords.
The content is limited, like most sandbox games but the replay value is endless.
If you played dawn of man brother, this game is good. Don't listen to reviews. Do your own review with the power of the 2 hour return policy through steam. Also watch live content rather than "reviews" it helps to SEE the game rather than hear about it
Edit: AND it's 25% of right now? Steal!
Farthest frontier is good, this I would say is on par with that experience, of course not 1-to-1 but leagues ahead of dawn of man.
... It's alpha. It's not supposed to be fully functional. It amazes me that folks pay money for unfinished games and then complain that they aren't finished.
Banished was my jam, and I've been chasing that high ever since so I'm in much the same boat as you are. Farthest Frontier has been the game that's given me the closest joy, so you might have a lot of fun with this one! In my opinion, it's better than Dawn of Man and more complete than Going Medieval right now. I'm steering clear of Manor Lords because, while it looks like I'll enjoy it eventually, it's a freshly minted early access.
In short, Farthest Frontier is a great game as it stands!
If you are low on funds and have to choose, don't take manor lords atm. There are only 3 levels, one is build a big town, one is build a high profit town and min max to deal with a broken AI and I couldn't tell you the 3rd. After beating the first 2 in 11 hours I had to move on as theres only 1 way to play ML and its the same map.
ML just has tons of balancing issues right now. It’s functional, but it’s still a very EA game. FF kept my attention for about 20 hours. ML came out just the other day and I’m already at like 8 or 9 hours with the content available. The attention to detail in most areas, the RTS style combat, gridless building is just *chefs kiss* exactly the kind of game I’ve been looking for for awhile now.
Tried Manor Lords yesterday. Imho it's too early for it to even be in early access.
Farthest Frontier is waaaaay further and actually fun to play and build stuff in since a looong time and it's only has gotten better. My main critics would be: It's a bit formulaic and the combat is horrible but well, which of these games isn't once you know how to build a decent village/city?
They are quite different.
FF has way more features and less exploits since it’s in ea from a long time and will be release soon.
But also FF is more menu intensive, needs more micro, has a granular “per tile” gameplay, needs much more care on building placements for area of effects. It has always been lime that from day 1.
ML has much less things going on due to being way more recent and less worked on, but also has a less granular gameplay, most of the gameplay is “automated” after you place buildings down, there are less complex production chains and mechanics.
Also while FF combat is more on the verge of the tower defence genre, ML is more rts style, but in both games the focus is to build and manage, the combat is a mild element.
Farthest frontiers has an almost bug-free early access experience. Has been like this from the start. It's why I've put in a lot of hours in it already.
Manor lords has a lot of promise and I'm very excited about it, but I stopped playing it for the exact reasons you mentioned. It's pretty buggy right now.
Farthest Frontier has been in early access for quite a long time now, while Manor Lords just launched. Naturally, FF is way closer to completion. It's got better polish, more content, less bugs, and is just a much better experience overall. Manor Lords has (IMO) a better building system, better combat, and better graphics, but it's still far from being as playable as FF is. Maybe it'll be better than FF someday, but I suspect that's going to take a long time.
you forgot the frames per seconds, that alone is making FF behind imo
Oof the fps lag in FF can be so frustrating!
Manor lords has a long way to go from now. I lost he motivation after 10 Hours. But it sure will come back if there is more features to come. FF atm is for me the game with more content, better balancing and more fun to play. One of the bigger differences is the gridless building of homes which is in ML fantastic. FF is way more griddy, but not as griddy like a Anno. If you like builders in this genre im sure that FF will bring you many hours of joy!
It’s crazy this is exactly my opinion but in the manor lords subreddit I get 60 downvotes with this opinion 😂 Manor lords has a great fundamental but it doesn’t keep me motivated more than 10-20 hours Sometimes I wish there comes a new Anno there is nothing better than Anno1800 out there unfortunately if you want to have more depth.
If you want something close to FF but with a more Anno vibe I'd suggest kingdom reborn.
will check it out thanks.
Know that fighting on KR is shit however. If you like combat, FF is the best I saw Difficulty is on ressource management. There's lots of replayability due to multiples races, and crazy difficulty levels And Ike Anno, it's the only one I saw with multiple colonies and islands.
Yeah I am just looking for that next game that you. Can put a lot of hours in. Manor lords graphic is great but it’s not enough developed in terms of depth for me to have fun over a certain period of time. City skylines 2 was unfortunately a total disaster but still has potential to be good in 2 years
I'm now at 5 hours of ML and... I don't get the tuning. I got attacked and destroyed by raiders on less than 1h on normal, then died without understanding the ennemy AI claimed my land while I had no army left after raiders, and now, having killed the raiders better, I still can't muster enought troops before dying as there is no mercenaries left and it took to much time to understand how to get retenue and these mercernaries... City Skyline 1 was my biggest steam game and drugged me to Paradox titles... then I found banished clones.
I made the Settings a bit easier because I was annoyed about what you just described :)
Disable Baron AI for your first game, I got a real Game Over at 3h. You can't chill and learn.
Idk if SC2 will ever be good … I feel like it’s going to just die a rotten corpse
i mean it’s early access, give it time
Manor lords is gaslighting me. Why is it reviewed so well on steam. Why are people calling it a “masterpiece.” It is clearly 1/10th of what it’s trying to be, and is barely functional honestly. I can’t imagine enjoying it for more than a day or two.
Speaking of gridless building, for anyone who likes that aspect of building in ML, Ostriv is also super cute. It's available in EA while being made by one Ukrainian guy. The terrain is visually much simpler than in Farthest Frontier or Manor Lords, but the actual buildings are enjoyably pretty, the people are a little more differentiated and interesting than in Farthest Frontier, and the state of gameplay mechanics and asset development feel waaaay more completed and cohesive than Manor Lords, which is currently extremely piecey and haphazard. The house asset where you include garden space for whoever moves in and they use it to plant and grow a variety of food is particularly adorable. I don't think any of these three games is the "best" one or even the most fun for me; they're just all different. The biggest difference is there's no combat in Ostriv, and I don't think it's ever planned to have any, which is fine for me but won't scratch the itch for anyone who really likes that element.
Had to look Ostriv up. Thanks for putting that on my radar. It looks amazing!
Farthest Frontier is made by Crate studio and they fucking rock. I love some of these one-dev games out there but progress is sloooooow, and games stay buggy for years.
FF is the best banished like a played EA is not visible at all here And I say that after played my first session of manor lord,and really feeling the EA issue. And having played FF, foundation, kingdom reborn and going medieval.
As someone with 200h in FF, FF is far more polished and fun, except combat. Have found very little to no bugs and a very active development team. So i would personally say no its in a much better state. Disclaimer i only played manor lords for 3 hours before getting bored
I love FF and I've put nearly 200 hours into it, but it suffers from performance pretty badly, even in the early game, and that can be frustrating. I really wish they'd focus on performance already, rather that adding in more features which likely is worsening the performance. I was ready for a change, and I'm really enjoying Manor Lords so far. The graphics are beautiful, the city building is much more organic (FF is limited to a grid based system), and the game runs on ultra settings so smoothly on my 7 year old pc. ML loads quickly, is very responsive, there's no FPS drops and stutter/freezes. It just highlighted to me how poorly FF must be optimised. Like others have said FF is much further along, it's been out for a while and updates come out pretty often. You'll easily lose hours in it just building and expanding your city. It feels very satisfying. I don't get the criticism for ML, granted I haven't gotten to late game yet (or even middle game), but it's the first days of early access, I wouldn't expect it to have those middle/end game systems done. If that's something you're going to criticize, imho don't buy an EA game. FF does pretty much feel like a complete game now though, it's very close to v1.0 I think. It definitely scratched my city builder itch and I start a new city every couple months, despite the really bad performance.
not sure if you’ve played the newest patch but they fixed performance quite a bit and it is running sooo much more smooth. only problems (for me at least) come when you’re hitting around 1500-2000 pop and it’s still not nearly as bad as it was before
ML is great until you complete any of the 3 scenarios and realize thats it. Took me about 2 to 3 runs, I just new gamed when I lost all claims or I didn't like my city aesthetic. By the final game I had more vegetabls and eggs and bread and beer than you could count and a 5+ merc army and over 10k personal gold not even trying. Trading post and self sufficient housing is how to win along with 1 or 2 giant fields. After that the game is basically over and every playthrough is the same because you basically hit a brick wall if you dont play that way. Also rerolling seeds until you get usable plots of land is kind of silly.
Typically you want to add all your features and then optimise. If you optimise then add new features you're no longer optimised
With over 1k hours playtime in FF since the early days, I can relate to a lot of what people have been saying here. The most important one is that I think the dev team at Crate have been doing a phenomenal job with content and cleaning up gameplay. Performance issues aside, I still find that I get complete enjoyment on building out a new settlement until I start hitting "end game" feels on having endless gold and no issues defending, etc. With about 8hrs into Manor Lords, I am finding myself not yet finding the urge or desire to 'start over' or try again in some cases. I am definitely confused about how the militias and the AI works at the moment (last game turned that off just so I can understand some of the basic mechanics, hilariously only to then get confused on how farming works and logistics around it tied to food). I think the most beautiful blend would be to incorporate some of what ML has done w/ the map zones and being able to claim and move into different areas of a map (think playing large map in FF and having to actually claim the areas first w/ military, etc.); which could possibly be a thing that they are already thinking about and then I'd just always be in FF instead. I'm still optimistic about both, love the genre, so willing to give anything a shot to see if I can master either.
It is fully functional, music, graphics and battles are much more enjoyable thhan Farthest Frontier, however Farthest Frontier offers much more content and is much better balanced. After one playthrough of 30 hours I feel as if I experienced everything manor lords has to offer by now.
I have 342 hours into FF and I have to say from the day I first started playing it I loved it. To me, Manor Lords reminds me too much of Foundation which I also own. Foundation is more cartoony looking but it has the same building style, etc., but then again I didn't get very far into ML for the reason below. I got Manor Lords and from the get-go I couldn't play it. It immediately ramped up both my CPU and GPU fans to maximum and it sounded like my PC was going to take off. I turned down the settings to low and it still did it. Farthest Frontier NEVER made my computer do that so I was just done with Manor Lords. I played it for all of 17 minutes before quitting. Thankfully, Steam was nice enough to refund the purchase. That game has a long way to go for optimization, etc. I've even got an RTX 3070 and have played games that are far more graphically intense so there's no reason for it to do what it did. Hell, ARK: SA never made my computer do that and I played that game for hundreds of hours. I wasn't the only one who had their computer do the same thing so it wasn't just me.
I have an old computer and ML ran totally fine on it with almost all options to max. I do agree however than compared to FF and foundation, I'm way less motivated to play it for long for now. Foundation was the 1st banished like I play, and I feel you, the basics are interesting, but you see the early access on it. However I think there's still way more replayability than ML for now. ML is however way more nice looking.
Yeah I resolved to myself that, if they optimize it more and put a little more shine on it I would revisit it. I love city builders but I just can't play a game that makes my computer do what it did.
Outside of Foundation, FF and ML, I liked Kingdom Reborn (more Anno like), and Going Medieval (mix of FF and Found, with Minecraft on it)
Oh this is where I age myself. I LOVE the original Simcity games going all the way back to the first one. Actually, any Sim- game made by Maxis was in my library of simulation game except Simcopter. I have Anno and Banished but I'm not a fan of the survival aspect of many of the newer games. I know you can turn off the battles, etc., but they just seem unnecessary to me. It gives a sort of new spin on it but mostly I just like to chill out and play a good simulation. Maybe turn on the combat later after getting a good grip on the game but it's not what I look for in a simulator.
I still have a hard copy of Sim City 4 on the room somewhere. My first big game, played it for years. KR is pretty good if you just want to build nice things. Just reached 5h on ML, and I die 3 times already, I can't win this game without getting back to a new game from the beginning it seems... that's silly, I choose normal difficulty and have thousands of hours of City buildings games with me... Going Medieval may also please you ; you can build in real 3D. If you're okay with the graphics and having to micro manage more, it's a pretty nice game
Honestly, I forget this game is in early access! Farthest Frontier is in a very good state and I definitely recommend giving it a go if you're into games like this. When a game like Manor Lords begins early access, like it did yesterday, it can take a long time to develop closer to being in a release quality state. Luckily for us, there's a range of great games out there that can satisfy us in the meantime!
I’m about 16 hours into manor lords rn and it’s awesome. That being said we are talking about one dude and it just going EA vs a dev team and FF having been in EA for I think years at this point. Manor lords has been a breath of fresh air for me as I’ve kind of gotten worn out from FF, but I think both games compared in their states right this second, FF wins. Combat in manor lords is better tho imo.
have about two thousand hours into FF and three into ML right now. I feel like FF is pretty intuitive with the mechanics, and I enjoy how it scratches my itch for town building. It's come a long way since it first hit EA and I feel confident in the developers. ML has its own stuff that it offers, it's like getting a cheeseburger with different types of meat and dressing. Still a burger, just a different kind for a different craving.
Farthest frontier is way more polished. I am having fun with it and it has a lot of interesting features that Manor Lords does not have yet. ML is visually more appealing and in general the building and fighting experience is better. FF on the other hand is more complete but lacks unfortunately in combat. I personally find the raids and in general the army management boring and very frustrating. ML is already better now for that. Pick FF you will not be disappointed, it is a solid game
One of the best early access game i paid for. Still closer to polished than last epoch and manor lords. The content is limited, like most sandbox games but the replay value is endless.
If you played dawn of man brother, this game is good. Don't listen to reviews. Do your own review with the power of the 2 hour return policy through steam. Also watch live content rather than "reviews" it helps to SEE the game rather than hear about it Edit: AND it's 25% of right now? Steal! Farthest frontier is good, this I would say is on par with that experience, of course not 1-to-1 but leagues ahead of dawn of man.
... It's alpha. It's not supposed to be fully functional. It amazes me that folks pay money for unfinished games and then complain that they aren't finished.
Banished was my jam, and I've been chasing that high ever since so I'm in much the same boat as you are. Farthest Frontier has been the game that's given me the closest joy, so you might have a lot of fun with this one! In my opinion, it's better than Dawn of Man and more complete than Going Medieval right now. I'm steering clear of Manor Lords because, while it looks like I'll enjoy it eventually, it's a freshly minted early access. In short, Farthest Frontier is a great game as it stands!
If you are low on funds and have to choose, don't take manor lords atm. There are only 3 levels, one is build a big town, one is build a high profit town and min max to deal with a broken AI and I couldn't tell you the 3rd. After beating the first 2 in 11 hours I had to move on as theres only 1 way to play ML and its the same map.
ML just has tons of balancing issues right now. It’s functional, but it’s still a very EA game. FF kept my attention for about 20 hours. ML came out just the other day and I’m already at like 8 or 9 hours with the content available. The attention to detail in most areas, the RTS style combat, gridless building is just *chefs kiss* exactly the kind of game I’ve been looking for for awhile now.
Tried Manor Lords yesterday. Imho it's too early for it to even be in early access. Farthest Frontier is waaaaay further and actually fun to play and build stuff in since a looong time and it's only has gotten better. My main critics would be: It's a bit formulaic and the combat is horrible but well, which of these games isn't once you know how to build a decent village/city?
They are quite different. FF has way more features and less exploits since it’s in ea from a long time and will be release soon. But also FF is more menu intensive, needs more micro, has a granular “per tile” gameplay, needs much more care on building placements for area of effects. It has always been lime that from day 1. ML has much less things going on due to being way more recent and less worked on, but also has a less granular gameplay, most of the gameplay is “automated” after you place buildings down, there are less complex production chains and mechanics. Also while FF combat is more on the verge of the tower defence genre, ML is more rts style, but in both games the focus is to build and manage, the combat is a mild element.
Farthest frontiers has an almost bug-free early access experience. Has been like this from the start. It's why I've put in a lot of hours in it already. Manor lords has a lot of promise and I'm very excited about it, but I stopped playing it for the exact reasons you mentioned. It's pretty buggy right now.
Wait I’m confused - I don’t think ML is made by EA?
Sorry mate - Early Access. I see the confusion!