One Manor Lords town has been taken over by an exponentially growing sheep flock that's reproducing faster than they're selling.
Over on the Manor Lords subreddit, u/Jamesblonde333 shared their village of "1,000 people and 1,000 sheep" just four days ago. In less than a week, the number of sheep has ballooned to 2,100, meaning the mobile wool bushes vastly outnumber the human villagers with no signs of slowing down. At least the village is pretty - see below.
manorlords from r/ManorLords
How did the sheep become infinite? Well, Manor Lords' markets can get overstuffed, so the simple rules of supply and demand are to blame here. The farmer "flooded" the market with sheep and so the market can no longer buy the surplus or the global oversupply of wool. Manor Lords currently doesn't allow for sheep to be turned into meat produce, so there's no other way to dwindle their numbers until they run away or the market bottlenecks subside. (More handy Manor Lords food tips and Manor Lords trade routes info here.)
"They breed faster than I can sell to the market," the player explains in a comment, "no foreign exports as I have flooded [the] market with both lambs and sheep… Send help, I'm drowning in wool and I can't sell that either."
Developer Greg Styczen tried to nerf the "infinite money" sheep exploit prior to launch and succeeded by implementing limits for trading - historically, there is no reason for markets to infinitely buy resources that are so plentiful. Defying the game's developer by breeding infinite sheep has its own consequences, I guess. Namely: infinite sheep with nowhere to go.
The player says the sheep blob has unleashed some kind of eldritch horror upon the village, with citizens "frozen in place" (inconsistent pathfinding) and a distorted flow of time (choppy performance.) The horrors of sheep – who knew?
Funnily enough, sheep might actually have some kind of otherworldly attachment to the massively popular city-builder since Manor Lords' publisher signed the game in part due to how fun "raising sheep" was in a similar 1994 strategy game. Sheep seemingly sowed the seeds for Manor Lords' record-breaking success decades in advance, only to eventually take over the game. Truly, a conspiracy to rival Lisan al-Gaib.
After 2.5 million sales, Manor Lords publisher says it "would almost be arrogant" to not be surprised by the city builder's success - but "you cannot count on it to repeat"
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