Why can’t I build a plot in Manor Lords?

Flexible plots are how you’ll build burgage plots, marketplaces, and farm fields in your Manor Lords town. It’s a pretty intuitive (and satisfying) process with the edges of the plots snapping to roads to make organic shapes. Sometimes, though, it just doesn’t work.

Our Manor Lords guide will help you understand some of the reasons that flexible plots can’t be built and how to avoid or fix them.

How flexible plots (are supposed to) work

Flexible plots are how you’ll lay out some important parts of your town. It a simple enough process — you just place four point to define the corners of a shape (some sort of quadrangle). Where it gets more complicated is the (clever) way it fills in the gaps and expands the plot(s).

Flexible plots snap to roads by default. This makes them fill in all the space available around intersections and other buildings or plots. It’s also where things can get a little messy — remember, Manor Lords is in early access. Sometimes, your flexible plot will turn red (telling you can’t build it) while you’re laying it out. Other times, you can place all four points and then the build button just never lights up. And, sadly, the game doesn’t actually tell you why you’re not allowed to build your plot.

Before we dig into the more complicated and weirder reasons this happens, check to make sure your plot doesn’t cross a road and that you have the supplies you need to build it. If it’s not one of those, let’s look at some of the other reasons this happens and how to fix (or avoid) them.

Quick aside: You can avoid most of the problems below by just turning off snap to roads, but where’s the fun in building boring old square(ish) plots?

Look for supplies on the ground

When you first start out, all of your town’s supplies get dumped on the ground in two piles and you can’t build over them. If you demolish or even relocate a building (even a marketplace stall), some supplies will be left behind in the same way.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Make sure you’re not trying to build your flexible plot in a place where there are supplies hiding. If you do find supplies there, make sure you’ve got families assigned to your granary and storehouse (at least temporarily) and space to store stuff. Give it a little time, and the supplies should get picked up. Just remember that timber and planks need an oxen to move them (and an unassigned family to guide said oxen).

Watch the edges of buildings

A lot of the time, flexible plots (and roads) will snap to the edge of buildings and even follow the perimeter around corners to make fun little cutouts. Usually, this isn’t an issue.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Some buildings, though — windmills and hitching posts, for example — don’t do this. If your flexible plot (or road) even touches the edge of one of these round building footprints, you won’t be able to build it. This one is easy to avoid — just, kind of, don’t do that.

Complicated roads are harder to snap to

Building roads in Manor Lords is just the process of picking a few points and then building it. It’s a really simple (and satisfying) way to make organic, windy roads. If you’re not careful, though, the ends of your roads — especially at intersections or when you extend an existing road — don’t quite line up.

These weird little overlaps and misalignments seem to cause problems with flexible plots, especially when the plot is narrow. Check the roads and pick points that aren’t along those weird overlaps. If you have to, you can also pull the corner points of the flexible plots away from the roads. There’s not a lot of way to fix the roads themselves, but you can delete them and start over — just be aware that it deletes the entire road you drew originally, not just back to the first intersection, for example. You might end up redrawing a lot of roads.

Watch for building footprint overlaps

If you’re building your town with buildings that are packed in tight, you’re going to get a lot of weird intersections where the footprints of various buildings and plots meet.

Image: Slavic Magic/Hooded Horse via Polygon

Buildings have square (rectangular) footprints, but the roads are organic and curved. And that means that where the building meets the road might not quite line up. When you place a flexible plot that gets too close to one of those weird corners, it might trip up the flexible plot — kind of like the road overlaps above.

If you think you’re running into this, try zooming in before placing your flexible plot points and moving them a little away from the footprint you’re trying to avoid.