I am either not understanding this game, or it's not working right.

I start a new game, and I get how to assign the number of rations I want, and how to assign the number of laborers needed in the fields. But when I go to the assign other laborers screen, it doesn't matter how many laborers I assign to a task, I never get any resources. I've clicked through 3 turns and still have 0 stone, 0 wood, 0 iron, and 0 weapons, even though laborers were assigned to those tasks each season. I did notice their efficiency went up as I left them there, but when winter came and I had to move all hands available to the fields to harvest the grain, when I went to the next season and put the laborers back into gathering stone, wood, iron, etc., their efficiencies all went back down to the default start.

Is this correct??? Is this working properly?? And if it is, what am I missing??? I've tried about a dozen times to download the turorial from a link I found here, but I can't get it to work, and GOG didn't include the tutorial in their download.

Please, can anyone help me?

THANK YOU!!!!!

Any ideas on how or where I could The tutorial??

I've no idea on where you can find a tutorial I'm afraid, however I think we can get one going here pretty easily. Fans of these games love to add their tips. If you'd like I can start one going tomorrow (or you can now, just start a thread titled Tips for Lords of the Realm 1). After checking out your question, I got caught up in a game, and now have plenty of my own tips to add.

However half the fun is finding these strategies out for yourself. The manual is comprehensive enough to tell you how to play, so it's only the strategy that you need.

The manual is sadly incomplete, as there is no section on combat nor any troops statistics (they are allegedly on a card that came with the original game, but good luck finding that.)

Resources in LotR1 aren't scaled up as much in LotR2. You only need 1 unit of iron to make any weapon, completing 1 unit of weapons lets you equip 50 troops with that weapon (except knights, you need to make a unit of swords AND a unit of armor to make knights), and castles typically cost between 5 and 20 units of wood and stone, more for larger castles (and they get quite large since you can design your own).

One thing that is really crucial to LotR1's gameplay that isn't touched on much in the manual is worker efficiency. You'll notice when you assign workers to stone/lumber/iron/weapons there's a little percentage displayed above the bar. When you first assign workers it will be very low, and you'll notice it will go down any time to assign more workers. That's because workers fresh to a certain task aren't as good at it and work at it less efficiently--if you were a peasant who was tossed into a smith and told to make swords, it'd take you a while to figure it out too. Every season that goes by makes the peasants more experienced at their job and they'll produce faster, which is why it's important not to swap around workers between different jobs constantly, because you'll never get efficiencies up. Once you've got a decent population and efficient industries, you'll be able to produce 1 unit per turn in many counties. If you've got a huge population and they're all working on one thing, you can even get 2 units per turn (the text will turn white when that happens).

While we're dispensing tips, there's a very big consequence to the efficiency system: It makes grain farming worthless compared to cattle herding as a means of feeding your population. Grain farming requires very few peasants during the spring and summer, but a ton during the autumn (to harvest) and a fair amount during the winter (to plant). If you want enough grain to feed your population sustainably, every fall you have to dedicate all of your peasants to grain, which makes you lose all of your industrial efficiency. Focus on getting enough cattle that they feed your whole population through dairy, and keep a backup supply of grain on hand for emergencies (since grain can be stored without using any fields). Dairy doesn't suffer from the swings in labor requirements that grain does, and on those seasons when you're short workers, often all that happens from skimping is that you just don't get as much new cattle (rather than losing anything, as happens with grain).

Hope that's helpful!