Every Songs of Syx guide that talks about a second species talks about one species. You get a paragraph on how good Dondorians are at smithing, or that Argonosh are shock cavalry, and then you are on your own the moment two of them share a city. That is the wrong shape of answer, because the problem is not additive. Each species you accept multiplies the number of demands your city has to satisfy at once, and some of those demands are mutually exclusive by design.
So this is the grid, not the profile. Rows are species, columns are the things they will punish you for not providing.
The matrix
Everything in the food, aptitude and immigration columns below is read off the wiki.gg species pages and cited at the bottom. Where a cell is blank on the wiki, it says so — this site does not fill gaps with plausible numbers.
| Species | Favourite foods | Environment demand | Standout aptitudes | Bad at | How you get more of them |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Humans | Bread, meat, mushrooms, eggs | Not stated on the wiki | Innovation, administration, knowledge; +10% farm and orchard work | Lowest sanity (0.8) and lawfulness (0.75) of any species — crime and derangement | Natural growth |
| Cretonians | Fruits, vegetables, bread | Prefer wooden structures; gain fulfilment from religious diversity | Fruit orchards 125%, refining 110%, rationmaking 120%; lawfulness ×1.5 | Education 50%, crafting 80%; offence 0.9, defence 0.9, morale 3.0 | Natural growth |
| Dondorians | Meat, fish, mushrooms | Mountain/carved homes per the race page | Smithy 125%, jeweller 125%, all mines 115%; sanity 5.0, 180-year lifespan | Farming 75% with 0% fulfilment on every farm type; slow at universities | Cannot reproduce at all — immigration only, so loyalty and happiness are the tap |
| Garthimi | Fish, meat | Not stated on the wiki | Balticrawler pastures 300%, masonry 130%, mining 125%; speed 6.3 (joint fastest) | Crafting 75%, farming 75%, tech roles; morale 3.0, force 40 | Garthimi Breeder building; adult in 1 year, 50-year life |
| Amevias | Fish and eggs, eaten with vegetables | Water: 3.0 fulfilment from proximity, six times what other species get | Fishing and egg production; offence 1.1, force 60; eats only 0.75 food | Farming and non-egg pastures; 80 days to adulthood | Natural growth, but very slow maturity |
| Tilapi | Wiki lists icons for bread, egg, fish, fruit, meat, mushroom, ration, vegetable — no ranking given | Not stated on the wiki | Orchards 140%, pastoralists 120%, bowyers 120%; bow skill 0.15 vs default 0.1 | Mining 75%; force 40 | Natural growth; 140-year lifespan |
| Argonosh | Bread, egg, fish, meat — dislike mushrooms, fruit, vegetables, rations | ≥20% humidifier fulfilment | Weight 240, force 280, force absorption 160, 1 innate pierce damage, 2 innate pierce armour | 10% at every non-combat job; 0 university skill — literally uneducable | Haven + seven simultaneous gates (below) |
Argonosh’s force and force-absorption numbers are also the reason species mix matters for your garrison shape, not just your housing plan: if you’re deciding how much to invest per soldier, the train-to-max tradeoff covers when that quality actually pays for itself.
Read the “bad at” column as a food column too. Dondorians farm at 75% with zero fulfilment from farm work, which means a Dondorian-heavy city does not solve its own food problem — it imports or it staffs the fields with somebody else. If you have not sized that gap, the food balance calculator takes cultivated tiles and population and tells you how far short you are.
The conflict layer: brawls
This is the column that actually decides your roster, and it is mechanical rather than moral.
Two species with less than 100% preference for each other who live in houses within 58
total tiles of one another may brawl, and a brawl kills or severely injures somebody. The check
runs from doorway to doorway: an aggressor looks for other species within 10 tiles of their own
front door and within a 48-tile range of their home. Damage is
rand(0..1) × 0.25 × Force of attacker ÷ Force absorption of defender, and only lands when the
result exceeds 0.4.
That formula explains an outcome people report as a bug. Argonosh have force 280 and force absorption 160; Tilapi and Garthimi sit at force 40. An Argonosh-versus-Tilapi brawl clears the 0.4 threshold on most rolls; a Tilapi-versus-Argonosh brawl clears it on almost none. Mixed housing is not symmetrically dangerous — it is dangerous in one direction, and the direction is readable from the stat sheet before you accept the immigrants.
Preference is also not reciprocal. The wiki gives the example of Dondorians and Humans, where one side likes the other more than it is liked back. The confirmed figures:
| Pair | Stated preference | Practical consequence |
|---|---|---|
| Garthimi → Argonosh | 100% both ways | The only pair the wiki names as brawl-proof. House them together freely |
| Garthimi → Amevia | 100% | One-directional |
| Amevia → Garthimi | 25% | The Amevia side still brawls |
| Amevias → almost everyone | ~10% | Effectively must be housed as their own district |
| Humans → most species | 75% | Under 100%, so still brawls — 75% is not safety |
| Humans → Tilapi | 20% | Keep these two quarters far apart |
| Tilapi → Dondorians | 0% | Worst confirmed pair on the wiki |
| Tilapi → Humans | 0% | Same |
The complete cross-species percentage grid is not published on the wiki, and we are not going to invent the missing cells. What the published fragments already establish is the rule that matters: anything below 100% brawls, and 75% brawls just as surely as 20% does — the number changes how often, not whether.
Religion is a per-species dice roll, not a setting
Four religions exist. Athuri boosts universities plus refining and crafting jobs; Crator boosts natural birthrate along with farms and pastures; Aminion grants extra submission, health and lifespan; Shmalor raises raid security and offence while lowering defence.
The important mechanic is the one people misread: each species has a tendency toward the four gods, but that tendency “only indicates the chance of an immigrant of that species has for worshipping any one of the four.” You do not assign a religion to a species. You get a distribution, and you manage the friction. Cretonians uniquely gain fulfilment from religious diversity; Argonosh dislike religious opposition at twice the rate of other species. The per-species tendency percentages live in the in-game Tome of Knowledge and are not reproduced on the public wiki, so read them in your own build rather than trusting any list you find.
That single line about Argonosh is the whole reason the Argonosh gate is shaped the way it is.
The Argonosh gate, as a checklist
Haven species are the clearest case of “unlock conditions are opaque”, so here is the full published set. All of these must hold at once:
- Control an Argonosh Haven
- >60% of the population worships Shmalor
- >20 days’ worth of food stored
- ≥20% humidifier fulfilment
- Population ≥ 500
- >10% of the population are slaves
- Zero Argonosh slaves
Note the interlock. Condition 2 forces a Shmalor supermajority, Shmalor lowers defence, and condition 6 requires a slave underclass — which is itself a happiness and security cost you have to have already solved. If your slave ratio is drifting, the slave economy ledger is the place to check whether you can hold 10% without the loyalty bill eating the benefit. And condition 3, twenty days of food, is a stored-days figure, which as covered elsewhere is a ratio with a moving denominator — hitting it once at population 400 does not mean holding it at 500.
Haven species in general require ownership of that species’ Haven “and fulfilling further requirements, notably including having no slaves of that species.” Cantors are the other Haven species — “exceedingly powerful in combat” with “unmatched skill in many occupations” — but their specific gate conditions are not published on the wiki, so treat any numbers you see quoted for Cantors as unverified.
How to order the fixes for your own roster
Run your accepted species down the matrix and you get a conflict list. The order to fix them in is not preference, it is reversibility:
1. Housing geometry first. It is the only demand on this page that becomes expensive to fix later. Once two incompatible quarters are built inside 58 tiles you are demolishing, not adjusting. The mitigation the wiki names is a 10-tile safe zone or courtyard around houses, though it warns brawls can still happen if another species wanders in. Plan the district boundaries before the first foundation.
2. Food groups second. Each species adds favourite foods, and one species actively dislikes four groups: Argonosh reject mushrooms, fruit, vegetables and rations. A city feeding Cretonians (fruit, vegetables, bread) and Argonosh (bread, egg, fish, meat) needs two production chains, not one bigger one, and only bread overlaps. Count distinct groups across your roster before you count tonnes.
3. The environment column third. These are cheap but easy to forget: Amevia water proximity, Argonosh humidifiers, Dondorian mountain homes. Each is one building type or one placement decision, and each is a standing happiness drag if skipped.
4. Religion last, because it is a distribution you steer over time rather than a switch. The exception is Argonosh — their 60% Shmalor gate has to be engineered deliberately, well before you want them.
5. Aptitude gaps are not a fix at all, they are a staffing plan. Dondorians will never farm well and Argonosh will never work. Accepting them means accepting that somebody else does that job, permanently.
If the happiness number is already falling and you want to know whether species friction is the binding constraint or something more ordinary, the need-floor calculator separates the categories, and the colony audit tracker is the broader sweep.
What is not verified here
Being explicit, because this site promises it: the complete cross-species preference matrix, the per-species religion tendency percentages, the housing-grade requirements per species, Garthimi and Tilapi housing preferences, and the Cantor unlock conditions are all absent from the public wiki. Every number above appears on a cited page. The wiki also lags the current build — Songs of Syx moves values between versions — so treat percentages as the shape of the rule and read your own Tome of Knowledge for the exact figure.
Sources
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Species — playable and Haven species overview, aptitude summaries, Haven access requirement
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Brawls — 58-tile condition, 10-tile doorway check, 48-tile range, damage formula and 0.4 threshold, non-reciprocal preference
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Housing — apartment/house/longhouse sizes, 40% per upgrade, brawl distance and 10-tile safe-zone mitigation
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Religion — the four gods and their effects, species tendency as immigrant chance, Cretonian diversity fulfilment, Argonosh double sensitivity
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Cretonians — favourite foods, orchard 125%, refining 110%, rationmaking 120%, combat and education figures
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Dondorians — favourite foods, smithy/jeweller 125%, mines 115%, farming 75% at 0% fulfilment, no reproduction
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Garthimi — foods, Balticrawler 300%, masonry 130%, mining 125%, breeder building, Argonosh and Amevia preferences
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Amevia — fish and egg preference, 3.0 water fulfilment, 0.75 food modifier, ~10% preference toward others
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Humans — favourite foods, sanity 0.8, lawfulness 0.75, 75% and 20% preference figures
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Tilapi — orchard 140%, bowyer 120%, bow skill 0.15, mining 75%, 0% preference toward Dondorians and Humans
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Argonosh — liked and disliked foods, combat stats, 10% work proficiency, full seven-condition Haven gate
