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Songs of Syx News

V65 The way of water

It is here!

This version can now be checked out as beta in the steam client. Right click the game and there should be something like "betas" or "properties -> betas".

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Patchnotes:

  • WORLD
  • Overall the world has been overhauled to 1.0 status. Lots of smaller adjustments.
  • Armies are now reinforced by garrisons and other armies nearby in an intelligent way.
  • Better auto resolve based on damage types.
  • Better army composition for the AI.
  • Most UI reworked. Made sure it fits on a 1200x720 screen.
  • Improvements to FOW and minimap FOW and highlighting.
  • Lots of new functionality around trade.
  • Improved world buildings on the map. Each race have specific ones.
  • Improved neighbour factions spawning
  • Mineral deposits rework. All deposits available in any region and in any city. The amount of deposits dictate the efficiency of the mines. Settlement will be generated with the same quantity of ores. The ore nodes will increase quality of the nodes.
  • Epidemic events on the world map.
  • NPC factions communication events.
  • All UI and mechanics concerning army management and recruitment polished.
  • The world construction has been completely revamped with new mechanics and buildings to choose from.

  • CITY
  • Generating initial roads according to the world roads.
  • Generating small rivers according to the world map.
  • Equally large mineral patches will be generated (about 1500 workers each) on every city. The richness of the spots is determined by what world location you pick.
  • new Main UI
  • Historic data for equipment wear and initial equip.
  • Full control over house assignments.
  • Brawls still happen now and then (prevented by segregation of hateful species with the new home settings). Big brawls are now an event that happens with low fulfilment.
  • Army recruitment UI redone. Bulk edit of divisions, and reordering. More info on whats going on.
  • Strangeness regarding training of different battle types fixed. A recruit can train at any facility for basic training, and will then start specialising.
  • Warehouses are now upgradable for more space and less degrade. Visually a bit more exciting.
  • Overtime command now gives flat bonuses. The actual work hours are not affected, they just work more efficiently.
  • Work time is now "elastic" in order to let the peeps travel farther away services without affecting production. When a peep has been away in the arena, he will work extra shifts afterwards to compensate.
  • Arenas now have workers istead of using prisoners. Death in the arena is an optional punishment form.
  • Arenas are now renamed "fighting pits" and are available early. The size option does not affect quality.
  • A new Grand arena building is available late game.
  • Eatery renamed food stall, and look much prettier. Canteens -> restaurants, and I've increased coal consumption and work time for it! The idea here is that while it's theoretically possible to give everyone restaurant access, you shouldn't, you should use in conjunction with food stalls.
  • Roundness and squareness now replaced with only roundness, and it's not tied to rooms, it's tied to the walls of your whole city, including mountains. Added roundness liking to Garthimi.
  • Hearths no longer require wood to be brought to them. Instead they cost a lot of wood to contruct and maintain.
  • Added some terrain decorations.
  • Made the mineral deposits a bit more visually appealing.
  • Shrines to all gods added. Shrines is your everyday religious fix. Shrine have a tiny radius. Temples can serve more people and have a much wider radius.
  • All services are now a bit more tolerable for being full. A subject will try to find a vacant service several times before they mark it as unavailable.
  • Made some changes to the workload calculator, hopefully giving you more accurate results.
  • Entry points to your city is now fixed and mirror how your city is connected to roads on the world map. You must keep these points open, or receive negative consequences.
  • Invasions can happen even if the entry points are closed. Invasions will find a suitable area to spawn on. They will not spawn on places that can't be reached from the world map, like in a mountain, but they are not tied to entry points, so you can't just fortify those. More will be done, I plan on keeping track of where enemies attack, and your fortifications in the area, so that they don't walk into kill boxes. If you go all in on fortifications and artillery, I plan to have them simply besiege you until you die.
  • Mountains are now "soft" around the edges, so that you can initially tunnel quicker, however tunnelling will be slower the farther into the mountain you dig.
  • Clearing other terrain stuff can be a bit slower, but yields more resources.
  • Fixed so that you can always get 1 of each race through immigration, unless you're prosecuting them.
  • Added more hate and racism :). This will make sure the world map is less diverse, with more regions oppressing other races. I also increased the importance of the "other" fulfilment thing, as well as gave x2 expectancy to your non-starting race.
  • The liking of other species is now an absolute value 0-1. If A likes B with 0.5, they will only tolerate having 0.5 of that species relative to their own population.
  • Workshops and refiners now have fixed amount of workers that are guaranteed to have something to do if raw materials exist.
  • Daily production/consumption UI for rooms.
  • Tools are now tied to the rooms they are used in, and not equipped.
  • Pastures have an efficiency item, and get a small boost from sweet water access.
  • Consumption of resources when producing also apply to bonuses, meaning when you boost something by x2, its consumption is also boosted by x2.
  • Lowered all raw material production rates. (It's not harder, just more balanced).
  • Animals on the map are now hunted manually.
  • Hunter rooms are now a perpetual source of meat, though limited to very few employees.
  • New building type added. The "hut". What's special about this is that it's free, but take a long time to build. Amevias like it.
  • A new food panel, that gives you daily production and detailed info about food.
  • Smallest housing option removed. The other houses have had their capacity increased by 125%
  • Nurseries now unlock with you population. Maximum children is based on the population of the race in question.


  • WATER
  • Water table scrapped
  • Instead there is ground water in both sweet and salty variants. You can terraform these areas as you're used to. These areas cover the generated natural water on the map + 8 tiles surrounding it.
  • New water pumping system. You now need to build water pumps to generate water pressure that you can channel into canals. The pumps stack their pressure. these are manned by workers, although you'll need less as you upgrade them. You get the best result by placing the pumps close to sweet ground water.
  • Every map is generated with at least 1 small body of water.
  • To channel water through as structure you can use a drain.
  • The canals emit sweet water, and increases fertility.
  • Where there is sweet water access you can place different kinds of pools. These are moddable, I've added moats, ponds and pools to vanilla.
  • Wells no longer emit sweet water, but can be placed anywhere.
  • Bathhouses need access to sweet water to function optimally. Their pools look a bit better.
  • Deep water can now not be completely removed. you can create a pathway through it, and place roads on that, and it will mimic a bridge. You can also remove the pathway.
  • Skinny dipping access gets you a small fulfillment bonus.
  • Fish amounts on the map is scrapped.
  • Instead, you get a fixed, 1 worker/64 tiles in your fisheries.
  • But, you get a lot of fish from new "deep water fishing spots" that will litter the edge of the sweet water tiles that's adjacent to deep water. These will send out boats to sea to fish.
  • Salt water gets more of these tiles, since it has crap fertility.
  • Just wood needed for fishery, they now have an upgrade.
  • Indoor farms get a small boost to fertility from sweet water access.

  • BUGS
  • All bugs reported fixed. Noteworthy:
  • The Cannibal now produces resources as it should.
  • Fixed broken camps (Cantor, Argonosh).

  • BATTLE
  • Military Training and Training rooms now moddable. Each room has its own training stat and bonus. Each stat has its own set of bonuses. Divisions will be populated in a smart manner, best candidate first.
  • Added new damage and armour types. Blunt, Pierce, slash
  • New division power calculations + advanced auto resolve calculations.
  • Added new battle equipment: short sword, long sword, warhammer, plate armour, leather armour and shields.
  • I've rebuilt and rebalanced everything regarding battles. It is now much better, but far from perfect. It is important that you give me test cases where the AI is acting weirdly. Save before a battle, and if possible before the oddities occur.

  • MISC
  • 4 new sound tracks
  • new day-night cycle, kinder to the eyes.
  • New lock and unlock mechanics for everything, which makes the possibilities of the tech tree much more interesting and increases modability. For modders, full syntax examples should be in the tech files. Also works on titles and player levels and world buildings.
  • Improved fonts, especially for non-latin languages.
  • Visually improved main menu.
  • New icons for everything. Improved icon rendering.
  • Increased maximum resource types from 64 to 128. It can be increased further without hassle, but I think 128 will be enough for modders.
  • New and improved titles, totalling 20. Titles have a 1:1 relationship to steam achievements.
  • Steam achievements are now automatically updated when starting and exiting the game.
  • Timed super screenshots
  • Launcher is now translatable, with a new look, and a live language select.
  • Quarter speed added by double tapping 1x speed
  • Fixed the "non shading" option.

  • MODDING
  • First off, I've ruined a lot for current mods, and I apologise for this. I will most probably not do such a big change as this again, it is close to 1.0.
  • The biggest thing is the new bonus system and unlock. It is much more versatile and broader, but has a different syntax.
  • Added optional flag "AI_BUILDS" to world buildings.
  • Made world generation heightmaps able to have any size (256px is the current world size) for better precision.
  • Added default liking for other species.
  • Better moddability for ranged weapons.
  • Moddable damage and armour types
  • All projectiles are now moddable, one can mod the damage done, velocity, etc. Added max arch angle as well (for muskets and cannons).
  • Services are now tied to needs, and needs are moddable. This means that you can add a service and tie it any existing or new need you come up with. A physician can be reskinned and repurposed to deal with some other need for instance, very similar to industries, where you can change input/output.
  • Water pool buildings available to be modded.
  • Moddable city map size

  • NOTES
  • Brawls can not be a crime in the game. A crime needs an intent, while brawls are a sporadic thing, and will not work in the current law system. We will have to live with them going unpunished.
  • Fishing boats can indeed bump around in an ugly fashion in your fisheries if you build these in weird shapes. Please let me know.

Road to 1.0

My dear despots. Apologies for the radio silence. I have not checked the steam boards for a month, because I've been spending all my time on programming, and while doing so I've become more and more anxious about coming here. Of course I've been available on email and on the discord.

I'm now half-way through the next update V65, code name “water”. In reality it is more about polish, getting as many mechanics into a 1.0 state as possible.

So far each update has been about adding some new mechanics, while trying to maintain the game in some kind of playable state, but spending as little time as possible on balance and polish. Now, focus has shifted to refinement and making the mechanics that are in, good as a whole. I am happy with the raw potential the game now has.

I have now finished up the overworld mechanics into a state that I wished would have been in V64. But there was no time, (and it's always good to let things mature and collect feedback). UI reconstruction has been the focus, so that you can truly use all the mechanics present regarding AI faction management and building your realm. Manual trade agreements have been re-added. Trade in general has been the secret to expansion for very long, mostly because it's a semi-exploit. I'm now deferring trade to a later stage, and the game will play like a classic colony sim for the first part. I've completely remade the world buildings to make it more interesting and have a sense of progression. There are now many more “Special” buildings that upgrade your kingdom as a whole, meaning the more regions you have, the more specialization, and the greater the kingdom as a whole. The AI aggressiveness will of course scale according to that.

The AI also communicates with you. From time to time they will send proposals, such as trade agreements, but also requests and gifts. For instance, a disgruntled king might demand of you to give up a region or face their armies.

As for the city-builder, I'm now getting started on that part, and I have big changes in mind. For instance, I will separate services such as wells and baths, so that they will use both. Wells will have a small radius while the bath will have a huge one. That will force you to build a city centre as the city grows, and allow final results to look more organic. I will also separate the entertainment building such as the arena into “fighting pits” and Colosseum. Fighting pits you will have to spread out everywhere in your city, while a single Colosseum covers mostly your whole city. Similar to this, I'm planning shrines vs temples. Food stalls (replacing eatery) vs restaurants (replacing canteen). I also want a new building “bazaar” with all equipment and furniture for you citizens. Housing will have more precise settings, allowing you to easily set up districts that do not burn down in brawls.

As for the balance, I want a streamlined experience that lets you set your own pace and difficulty. If you want a cosy little city-builder, then you can have it by expanding carefully and slowly, and if you want a challenge worthy of 100s of hours, then you must expand and face the challenges.

As for the water, I'll keep it simple. A bridge will be needed to clear deep water. You will be able to remove/add shallow water around the natural bodies of water. For irrigation, you will need a water pump, and connect canals to it. It will in other words cost you some manpower. Water table will be scrapped, but settling close to water will be equally important.

Visually, I'm happy to announce that I've gotten help from a very talented artist, and all the icons of the game have ben redrawn to perfection.

I will also dive into battle balance this time around, and make sure its well balanced. Speaking of which, I've added a very moddable equipment system with different kinds of damage and protection. I have added slash, blunt and pierce damage types, with equipment to go with it. I will leave “magic” to the modding community.

release of the game is approaching. Apart from the 1.0 quality of existing features, I still have the following to add:

  • nobles (will include a whole set of posh buildings)
  • military (fix AI issues on the battlefield) Perhaps add commanders to divisions, more training options, royal guard)
  • Tutorial
  • Campaign
  • Zombies
  • Atrifacts
  • Sound overhaul


There are a pile of suggestions on top of this, and I know many of you might be waiting for this or for that. Boats and harbours for instance. Thing is, I do agree that the game would be better with boats, but the amount of work needed for this does not outweigh the benefit currently. Depending on how long I will work on the game, it might still make it into the pipeline.

With 1.0, I envision a certain degree of quality. It's not the end of the game at all, but it's a shift in my work, and I'll have to be more careful not to break things, and keep the balance of the game. Raw progress will be slower.

My plan on building and maintaining momentum for 1.0 release is you guys. I want to make the community come alive, have moderators, events, competitions, and most importantly modders. Taking advantage of you modders have been the plan from the start, as you create the best stuff. Vanilla will be as good as I can make it, but mods will make it excel. I hope to work more closely with you and guide you through the process, and hopefully present you with rewards and opportunities. I plan on opening up the entire code base for you to play around with, make changes, and finally release mods from it.

If you would be interested of helping me with the community, please let me know!


When the big 1.0 release might be, I do not know yet. It's always been 4 years now, but I do see the horizon within a year.



V64 What is best in life?

[h3]A new era dawns. The greatest gaming event of 1999 is here. Song of Syx has a new patch.[/h3]

Oh, where to begin, it's been so long, and I've forgotten what I've done, and lost the patch-notes in a game of poker. But basically, it's been all about the world map, and adding a sort of 4X experience to go along with the city builder. We now have proper generation, proper factions that are alive, proper everything world related on steroids!
No video this time, my mic broke. But here's the thumbnail:





Here's a neighbouring king, and his heirs. He will like you differently depending on his characteristics, and your history together. You can interact with him through diplomacy.



You can also send emissaries to keep him and his heirs happy. If he makes a fuss, assassination is an option.



You now have much greater control over your realm, with proper buildings, shamelessly ripped from the total war franchise (before they had the good sense of streamlining it).



I've also added a few things to the city building experience, features, fixes and quality of life. Orchards for instance.



There's still a bit missing that I didn't have time to add to the World. Most notably anything regarding armies. That's on the to-do list for the next version.

Next up, I want to do another polish update, focusing on the city map. I have a lot of plans, you can see them here: Trello

Overall, I'm exited, we're closing in on 1.0. I have only nobles left as a major feature, and of course a mountain of polish and balance.

EA 64 has to be checked out manually in steam for now, as a “beta”. I'm very curious about the balance late game, and how the AI conducts diplomacy and decides to take you on, so let me know, I'll be here, and on the Discord

The previous version is now available as the demo, for those of you who are still waiting for a sale or whatnot, so have a look at that.

Now go forth and conquer the world!

Version 64 progress

Hi everybody!

I just want to say, that you never have to worry about the state of the game. It's going to be finished, I've got enough funds to keep at it now for another decade, and I've already been at it for about a decade, so it would be a bit silly for me to stop now.

I'm working on the game every day, sacrificing PR and community management for the sake of coding, that's why I'm not super active on the forum ATM.

Work on V64 has been a bit frustrating and slow, and it's going to be the longest wait you've ever had to endure, so I made a little video on the current state of it. Excuse the quality and the cohesion of my scattered thoughts.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Dwarf Fortress too retro? Songs of Syx is worth looking at with another big Beta update

Songs of Syx is a fantasy city-builder that in many ways could be compared with Dwarf Fortress, only with a graphical style that's just a bit more modern. A new Beta release went up recently and it's another big one.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/01/dwarf-fortress-too-retro-songs-of-syx-is-worth-looking-at-with-another-big-beta-update