Songs of Syx ships one large update at a time and explains it in one long post. V71, released 15 June 2026, is named “Reign of Terror,” is described by its developer as being “about law, order, slavery and family,” and carries 94 patch-note bullets under seven headings. Counting how those 94 are distributed turns out to say something the post itself does not. The counts below come from the official “V71 - Reign of Terror - Available Now” announcement on the Songs of Syx Steam news feed, recounted bullet-by-bullet on 2026-09-22 via the announcement’s Steam Community mirror, against the announcement’s own section headings — they are what the developer wrote, grouped the way the developer grouped it.
The headline feature is the least documented
Law and order — the thing the update is named after, the thing the store page and the devlog lead with — accounts for five of the ninety-four notes. Misc & quality of life accounts for thirty-seven.
This is not a criticism of the post; it is a reading instruction. A rework is short to describe and long to learn, while a hundred small conveniences are long to list and take no learning at all. “Law has been completely redesigned” is one bullet and a full evening of play. “Farting sounds toned down” is also one bullet.
What the five law bullets actually commit to, in the developer’s own framing:
| Stated in the patch notes | What it means at the desk |
|---|---|
| Law is “now primarily about trading happiness for loyalty” | The two bars are no longer independent goals; every enforcement decision spends one to buy the other |
| “A perfect utopia with 100% happiness needs almost no law enforcement” | Zero-guard play is explicitly supported, not a challenge run |
| You set a specific punishment per crime, and each pairing “affects happiness and loyalty differently” | The interesting decisions are per-crime, not a single severity slider |
| All law effects are multiplied by guard count, guard-post coverage, execution-site coverage and secret police | Enforcement is coverage-limited before it is severity-limited |
| “Deep investment in law gives exponential returns” | Half-committing is the worst position; the returns curve rewards going all the way or not starting |
That last line is the practically important one. A partial law build pays the happiness cost without reaching the loyalty payoff — which is the same shape as the older problem of a province rebelling with its loyalty bar apparently full. For that chain in detail, see why provinces rebel at 100% loyalty.
What updating actually costs you
Three warnings are stated plainly in the announcement, each in a different place, none of them in the patch notes proper:
| Cost | What the post says | Your option |
|---|---|---|
| Saves | “Your saves will break” | None — a V70 save does not open in V71 |
| Mods | “Many mods will break.” Some modders were invited to update ahead of the release; “far from everybody” was | Wait, or play unmodded |
| Rollback | “You can roll back the update to V70 if you want to finish your run before updating” | Finish the current run on V70 first |
The order these three imply is unambiguous: if you have a run in progress, roll back to V70, finish it, and take V71 on a fresh map. There is no migration path and the post does not pretend there is one.
Mod authors get a genuine improvement in exchange for the breakage. V71’s new modding system lets a mod
overwrite individual fields rather than whole files, with _ARRAY_ADD: true and _JSON_ADD: true for
appending to lists instead of replacing them, and mods can now carry their own translation files. A mod
that previously had to clone an entire definition to change one property no longer does — which is also
why so many of them broke.
The rest of the 94, in one pass
- Family mechanics (11). Most species now reproduce naturally and raise infants at home, replacing the old breeder system. A family tree tracks up to a million entries — roughly 6 MB at maximum — and is reachable from any subject’s panel. Nurseries became one global nursery that cuts child mortality.
- Education & admin (7). Child education is now distinct from university, measured in days with diminishing returns, and multiplies innovation, knowledge and admin output by education level and room quality. Admin was repurposed into a straightforward tech-point producer.
- Other major changes (14). Slaves became fully tradable goods whose happiness and fulfilment work almost identically to citizens’; guards became assignable active soldiers who patrol; gallows became placeable items worked by guards that radiate a loyalty-boosting dread aura; secret police were added.
- Economy, production & balance (15). The tech tree was remade again with all techs roughly 50% cheaper and common nodes removed. Tariffs now work in both directions as a percentage of goods price, every resource carries a per-item logistics cost, and trade caps were removed entirely. Accident rates are disabled below 150 employees and scale exponentially above it.
- Misc & quality of life (37). Free fetch for all services, max carry capacity 4 → 7 for every job, import depot capacity 250 → 600 and export 200 → 500, work priority max reduced from 20 to 5, and the subject list plus every detail panel rebuilt.
For how the production side reads after the tech-tree change, see the production chain map. For which species you can actually mix under the current rules, see the race requirement matrix.
What the release post leaves unquantified
- Any numeric value in the law system. The patch notes describe law entirely in relative terms — “exponential returns,” “very low crime,” “small happiness costs.” No coefficients, thresholds or rates are published, and we do not invent them.
- How many mods actually broke. The post says “many” and names no figure. There is no published tally.
- What shipped after V71. The 15 June post says the developer would “spend some time after the release to fix bugs and balancing,” but no subsequent patch announcement appears on the Steam news feed as of 22 September 2026. Hotfixes may have shipped without an announcement.
- The 1.0 timeline. A March 2026 post discusses the year ahead; nothing in the V71 announcement commits to a release date.
Sources
- V71 - Reign of Terror - Available Now, 15 June 2026 — the full patch notes counted above, and the save-breaking, mod-breaking and rollback statements
- V71 - Reign of Terror - Coming June 15, 28 May 2026 — the pre-release announcement
- V70 - Riders of Doom Available Now, 4 December 2025 — the version you roll back to