Manor Lords' developer doesn't 'have a game design problem with infinite money' but was forced to patch out one game-breaking exploit anyway
Bent out of sheep.
Manor Lords isn't open for Early Access yet (that's scheduled for next week, April 26), but some lucky players have gotten a first look at the city-building and management game through early playtests, and some have already figured out one way to break the game.
The primary aim of Manor Lords is to raise a town and progress it into a bustling city for you to manage and watch grow—but while navigating social situations and waging war are quite important, nothing tops the need for money. One gaming YouTuber, P4wnyhof, decided to take this rule one step further and create an infinite money economy that would completely break the game, with the help of 112 sheep and 52 lambs.
Sheep can technically produce an infinite amount of wool, and with the help of three shepherds, P4wnyhof was able to obtain a staggering 772 wool and counting from one single sheep farm. With the help of a couple of weavers' workshops, which can create yarn and eventually clothes that sell for eight coins, the sheep farm was able to bring in an endless supply of money.
You'd have to spend your first couple of upgrade points on trade logistics and better deals, as this helps you get better discounts on builds and reduces the import tariff by 10%, but this is a small price to pay to get guaranteed cash all year round.
Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, as the developer Grzegorz Styczen, otherwise known as Slavic Magic, decided to do away with this feature for now. In a tweet, Styczen claims, "Personally, I don't have a game design problem with "infinite money" (as some clickbaity videos say), yes sheep make infinite wool, and "trade only" towns were part of the design. But I think the export abuse feedback came in so often that I decided to yolo a last-minute feature."
This pretty much just means that due to a global oversupply of wool, there are no trades happening right now. But that doesn't mean it will be like this forever, as Styczen even suggested in reply to the prior tweet that this could be the start of "random events impacting prices and stuff like that.". So, who knows, maybe a gigantic sheep farm will come in handy sometime in the future.