Manor Lords, the best city builder of 2024, hits 3 million sales as players continue to fill its maps with muddy medieval towns

A rival AI lord. It's part of the game's goal to conquer the lands around and establish a proper fief, and the rival AI will take control of all the surrounding lands quite fast, so it gets to a point where you just don't have the resources to win the fight. This game is actually somewhere in between a city builder and something like Total War. Best use I've found for the game is to create maps for medieval towns and regions for your RPG games.

In the default mode you have to beat your enemy and only way to do it, is to build new towns, upgrade soldiers and get territories asap. If you are too slow, good luck at fighting multiple armies with your ”pesant squad”. So in a way you are racing against the clock and you don’t have much time to admire what you built. But there is a game mode where you can just relax. But that just sounds content cut off from a game that doesnt have much content so I even didn’t try it.