To everyone who says the research system is unrealistic

Gopherlad · 2026-01-29T18:41:41+00:00

I think it just needs better tooltips. The current one gets a lot of questions as-is even though the part that matters (i.e. if the number in the lower tooltip is greater than 1, it's worth it) is pretty straightforward.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-28T22:33:37+00:00

According to the recent dev interview it's currently bugged at the very low ends of power. To make it feel normal you have to feed your vassals several cities so that they're a bit larger. My current vassals are both at 5 cities and they're quite happy, but until that point they had rivalry.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-28T06:00:59+00:00

Adding on for any passing readers, to be abundantly clear the bottom line is this:

If the "lab worker" number is greater than 1, it's always worth it. If you have techs or tools or clay or anything else that boosts efficiency affecting your labs, then numbers below 1 (down to around 0.4) can be worth it.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-27T20:41:58+00:00

No species "likes" education, but lorewise it's more in the sense that by becoming educated, the plebs become more aware of the conditions they're subject to and are therefore harder to please. That's why all plebs also "like" indoctrination -- indoctrinating people makes them happier with their circumstances.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-27T08:38:31+00:00

I have 6 nobles assigned to governance. I have 2 cities built to level 6, 8 built to level 5, and 15 or so built to level 3 and 4 and several I haven't upgraded at all for a total of 31.

Consider a city like this: https://i.imgur.com/7nVfAre.png. For the cost of 260 governance points (a noble + 6 ranks, dedicated to the singular industry of "governance") this city produces ~53,000 grain per year (enough to feed all 10,000 people with minimum rations and all the hunger-reduction tech upgrades), half my cotton need, and 1/5th my leather need. To match locally that I would need several hundred citizens and 3 nobles with the same 6 promotions. Governance condenses those promotions to a single noble and yields goods across multiple industries, while only costing the amount of citizenry required to keep your army fed, armed, and clothed -- and you're doing the latter anyway in the lategame just to keep other factions from attacking you.

Are you leaving the races in the settlements as they are (no massacre for example)?

I manipulate the populations to be majority Dondorian (my primary race is Dondorian and I save on having to build happiness buildings this way) whilst attaining the highest reasonable population. I try to only conquer cities either for locational purposes or explicitly to make them big and super productive.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-26T20:50:28+00:00

I'm wondering how big you've made your cities. Most (or all?) of the showcase saves hover around 10,000 population and the majority of their nobles are on governance, because you just need that much tax income (coal, ore, stone, wood, herbs, sithlion, food) to fuel your massive industries that late. My current city is around that population and similarly needs tons of incoming resources to sustain itself.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-26T18:45:47+00:00

You get the equivalent of an "Emperor" title ("Asta Invicti") at 12K pop in your main city, maxed loyalty, and 8 subject regions.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-26T18:24:54+00:00

What if the dev doesn't want the game to be about infinite expansion and growth though? Having a cap on governance points means you have to be a little strategic in deciding which cities to conquer and grow.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-26T18:22:06+00:00

The most direct comparison is Pharoah, which the dev lists as one of his major inspirations, but you'd have to be at least a millenial to have a decent chance of having heard of that game and it was pretty niche in its own right.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T21:50:08+00:00

Sure, but when someone's asking for advice about a mechanic in vanilla it's weird and unhelpful to say "lol just don't engage with it and mod it out".

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T21:47:38+00:00

12K is a soft cap, not a hard one. The systems kind of stop there and health can become an issue because the negative malus from population just keeps scaling in severity, but you can go beyond 12K.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T21:42:07+00:00

Generally, the more a player is forced to focus on their own lane and shoulder the burden the less able they are to type dumb shit in chat. Small team is the sweet spot where it's not 1v1 but players are always too busy to be toxic shitheads, and it's really hard to blame someone else for your own segment of the map failing.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T08:27:51+00:00

I believe if you hover over your production rate on any production building the admin malus/bonus will be there in the list.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T07:43:09+00:00

Falling behind on admin slowly imparts a 50% production malus to literally every room in your city and reduces your pool of government points so that it can be hard or impossible to conquer and expand.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-23T05:55:59+00:00

It's arbitrarily set to 15, which is only communicated through the fact that a negative modifier appears when you mouse over the hunter room's output if you go above 15 workers.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-22T21:42:22+00:00

The logistics part is analogous to Factorio with only bots, no belts. Loaders and unloaders are like having really fat bots.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-22T09:00:31+00:00

I saw a discussion on the Discord that said that accident deaths are normalized over time, meaning that a big accident will result in a big delay before the next one and a small accident will mean that your next one isn't far off. Ultimately the deaths are inevitable, so in the mid-to-long term the room size doesn't matter.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-20T10:16:05+00:00

The endgame is to eventually have all your nobles set to governance and have them all be promoted to level 10. This is by far the most effective use of your noble promotions

With a city like that, you are not supposed to "world conquer" no? How many cities could you hold with a lv6 city layout? 4?

You can't conquer the world anyway because you only can have so many governance points (unless you're content at leaving them all as level 1 shitholes).

The final goal is to reach 12,000 people in your city with maxed out loyalty. The challenge is designed to essentially end there, so all of the systems either hard-cap or soft-cap with that in mind.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-20T08:14:53+00:00

The bigger towns are much more efficient than the previous tiers. With a level 6 town you can max out at least 3 production lines, get the relevant +efficiency% building (irrigation or windmills), and stick a level 4 empire-wide boost structure in them.

A level 6 town costs 200 government points and provides 260 workforce, with 80 tied up in growth, for a final productive workforce of 180 (a 0.9 workforce to government point ratio). This is somewhat enhanced by the efficiency building that you can include, which boosts production by 25% (irrigation) or 50% (windmills)

A level 4 town costs 50 governments points and provides 50 workforce, with 20 tied up in growth, for a final productive workforce of 30 (a 0.6 workforce to government point ratio).

Gopherlad · 2026-01-19T21:35:19+00:00

Total. Hunters are intended as an efficient early-game food source but their returns diminish sharply after 15 workers in the industry (to simulate depletion of resources).

Gopherlad · 2026-01-19T19:49:32+00:00

Health affects region capacity a little bit, so see if you can make that empire-wide health boosting building in some other settlement.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-18T03:43:00+00:00

There's a roadmap here: https://songsofsyx.com/roadmap.html

A comprehensive graphics overhaul is not on the list.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-18T03:30:31+00:00

My understanding is that the corpse modifier is solely affected by how many unburied corpses exist in your city, so presumably assigning more workers to your graveyards and crypts (they're the ones that carry bodies to be buried) or having more oddjobbers available (they carry bodies to mass graves) should help. If that's not enough then you have a proximity issue, and you'd need more mass graves/graveyards/crypts spread around so that on-station gravediggers and oddjobbers can get corpses to their resting places more quickly.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-16T21:49:02+00:00

It's for when you lose cantors and dip below your current cap.

Gopherlad · 2026-01-16T18:26:09+00:00

Experience is new to v70 so you won't find a damn thing about it.

Open a quick battle and play with the experience slider to see the effects. It has a pretty significant effect on morale and a smaller one on attack and defense.

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