Hi everyone!
After testing new features on the experimental branch for about a month and receiving all your valuable feedback (again, thank you so much for that!), we’re happy to officially release the Districts Update (v0.4)!
This update brings major changes to the districts, research, and satisfaction systems, along with many other improvements that we're sure you'll enjoy.
⚠️Warning: Save files from versions prior to 0.4 won't be compatible with this update.
If you’d like to continue playing with your old saves, you can switch to the appropriate beta version in the Steam settings.
As always, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the new content, so join the discussion on our Discord server!
Here’s a recap of what’s new in this update:
New Districts System
We’ve made major changes to the District System, placing it at the heart of your city-building experience. The updated system now plays a crucial role in shaping your city’s progression and unlocking important bonuses.
At the start of the game, you build the new Founders’ Square and plan your city around. This square can later be upgraded into one of six specialized squares.
Each of the six distinct districts now has its own unique theme and corresponding square. As your city advances, you’ll unlock these districts at key moments, integrating them into your city’s progression. Constructing and upgrading these districts is essential for expanding your city’s potential and following the natural flow of your development.
Districts now come with significant unlockable bonuses that are tied to district development score thresholds. Each threshold has been carefully designed to align with key stages of the game, ensuring that bonuses arrive when they are most impactful. These bonuses can increase maximum satisfaction, boost Science and Legacy point caps, or apply powerful effects across your entire city.
Districts start with a basic square area, but you can extend their range by placing markers. The first marker is available right away, while subsequent markers require more advanced resources.
We’ve also added some helpful new feedbacks, including the district preview when placing buildings and the projected district score increases.
New Satisfaction System
The revamped Satisfaction system is no longer just a number but a key component of your city's growth. Satisfactions provide significant boosts across your city, affecting key actions such as production, construction speed, and Science/Legacy point generation.
Each satisfaction score starts with a maximum of 10, which can be increased later through district bonuses. This ensures that the maximum score is attainable at any stage of the game.
As you cross each threshold, the power of satisfaction bonuses increases significantly, making every milestone impactful. This makes satisfaction a natural progression goal throughout the game.
Buildings now apply satisfaction modifiers with levels that correspond to satisfaction thresholds. Late-game buildings apply higher-level modifiers, which can replace those from earlier buildings but not vice versa, making your city evolves as you progress.
To add more depth to the city, we've added a new City Events mechanic. Citizens will present you with narrative scenarios that offer objectives that you need to achieve. Failure to meet these objectives could result in some citizens leaving or negative impacts on your city.
This system is mainly focused on satisfaction for this update, with plans to expand it in future updates.
New Research System
We’ve completely reworked the research system to make it more accessible and responsive, driving the progression more clearly while removing the pressure of constantly managing research.
The core mechanic is straightforward: research buildings generate points, and once you have enough, you can instantly unlock the desired research. This gives you the flexibility to engage with research when it suits you, while allowing you to adapt to a situation if you’ve stored enough points.
In the early game, the Field Lab takes the place of the Research Center, producing the initial Science Points through environmental analysis. This encourages exploring and analyzing the environment, delaying the need for more advanced buildings while smoothing the learning curve.
Research now revolves around two distinct types of points: Science Points and Legacy Points. Each research item requires one or both of these to unlock. It removes division between cultural and technological research, making the tree more intuitive and easier to navigate, while keeping the original intention.
To help you manage your goals, we’ve added a Pin feature. You can pin up to four research items, and the game will notify you when they’re ready to be unlocked. Pinned research is visible in a dedicated UI near your objectives. Additionally, any research tied to a quest objective is automatically pinned, so you never lose track of critical progress.
Tablets have also received an upgrade: tablet-specific researches are now visible in the tree but they remain locked. When you use a tablet, you can choose which research to unlock, offering more strategic control over your progression.
Beyond these updates, the research tree has been revamped for a more streamlined experience, with a global rebalancing to enhance gameplay. This rework is designed to give you more clarity in your research progression, making progression smoother and more rewarding.
Detailed changelog
Main Features
Research
- Building a Field Lab now unlocks access to the research tree.
- Science and Legacy Points are mainly generated passively by assigning citizens to the Research Center or the Hall of Wise.
- Analysis actions now also generate Science Points.
- Researches are unlocked immediately upon acquiring the required research points (Science/Legacy) and resources.
- New pinning functionality:
- Players can pin up to 4 research items and will be notified in-game when the necessary points and resources are available to unlock them.
- Research linked to quest objectives is automatically pinned.
- Added new research to unlock via tablets.
District
- New Buildings:
- Founders’ Square
- Sand Furrows’ Square
- Fountain Square
- Observatory Square
Satisfaction
- New Satisfaction Bonus System:
- Satisfaction now significantly boosts various actions such as production, construction, and Science/Legacy point generation.
- Satisfaction boosts increase considerably at each threshold.
City Events
- New City Events System:
- Citizens present scenarios through narrative events, providing objectives to achieve. Failure to meet these objectives may result in citizens leaving the city or maluses being applied.
Resource Flow
- Several adjustments have been made to:
- Ensure early-game resource objectives are clearer and achievable.
- Make progression smoother and more rewarding.
- Provide meaningful resource sinks, making the establishment of production lines more engaging and rewarding.
Consequential Changes
- Adjusted automatic citizen distribution in housing.
- Revised the prosperity score formula.
- The tutorial has been completely revamped.
- Quest objectives across all three campaign scenarios have been adjusted.
Content
- New Buildings :
- Rustic Tent: new early game housing
- Cutting Station: new production building
- Science Exposition: new late game satisfaction building
- Cold Bathhouse: new late game satisfaction building
- Auditorium: new late game satisfaction building
Balancing
- Citizens can now carry more resources (20, up from 10), with the Carrier Tower bonus increasing this limit to 50 (up from 20 in total).
- The Arborist Workshop can now perform the "Seed scattering" action on trees.
- Adjusted food satiety parameters (basic => 15 to 20, simple meal 50 => 60, cooked meal 70 => 90, bread 90 => 120).
- Increased Bread satiety refilling amount from 60 to 120.
- The new resource Cooked Meal has a satiety of 90.
- It is no longer necessary for a plant to be satisfied to unlock its ground analysis information.
- Expeditions can now be launched with a minimum of 3 citizens (reduced from 4).
- Citizens will now try to eat resources which are available in greater quantities. This prevents them from eating all the vegetables, and allows them to keep similar quantities of the 2 resources for creating simple dishes.
- It is now possible to build over all environmental props sized 2x2.
- All Starting stocks now include 2 technological artifacts, streamlining the game's start by enabling immediate construction of a Field Lab.
- Trees no longer spread naturally, except for the Volcanic Tree.
- Invasive plants now spread a little bit more randomly.
- Reduced the number of Rocky emanations per map and the amount of Boreal rocks obtained from ripping out Rocky amalgams, but increased the frequency of Rocky amalgam spawns.
- Culture rewards from exploration have been replaced with Legacy Points.
- The Sandglider now requires resources to operate.
- Plant Nursery can now only employ 2 citizens by default.
- Increased max quantity of plant to be planted by Plant Nursery's slots from “5” to “10”.
- Decreased base worker's slots for Kitchen, Forge Workshop, Carpentry and Weaver Workshop from “3” to “2”. The new district's bonuses increase the citizen capacity by +2.
- Removed fountains from the decorations’ building category.
- Increased placement range for Arborists’ Worskhop harvest markers from “18” to “22”.
- Increased Arborists’ Worskhop harvest markers size from “10” to “12”.
- Increased placement range for Pickers’ Cabin harvest markers from “13” to “18”.
- Increased "Technological artifact" despawn duration.
Feedback & Interface
- Added feedback for insufficient transporters or storage capacity in production and harvest buildings.
- Notifications requiring an interaction now play a "glow" animation as a reminder.
- Inaccessibility reason text is now in red in exploration destination pin tooltip.
- Added quest icon on pin for quest related exploration destinations.
- Added exploration destination pin quest destination turns red when unreachable.
- Reduced max font size for quest objectives text in quest panel.
- HUD Housing hover tooltip now show how many places there are left in built houses and tents.
- Added a feedback above the Exploration Hut to show when it is possible to start a new expedition.
- Disabled Option "reset speed after certain events" for researches (because research completion is now instant).
- Opening the research tree no longer move the camera to the center of the graph.
- Research tooltip is now placed near the hovered research.
- First Time Event popups are now reset when starting the tutorial.
- Tutorial’s “outline” highlights (e.g., around buttons) are now animated to make them more visible.
- Improved building tooltip layout for Irrigation Canal, Irrigation Pump, Clay Road, and buildings that have an effect on Ground Properties or Satisfactions.
- Plant needs are now displayed in the same order for every plant.
- Added token instead of temperature value for housing construction tooltip temperature feedback. It also shows the difference with satisfied temperature instead of house resistance.
- Analysis building feedback "an action is available" disappears when no more information can be obtained and reappears when a new action is available (e.g., with new harvest task).
- Road placement mode no longer resets the start cell when the player tries to build an invalid road.
- When entering and leaving construction mode, current selection is now kept.
- Save list now properly deselects a save file when the save name is changed.
- Save list now automatically selects a save when the name set by the player matches an already existing save.
- Adjusted quest destination warning description.
- "Missing transporter" feedback on production buildings should be more precise.
- Added a tooltip when hovering the "access tutorial" button on the tutorial panel.
Bug Fixes & Performance Optimizations
- Optimized performance when updating satisfaction and terrain properties during building placement or destruction.
- Fixed performance issues when opening building tooltips or moving district-related structures.
- Fixed a bug causing citizens to stop working in harvest buildings.
- Fixed an issue where harvest building feedback remained indefinitely.
- Fixed research tooltips not displaying properly.
- Fixed satisfaction bonuses not being reapplied after loading a saved game.
- Fixed multiple issues with building placement and highlighting.
- Fixed a visual bug with an environment prop taking more space than intended.
- Various other minor bug fixes and improvements.
- Optimizations on districts updates to gain performance.
- Fixed a bug where worksites resources were displayed in front of environmental props.
- Fixed a bug where Pump animation was played even when the game was in pause.
- Fixed a bug where Prevention Unit animation was not played correctly after pausing the building.
- Fixed a bug where resources needed for recurrent actions of Harvest buildings were removed from the building at the end of a harvest cycle.
- Fixed a bug where surface analysis on incorrect plant state (too young or dead) was giving information anyway. It does not provide information anymore if the plant is in incorrect state.
- Fixed a bug on the Weavers' workshop where the wheel was not correctly positioned if building animations are disabled from the graphics settings.
- Fixed a bug where a save may become unavailable if it was given the name of an existing obsolete save file.
- Fixed a bug where pink links between a building and houses of employed citizens would not disappear when deselecting the building.
- Fixed a bug in construction mode where the feedback showing "in range" buildings was not correctly applied if the player was trying to place a flipped building.
- Fixed the missing inputs information (shortcuts) in time control buttons tooltips.
- Analysis feedback "action available" now correctly disappears on analysis completed when analysis is performed by another field laboratory.
- Fixed shortcuts buttons of cancel rip out, cancel priority, cancel destruction order paints were not working when button wasn’t visible.
- Fixed a bug where harvestable resources feedback on plant were hidden on harvest marker placement mode when selected building can't harvest plant.
- Fixed a bug where buttons of the citizens list could become unresponsive.
- Fixed a bug where citizens were removed from their job place on reload.
- Exploration event "Unspeakable" is now correctly set on a cave destination.
- Fixed a bug which could cause the loss of Autosave files.
- Fixed a bug in the serialization of Analysis notifications, which could cause the save to fail.
- Fixed a bug where plant nursery module not refreshing inventory when a plant is planted.
- Fixed missing sound when placing a harvest task on plants.
- Fixed a bug where mode popup not disappearing when exiting plantation mode.
- Fixed a bug preventing the dry season to be correctly applied on reload.
- Fixed a bug where the HUD feedback indicating that the city is missing transporters could be wrongly enabled.
- Fixed pump being invisible when loading a save.
- Fixed a bug where feedbacks showing links between a building and the house of employed citizens could stay visible while the citizen was removed from the building.
- Fixed a bug where the counts of adults, children and workers were not correctly refreshed when the children grow up at the end of a cycle.
- It's now possible to enter in "Move building mode" from the "Place district extension mode".
Visuals
- Improved effects rendering on Foundry.
- Improved citizen position on paused Foundry.
- Improved citizen status icons.
- Improved children icons.
- Improved Weather Station visuals (non animated version and outline).
- Improved visual on the tool conveyor on Forge.
- Improved global Forge rendering.
- Improved outline rendering on Founders' Place.
- Improved global UI rendering (in panels and worldspace) to avoid cropped or blurred icons.
- Added Bamboo Flute outline.
- Added depth to little bushes in the environment.
- Added shadows on texts in tutorial images.
- Improvement outlines on Ruins’ resources.
Sounds
- Environment’s ambiance sound loop will now slightly differ from one scenario to an other to incorporate a few sounds that better match with its corresponding fauna.
- Added new sound to opening of the list of citizens.
- Added multiple sounds to the research flow :
- added sound to the button for deciphering a tablet.
- added sound when using a tablet for either unlocking a “tablet research” or for buying Science or Legacy points.
Other Changes
- Added game credits accessible from the main menu.
- Added new achievements :
- Have all research point production buildings in your city simultaneously.
- Have 6 different districts at maximum score simultaneously.
- Have at least 150 citizens with all satisfactions at 30.
Play now:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1989070/Synergy/