Of course there's some basic things you're going to need before we even get to food production:
- Woodcutter and Logging camp for logs and fuel
- A granary and stockpile (let's not lose those starting supplies if we don't have, and we'll need storage anyways!)

Once these key buildings are down, before even getting to burgages, throw down a Forager and Hunter building. While workforce availability is low, you're gonna be bouncing a single worker between these buildings starting with the Forager until they berry supply is harvested or Winter hits and eliminates any unpicked berries. Then swap the worker to the hunting camp to drain half the available supply of wild animals for meat and hides.

This should allow you to feed your starting families thru the first winter and while we're constructing the first 6 burgages plots for our town.

For our first burgages, I'm going to suggest something that will probably go against the opinions of others here, but again, this is what I personally do and it's worked for me without fail so far for establishing my cities before I get into specializing.

Build 3 LONG and Wide plots that have a large back garden (8 or so road lengths depending on the space you have available for your expansion planning). You'll probably initially see 5 plots in the appropriate width, but we're going to click the minus (-) symbol twice to remove the extra plots which will turn those five individual burgages into three duplexes that will eventually provide us with 4 working families each for less than half the consumption we'd get out of similar solo family homes.

Each of these is going to get vegetable farms ASAP. They'll take a little bit to get up to speed, but that's what berries, meat, and the starting bread are for. Once they're producing though, you'll find you're absolutely swimming in vegetables. (Don't forget to upgrade that granary once you have some planks made!)

We'll skip the population expansion slots for now and move on to our next three burgages, but we'll be adding them in soon.
These next three are going to be our initial Artisans and the first level 2 homes so we can get into Shoes/Clothes, Ale, and a Goat Shed for some extra hides since we want to have a supply of those early on for the clothing requirement.
These plots should be just long enough to have an extension slot in the back and single width homes in the front so we're utilizing less families for our Artisanal goods. This is so we lose as few workers to Artisan production as possible while still making sure we have those goods available to support our progress to level 3 homes.

Once these homes have been built, we can go back and expand the first set's population by building the side buildings for extra family spaces.

This will supply us with 9 working families while only costing the same upkeep as six single sized burgages. This allows us to begin expanding depending on what resources are available while still providing workers for logs, firewood, leather, food and materials storage, berries/meat, a builder, and a sawmill for planks so we can get that church online and upgrade our storage buildings and the hitching post.

So, where do we go from here?

Well, you'll need one more burgage to get our second specialization point. I build another long farm for this just for even more veggies, but you could start on smaller extensions for building up an egg supply or more goats. It's really up to you regarding further burgages as I've given you a solid start above. I will say you'll probably want 5-7 veggie farms and the same number of egg producing homes to help support your journey to large town and domination!

I will recommend that most of your further burgages be wide ones with the population expansion. These are going to be the most working families for the least amount of upkeep.

I recommend utilizing the first two specialization points to reach either the second lower trade power which removes the import tariffs so that you can import basic goods (clay, iron ore, hides, food, etc.) for SUPER CHEAP, and then you'll be able to use those extra workers generated in your double wide burgages to craft those imported goods into more expensive products which you can export any excess of for profits!

If you're not planning to do much trading or if you want to make best use of any High quality resource nodes (clay, iron) then you'll probably go for the charcoal upgrade first to double fuel supply and grab the Deep Mines upgrade (make sure you actually build the upgrades in the node buildings if you're using this.) This gives you an infinite source of that resource that can then support further expansion. You can certainly make lots of wealth and upgrade your armies as much as possible by filling out the rest of this tree and building the appropriate artisan extensions. (Plate might be worker intensive to manufacture, but it's incredibly profitable if you go this route, utilizing 5 of the 6 available upgrade points as of the time of this guide's creation.)

I'll state again, everything in this guide is just personal experience, but I hope it helps you meet your goals while playing Manor Lords.

If there's anything different from your strategies here, maybe give this early game guide a spin and see if there's any part you want to adopt into your own play or if it helps spur you on to further Manor Lords greatness!

If this guide helps you, feel free to comment below with your own Manor Lords story, tips, or if you have any questions.