Songs of Syx’s V71 law rework does not publish a single percentage for what executing a criminal costs you. The wiki’s Scaffolds page says only that executions carry “the highest Law yield” and “the highest Tyranny yield” of any punishment — no number attached. Feeding a condemned prisoner to the Cannibal building does have published numbers, and they are extreme: -1000% fulfilment for four of the game’s eight species, +400% for Garthimi and Tilapi, and a flat 0% for Argonosh and Cantors. That is the only punishment-adjacent building in V71 with a species-specific cost the wiki actually states.
There is no dedicated “Law” or “Punishment” page on the wiki as of this writing. What exists is scattered across the Scaffolds, Slavery, Guard Post and Cannibal building pages, plus the official V71 patch notes. This page assembles what those pages confirm about the four documented outcomes for a criminal or captive — exile, enslavement, execution and cannibal processing — and is explicit about what none of them state.
The four documented outcomes
| Outcome | Facility required | Documented cost | Documented benefit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Exile | None — the fallback | None stated | Avoids the happiness and Tyranny cost of the alternatives |
| Enslavement | Stockade, to receive and hold captives | Guards, food and ongoing Submission management (see the slave ledger) | Labour, and slaves are now a tradeable good |
| Execution (Scaffolds) | Gallows, Chopping Block, Gibbet Cage or Cross — all functionally identical | Public Punishment aura reduces nearby happiness; counts toward Cruelty if used on war prisoners | “Highest Law yield” of any punishment, which raises loyalty; a “dread” aura also boosts loyalty |
| Cannibal processing | Cannibal building | -1000% fulfilment (Cretonian, Dondorian, Human, Amevia); 0% (Argonosh, Cantors) | +400% fulfilment (Garthimi, Tilapi); produces Meat and other resources from the prisoner |
Exile is the only one of the four with a mechanical description tied to captives specifically: per the Slavery page, “a Stockade is necessary for receiving Captives… If no stockade is available, the captives will be auto-pardoned or exiled.” That reads as a fallback state rather than a punishment you actively select for citizens already living in your city, and the wiki does not document a separate exile mechanic for that case.
Execution: two buildings, two very different price tags
V71 replaced the old single-room execution building with placeable items. The Scaffolds page lists four — Gallows, Chopping Block, Gibbet Cage and Cross — and states plainly that “all [have] the same function.” They “emit a Public Punishment aura, disliked by almost all species and causing reduction of happiness to nearby citizens. In return, it produces law which increases loyalty.” No magnitude is given for either side of that trade, and the official V71 patch notes confirm only that “Guards, guard post coverage, execution places, secret police and more all multiply these effects” — so the real cost scales with your city’s law infrastructure, not with a fixed per-execution number.
The Cannibal building is the other execution route, and V71 changed what it does: the patch notes state cannibalism “now only slaughters living prisoners (not corpses),” with “a setting to allow slaughter of condemned prisoners.” Despite the name, it “does not simply butcher corpses” — it “serves as an execution building that produces various products from the different species as they are ‘harvested’ within it, and no corpse is left behind afterward.” Its species modifier table is the most granular cost figure in this entire system:
| Species | Skill | Fulfilment from cannibalism occurring |
|---|---|---|
| Cretonians, Dondorians, Humans, Amevias | 100% | -1000% |
| Garthimi, Tilapi | 100% | +400% |
| Argonosh, Cantors | 100% | 0% |
Everyone can work a Cannibal building at full skill. Whether your population tolerates one running is an entirely different question, and it is answered per species, not per city. A Garthimi- or Tilapi-heavy population gains fulfilment from the same building that would crater happiness in a Human- or Cretonian-heavy one. The wiki also notes starving citizens will eat corpses to survive regardless of any building, and that this “may last over 10 years, potentially 20” as a lingering fulfilment effect — a different mechanic from the deliberate processing above, but one that shares the same fulfilment category and is easy to conflate with it in the death log.
Enslavement is a sentencing choice, not an automatic outcome
The Slavery page describes how a captive becomes a slave: “they are gained through processing your captives,” sourced from “Captives, whether these are criminal, prisoner of war, persecuted, or purchased captives.” A Stockade holds them for that processing. Once enslaved, they run on Submission instead of Loyalty, and low-Submission slaves “attempt an uprising instead of rioting, striking, or emigrating.” What guard count, food volume and acquisition cost do to the arithmetic of keeping slaves productive is a separate accounting question the wiki does not answer with fixed numbers either — the slave economy ledger is built specifically to let you price your own arrangement rather than trust a number nobody has published for this version.
Enslavement’s other V71-specific change, confirmed in the patch notes: slaves are “now becoming both a special type of subject and a fully tradeable good,” and their “fulfilment and happiness now work more or less exactly as they do for citizens” — a heavier management burden than in earlier versions, not a lighter one.
What is not a punishment, despite the name similarity
Two things worth correcting before they spread as fact. First, the Stockade is not itself a documented prison sentence. The wiki describes it only as the receiving building for captives pending processing into a punishment — exile, slavery or execution. There is no separate wiki page for it, and no confirmed mechanic for holding someone there long-term as a punishment in its own right.
Second, the Arena is not a punishment building. Searching the wiki for gladiator combat, fighting pits or arena sentencing turns up only entertainment content: Fight Pits and Grand Arenas are listed alongside Speaker, Stage, Canteen, Eatery, Tavern and Resthome as fulfilment sources — the same category as a tavern, not the same category as a Scaffold. Some species dislike them (the Amevia page notes Amevias “do not utilize Fight Pits or Arenas for their entertainment”), but that is a happiness preference, not a sentencing mechanic. If you have seen a claim that V71 lets you sentence criminals to gladiator combat, we could not find it on the wiki or in the official patch notes, and we are not repeating it here.
What the law screen itself does not publish
The patch notes describe the system in one line — “You dictate a punishment for every crime, and each crime and punishment affects happiness and loyalty differently” — with guards, guard post coverage, execution places and secret police multiplying the effects, but neither the patch notes nor the wiki publish the actual list of crimes, the numeric happiness/loyalty delta per punishment, or a screenshot-level breakdown of the in-game Law interface. That is a real gap, not an oversight on our part: the wiki’s Scaffolds, Slavery and Cannibal pages are the most detailed sources that exist publicly for this system as of this writing, and none of them assign a number to the happiness side of execution or exile the way the Cannibal building’s fulfilment table does.
If you are trying to fix a rebellion that is already happening rather than choosing a punishment in advance, the loyalty chain and its actual triggers are a separate question — why provinces rebel at 100% loyalty covers the four layers between a fulfilment shortfall and an uprising, and none of the punishments above act directly on that chain except execution’s stated loyalty bump through Law.
Sources
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Scaffolds — the four execution structures and their shared function, “highest Law yield… highest Tyranny yield,” Public Punishment aura, Cruelty on war prisoners (checked 2026-09-17, page last edited 17 August 2026)
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Slavery — Stockade requirement for captives, auto-pardon/exile fallback, Submission mechanic and uprisings (checked 2026-09-17, page last edited 4 August 2026)
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Cannibal — the species fulfilment modifier table, “execution building” description, starving-citizen corpse-eating note (checked 2026-09-17, page last edited 19 July 2026)
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Guard Post — Stockade routing for apprehended criminals “in accordance with assigned punishments in the Law screen” (checked 2026-09-17, page last edited 28 July 2026)
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Amevia — Fight Pits and Grand Arenas listed as entertainment, not punishment (checked 2026-09-17)
- V71 - Reign of Terror - Available Now (Steam Community announcements) — the Law and Order rework description, “Punishment Matrix” framing, guard/execution-site multiplier statement, slave tradeability and fulfilment-parity changes; confirms V71 (released 15 June 2026) as the current major version, with no later major version found as of 2026-09-17 (checked 2026-09-17)
