You have it right, 'woose1'... it will be as combat oriented as you like, eventually. And the peasants will be quite autonomous beings, they'll build their home where they like and collect their own food and such, but you can give them overall orders or basic work professions, like in Dwarf Fortress. (And you can have them ask you where you would like them to build their home, for us nuts who like to craft an elegantly-shaped town, otherwise, bathe in the chaos).
The game starts off the manor from scratch, however, and in the beginning it will very much be a survival game, with your character foraging off the land as you slowly build your empire.
Its kind of similar to Spore in some ways, as their are increasing levels of complexity as the game progresses. When you have a town, you have to manage the town, but you still have to worry about your own character family's survival. When you progress to a city and larger manors, you have to govern the city AND your other manors, AND keep your family well fed (but it should be considerably easier as the money starts to flow, you just have to worry about the luxuries your family wants), then as you become a kingdom, you take on the full roles of King. You can pass on work to Manager's and Knights and other lower nobles to take care of individual manors and cities, but you still have to worry about your family, regardless what mode you make it to.
Here are my influences for this game for an idea of where I'm coming from:
Oblivion (Exploration and natural world)
Mount and Blade (Combat)
Stronghold 2 (Castle building, labor management)
The Guild 2 (Dynasties and family focus)
Crusader Kings (Politics and lines of succession)
Dwarf Fortress (Autonomous workers, workshops)
ANNO 1404 (Medieval cities)
UnReal World (Survival!)
Stranded II (Object combinations)
Wurm Online (Terraforming, resource gathering)