“Why are my training grounds not filled?” reads like a building problem, and the replies mostly answer it like one — build more training grounds. Sometimes that is correct. Often it is not, because slots are only one of three separate ceilings that can be capping your army below your target, and the panel that shows you empty slots does not tell you which ceiling you actually hit.
Songs of Syx training grounds ceiling, at a glance
| Situation | Binding ceiling | What to do about it |
|---|---|---|
| Training grounds full, army target still far off | Bottleneck: slots (affordable 500) | More training buildings is the only lever that moves this — eligible population and budget both have room to spare. |
| Slots and budget open, but few citizens qualify | Bottleneck: eligible (affordable 1,000) | Building another training hall will not help here — the ceiling is who is eligible to conscript, not where to train them. |
| Plenty of slots and recruits, upkeep is the limit | Bottleneck: upkeep (affordable 80) | The empty slots you are seeing are a budget decision, not a bug — raise the upkeep budget or accept the smaller army. |
These are outputs of this site's own three-way ceiling comparison run against illustrative inputs we chose, not values extracted from the game files — slot count, eligible population and upkeep per soldier come from your own military and city panels. Use the calculator below for your own numbers.
Three ceilings, one symptom
Empty training slots and a smaller-than-planned army are the same visible symptom for three structurally different causes:
- Slot capacity. You genuinely have fewer training slots than soldiers you want in training. Building more training grounds is the correct fix, and only this fix.
- Eligible population. Your city population is not the same number as your conscriptable population — exemptions and other pools narrow it, and species matters too: Cretonians in particular dislike being assigned to a Training Ground, which shows up as a real fulfilment penalty for that species specifically, not just a flavor line. If eligible population is the ceiling, more training buildings sit empty no matter how many you build, because there is nobody left to put in them (or willing to stay there).
- Upkeep budget. Every soldier in training draws upkeep. If your budget caps out before your slots or your eligible pool do, the empty slots are a spending decision your economy is quietly making for you, not a bug and not a construction shortfall.
These three ceilings do not move together, and a fix aimed at the wrong one does nothing — more training grounds against an eligible-population ceiling, or against an upkeep ceiling, changes nothing about how many soldiers you actually train. Once slot capacity actually is your ceiling, sizing the new building is its own separate question — the workshop sizing calculator covers the same worker-vs-floor tradeoff for production buildings, and the same bottleneck-versus-wasted logic applies to army buildings.
Find your ceiling
Which ceiling is actually stopping your army?
Slots are the ceiling: 40 slots cap you before eligible population (500) or upkeep budget (50) do. Building more training capacity is the only lever that moves this.
- Slot gap
- 18
- Eligible gap
- 478
- Affordable
- 50
Slots, eligible population and upkeep are read off your own military and city panels. The three-way comparison is ours; the numbers are yours, which is why this stays correct across versions.
Every input here is something you read off your own military and city panels. Slot counts, upkeep-per-soldier and how narrowly your city defines “eligible” all vary by race mix, building tier and version, so we are not going to assert one of them as a constant the way a “current meta” guide would — the comparison logic is ours, the four numbers are yours.
The related question this quietly answers
“Is there any reason not to train conscripts to max?” gets asked almost as often, and the three-ceiling model above is most of the answer: if upkeep is your binding ceiling, training every conscript to max is directly what is capping your slot usage, because each one you add narrows the budget for the next. If slots or eligible population are binding instead, upkeep has room to spare and training to max carries none of that cost. Same question, opposite answer, depending on which ceiling you are actually against — which is exactly why the two threads never converge on one piece of advice.
What changed going into V0.71
The law, order and family systems that landed with V0.71 touch eligible population indirectly — family and legal status can pull citizens out of the conscriptable pool in ways the older loyalty system did not. If your eligible-population number looks lower than your city size would suggest, that is the most likely reason, and it is a fresh enough change that pre-V0.71 guidance on conscription pools should be treated as unverified rather than wrong.
Sources
- Songs of Syx Wiki, Training Ground — Employee/Recruits Limit sliders being linked (the slot-capacity ceiling), and Cretonians disliking Training Ground assignment (a real fulfilment penalty, not just flavor)
- V71 - Reign of Terror - Available Now (Steam) — the law/order and family/slavery rework that landed in V0.71 and touches the eligible-population pool
