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Songs of Syx News

Cannibals, Slaves and Drunks

This was supposed to be a small update, but it turned out big. And I don't remember what I was supposed to do, half way through, I decided to flesh out the slave mechanics. The results were marvellous.

This is now in the default branch, meaning the game will update. If you wish to continue on old saves, you need to manually check out V56 in the steam client

We've also got a bunch of new stuff, cannibalism rooms, taverns, eateries, funeral services. I've had a lot of fun playing through it. It took me 3 days to reach 750 people. Here's a video about it:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

  • Build a spell checker that checks for spelling/typos whenever I build the game.
  • Room production overhaul. Enables us to specify in-rates, so that bread can cost 0.5 wood and 1 grain for instance.
  • Added a "do what I did last" Button and hotkey for the build menu.
  • Clarified and fixed squareness a bit.
  • Clay exavatable resource + claypit
  • Ability to mod occurrence of exavatable resource based on terrain.
  • Happiness screen overhauled.
  • Info on city selection refined.
  • Trade adjusted and balanced.
  • Potter Workshop and Pottery. Coal + clay = pottery
  • Alcohol resource and brewery. Wood+pottery+grain/fruit = alcohol
  • Eatery room. Very basic food distribution place. Replaces kitchen.
  • Canteen room. Now works as a kitchen with tables.
  • Tarven is now for drinks only.
  • Alcohol limit to dictate. Adds happiness, but can make subjects drunk an unproductive if set too high.
  • Changed so that all rooms that needed wood to run now requires coal instead at a lower rate.
  • AI faction trade and production overhauled. Still needs some work, but better now.
  • Well room, a simple bath.
  • Jewelry and jewelers. Jewelry can be worn.
  • Proper slaves. Can be gained through beating Krull, or as a form of punishment. Slaves have a collective happiness that is still based on the racial composition of all your slaves. You set work priorities for slaves, same as citizens. Slaves have simpler demands in general. They don't have expectations, but the more slaves you have per citizen, the happier you must make them. Slaves can run away if too unhappy. Will revolt in the future.
  • Slaver room for punishing criminals and gain slaves.
  • New slave UI screen.
  • Unique slave happiness based on the number of citizens compared to slaves.
  • Lots of rebalancing around happiness and a few stats added/removed.
  • Touched up some icons.
  • Slaves will run away, while citizens will commit more crimes and not emigrate if unhappy.
  • Slaver event, lets you buy slaves.
  • Notifications reworked, some new added.
  • Death statistics and death causes added.
  • New grave alternative - Crypt
  • Cannibal room that butchers corpses for resources.
  • Mass grave for corpses.
  • Hover info for room copier.
  • Room category UI remade.
  • industry storage visible on hover.
  • mines/woodcutter proper errors.
  • Guard post placed inside fixed.
  • Forgetting techs now disables all dependent techs.
  • Horizontal scrolling of tech tree with ctrl + mousewheel
  • Notification when nobles die.

Crime And Punishment

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

  • Hauler room added. Can be placed for free on cleared ground and will employ haulers, that will fetch resources to the room.
  • Proper Woodcutter room added. Now fully renewable and with fixed output, same as other industries.
  • Much easier to reach 0% squareness.
  • Logistics mechanics overhauled, added a "empty to" mechanics which lets you empty resources to specific warehouses.
  • New Janitor room with maintenance now separated from construction. Only janitors can do maintenance. Janitors need construction materials in the vicinity, or they will become less effective.
  • Auto employment for some rooms, which will make the AI fire/hire 1 subject per day based on workload. Workload calculations improved.
  • Normal speed triggers when there is a message
  • Immigrant value now decreases more slow, allowing you to fulfil the needs of new immigrants.
  • Onx pastures for cold and temperate climates.
  • Hotkey for getting to the throne/capitol.
  • Status concept. New profile screen.
  • Level (title). You now increase your level according to your population, which unlocks bonuses and rooms. The throne visually upgrades with these levels.
  • Faction visuals. Change faction name and colors while playing.
  • Faction banners. Randomized banners for all faction and a banner editor for the player.
  • Added on "available services" tooltip. How many are used and how many that needs work.
  • Fixed various crashes from streaming. Requires you to uncheck "debug" in the launcher.
  • Remade light engine and prettier fires/candles
  • Recoloured ore
  • Huge AI refactoring. Not that anyone cares, but it allows for faster AI progress.
  • Criminals. Come in three flavours: thieves, vandalisers, streakers, and murderers. Each race has a property on their chance to become criminals. The amount of criminals spawned depends of law and happiness.
  • New guard post room. Guards will catch criminals in their vicinity, or if they happen to stumble into one on their patrols. Guard posts also deter crime in their vicinity.
  • Prison. Employs guards that bring food and empties latrines of the cells. Criminals will go here after being caught, if your policies are set up that way. Prisoners will stay there for a number of years before being let out and become citizens again (average 6 years).
  • Game will now save to "new_city" before you place your throne, allowing you to restart at any time by loading it.
  • Scaffolds room. Employs executioners. Prisoners will go here to be executed according to your policies.
  • Courts. Prisoners will go here before going to either prisons or scaffolds. Improves justice. Can also instantly turn some prisoners back to friendly subjects.
  • Added a width/height restriction to rooms.
  • Made so that the tunnelling bonus actually works. Dondorians tunnel into mountains twice as fast.
  • Rearranged resources categories a bit.
  • Law. Law is gained by apprehending criminals, having courts for them as well as Prisons and scaffolds. Law makes your citizens happy and deters the spawning of criminals.
  • New algorithm for determining build order when constructing massive walls now enables you to build as thick a walls as you'd like without people getting stuck.
  • The above also holds true when building rooms with inner walls.
  • Added demography to understand retirement better. Also made it more clear that retired people doesn't work.
  • Returned rock ground under mountains that had disappeared.
  • Moved key settings to in-game menu.
  • Touched up the happiness screen in an effort to make it more understandable.
  • New tech tree with unlockable buildings.
  • Made room construction render above terrain.
  • Decreased snoring sound.
  • Deleting room blueprint no longer removes roads beneath.
  • New employment mechanics with new priority system and panels. AI will now distribute workforce evenly.
  • A bit more UI info about service rooms.
  • New trading mechanics for stabler trade and prices.
  • When Krull dies, his son will take up his arms and continue raiding you.
  • optional resources shown as optional on hover when build.
  • Harvest jobs can be placed, but only performed when ripe.

Crime and Punishment 0.56

Hello fine folk!

I'm finally done. Focus has been on introducing a new law mechanics, but also did a lot of other stuff.

Here's a video about it:

If you'd like to continue your old saves, older versions of the game can be checked out in properties -> betas

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Here's the changelog:

  • Hauler room added. Can be placed for free on cleared ground and will employ haulers, that will fetch resources to the room.
  • Proper Woodcutter room added. Now fully renewable and with fixed output, same as other industries.
  • Much easier to reach 0% squareness.
  • Logistics mechanics overhauled, added a "empty to" mechanics which lets you empty resources to specific warehouses.
  • New Janitor room with maintenance now separated from construction. Only janitors can do maintenance. Janitors need construction materials in the vicinity, or they will become less effective.
  • Auto employment for some rooms, which will make the AI fire/hire 1 subject per day based on workload. Workload calculations improved.
  • Normal speed triggers when there is a message
  • Immigrant value now decreases more slow, allowing you to fulfil the needs of new immigrants.
  • Onx pastures for cold and temperate climates.
  • Hotkey for getting to the throne/capitol.
  • Status concept. New profile screen.
  • Level (title). You now increase your level according to your population, which unlocks bonuses and rooms. The throne visually upgrades with these levels.
  • Faction visuals. Change faction name and colors while playing.
  • Faction banners. Randomized banners for all faction and a banner editor for the player.
  • Added on "available services" tooltip. How many are used and how many that needs work.
  • Fixed various crashes from streaming. Requires you to uncheck "debug" in the launcher.
  • Remade light engine and prettier fires/candles
  • Recoloured ore
  • Huge AI refactoring. Not that anyone cares, but it allows for faster AI progress.
  • Criminals. Come in three flavours: thieves, vandalisers, streakers, and murderers. Each race has a property on their chance to become criminals. The amount of criminals spawned depends of law and happiness.
  • New guard post room. Guards will catch criminals in their vicinity, or if they happen to stumble into one on their patrols. Guard posts also deter crime in their vicinity.
  • Prison. Employs guards that bring food and empties latrines of the cells. Criminals will go here after being caught, if your policies are set up that way. Prisoners will stay there for a number of years before being let out and become citizens again (average 6 years).
  • Game will now save to "new_city" before you place your throne, allowing you to restart at any time by loading it.
  • Scaffolds room. Employs executioners. Prisoners will go here to be executed according to your policies.
  • Courts. Prisoners will go here before going to either prisons or scaffolds. Improves justice. Can also instantly turn some prisoners back to friendly subjects.
  • Added a width/height restriction to rooms.
  • Made so that the tunnelling bonus actually works. Dondorians tunnel into mountains twice as fast.
  • Rearranged resources categories a bit.
  • Law. Law is gained by apprehending criminals, having courts for them as well as Prisons and scaffolds. Law makes your citizens happy and deters the spawning of criminals.
  • New algorithm for determining build order when constructing massive walls now enables you to build as thick a walls as you'd like without people getting stuck.
  • The above also holds true when building rooms with inner walls.
  • Added demography to understand retirement better. Also made it more clear that retired people doesn't work.
  • Returned rock ground under mountains that had disappeared.
  • Moved key settings to in-game menu.
  • Touched up the happiness screen in an effort to make it more understandable.
  • New tech tree with unlockable buildings.
  • Made room construction render above terrain.
  • Decreased snoring sound.
  • Deleting room blueprint no longer removes roads beneath.
  • New employment mechanics with new priority system and panels. AI will now distribute workforce evenly.
  • A bit more UI info about service rooms.
  • New trading mechanics for stabler trade and prices.
  • When Krull dies, his son will take up his arms and continue raiding you.
  • optional resources shown as optional on hover when build.
  • Harvest jobs can be placed, but only performed when ripe.


Hope you enjoy! Next up is going to be kids and procreation. I'm also going to overhaul eating and everything with it + alcohol, education, elderly care and a profile that you get to keep between games.

/Jake

Fantasy RTS city-builder Songs of Syx has sold over 11 thousand copies

After a Kickstarter success back in May 2020, then an Early Access release on Steam in September 2020 - the fantasy grand-strategy city-builder Songs of Syx has continued to be a big indie success. Here's a look over it.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/12/fantasy-rts-city-builder-songs-of-syx-has-sold-over-11-thousand-copies

unstable V55 out!

Hohoho!

Here's a small Chrismas present from your devoted dev. This update changes a lot of things and adds stuff you could only dream about!

Generally, if focuses on production and some basic balancing surrounding it.

I've also updated the demo from V51 to V53!

  • Sithilion Ore that can be mined. Very rare and at a slow rate.
  • Happiness modifier based on resource stored per citizen (modable in race init files). Dondorians like Sithilion ore.
  • Stockpile crates size increased from 64 to 255.
  • Stockpiles have adjustable radius for their workers.
  • Smaller radius for employed subjects that wants to give a hand with odd jobs like hauling, construction or maintenance.
  • Bread resource + Bakery industry. Grain is no longer edible, but must be processed into bread. The industry only needs grain to operate.
  • Proper hunting rooms. Very effective in the beginning to feet your subjects. Has an adjustable radius that can cover the whole map. Wild game will be exterminated quickly though if overused.
  • Proper fisheries. You now place a fishery room on top of shallow water. Expand a bit on land too to be able to place storage and auxiliary items. Fish stock is static and is highlighted when placing the room. Green is best. Red is hardly worth placing a fishery on top.
  • When placing your throne at the beginning of the game you have the ability to regenerate (button below "place start"). While the general layout will be the same and dirived from the world tiles you picked, minerals, game, and fish stock will be randomly generated once more.
  • Tilling period for farms. No longer will you get an army of workers after harvest, the farmers must remain an "till" the earth until they can sow in spring. Tilling increases the output of next harvest.
  • Manual food usage in kitchen. You can now check which raw ingredients to use. Can come in handy if you're saving up some of them, or using them different locally (save the meat for the nobility district)
  • Manual usage of specific raw materials in workshops. Now only applies to tailors in practise that can use either pelts or fabric.
  • Rates added to industries. The rate is an estimate of the amount of produce per worker per day.
  • All industries internal storage reduced and will stop producing if these are full. should prevent carpenter from using up all the wood.
  • Tiny saves < 1MB. No need to zip anymore! Things now saved better and faster.
  • Fields of minable resources are now much bigger, while having a lower yield. they are also infinite and clearly visible if you right click. they can also generate inside mountains, or under shallow water.
  • Room placement undo better.
  • Ability to change roof of room when reconstructing it.
  • Ability to reconstruct rooms under construction. (Just click them).
  • Livestock resource replaces the damned eggs (eggs now a food) and pastures no longer needs them in the construction process. Instead the herders will grab a livestock and haul it into the pasture where it transforms into cattle. Pastures produce livestock at a low rate. Different type pastures are available in different climates and the animals produce different kinds of resources at different rates (meat, pelt, cotton, eggs). Hunters sometimes produce a livestock resource.
  • Animals also spawned according to climate and have different resources when hunted.
  • Minimap has been a bit revamped with better and more consistent colors and functions.
  • Construction panel has been condensed.
  • New setting in the launcher allows you to pick both width and height of a windowed window. Should now work well with ultra wide-screeners.
  • Service rooms have a reachability map on hover that shows you the area where subjects can reach it. "Distance" also added as a modifier to service happiness. You can never max it out, but you can decrease it by placing services closer to where they're needed.
  • Ability to pick multiple mods. The first chosen mod will have residence over the second and so forth.
  • 3 more soundtracks. I advise you turn the music volume back up.
  • keyboard rework. Ability to assign more keys using ctrl/alt as a modulator. Added keys for saving and zooming. More keys to come. Open to suggestions.
  • All rooms and their production now reflected on the world map. What this means is that the AI is playing by the same rules as you are when building your city in terms of manpower and production rates.
  • Trade fixed a bit. You will now get special treatment in the algorithms, making sure you're the first who gets to export/import on the world scene, leading to massive trades.
  • Baths are now made modable, meaning they are dynamically loaded. So you can add as many variations of a bath as you want and define how it affects happiness.
  • Clarified service access happiness a bit. I grouped each "group" (food & sleep)
  • Immigrants will now walk to the throne and kiss it.
  • Happiness and immigration completely reworked. We now have "expectations" which will increase as your population grows. It affects total population as well as population per species.
  • New, rare race added (Cantors). Giants not really good at anything else but fighting. Very picky and demanding.
  • Maintenance and upkeep reworked. Should be a higher rate, you now need to pay attention to it. There are settings for road and room maintenance in the room panel.
  • More resource expenditure UI. Added maintenance, construction and some other resource usage statistics.
  • Temperature according to climate and season. Exposure added to subjects. they have a chance to die from exposure. Exposure can be mitigated by wearing clothes and using hearths /skinnydipping. There is also snow in cold climates.
  • Walls now count towards building preference.
  • Squareness thing added for room construction. Affects happiness. Species can have a thing for organic looking cities or square ones.
  • Isolation added to rooms based on walls surrounding it. Affects maintenance needed greatly.
  • Room cost and upkeep is increased by building big rooms. You now need supportive pillars or walls inside the rooms to avoid this extra cost.
  • Efficiency/cosiness reworked. Based on actual stations vs knick-knacks/auxiliaries
  • Monument Trees now emit harmony. awe, harmony and dread reworked.
  • Noise. Noisy rooms disturb subjects. Noise travels through air, but is dampened by walls.
  • Paper and papermaker, primarely for libraries that now needs paper, else they'll work at 25% speed.
  • Fixed game zooming, should now zoom in and out without disorientation.
  • Krull wins if his men reaches the throne.
  • Species work priorities draggable.
  • Fart sounds reduced.
  • Re-added sounds to work rooms
  • Service usage number fixed
  • New localization method ensuring swift translation.
  • Removed coal usage in weaver, reduced efficiency
  • Launcher wind sound lowered.
  • Faction colors mixup fix.
  • CTD when invasion
  • CTD when dragging unit cards in dev mode
  • CTD when opening room list
  • Fixed broken kitchens. No more free food.
  • Food preference fixed.
  • CTD when deleting room from panel


In short, the game should be much harder. With more workers required for basically everything. The great dev himself could only manage a 100 pop city. There should also be a strong insensitive to build smaller and more thought out with the noise pollution. Maintenance is also boosted severely. Good luck!

Next up will be "law & order". Unfortunately we had a poll in the discord what V56 should and you guys picked the most difficult one. It will feature:
  • A room for soldiers. Fixing up army UI.
  • Soldiers patrolling the streets through a network of guard posts,
  • citizens commits crimes.
  • soldiers apprehend criminals
  • criminals stored in prisons
  • execution square for prisoners and for civic entertainment
  • ability to set laws and have them affect happiness / crime


Right now that sounds quite manageable and shouldn't take long, but I'm sure I'll find 50 other things to add along the way as usual, so I'll play it save and say 1st of March as an ETA.

A merry Christmas to you all! Thanks for your support.

/Jake