Written by Claude (Opus 5.5) from the run's own logs (events.jsonl, episode.json, results.json,
interview.md); it is a reading of the run, not part of its score.
- Model: Kimi K3 (
kimi-k3) on Moonshot's API, reasoning high (Kimi K3 has no medium), output limit 32,768 tokens - Benchmark: The Sinkhole construction, version 1.7.1 (commit 674e7ba), from the save the human reference game on this map started from; 45 min of game time at speed 40, the length of the person's game; no playbook; waits played fast
- Run ff80a5af, series 20261015T175751-2419d558, 2026-10-15: Kimi's first game of The Sinkhole's 1.7.1 round, a fresh series with no memory of its 1.6.2 game
Result
| This game (1.7.1) | Its 1.6.2 game | The person | Left alone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 7,286 | 9,164 | 41,631 | 2,195 |
| Gold | 3,647 | 2,356 | 39,977 | |
| Stored goods, at the sell price | 3,639 | 6,808 | 1,654 | |
| Population / housing | 75 / 90 | 91 / 122 | 506 / 506 | 4 |
| Popularity | 54 | 52 | 99 | 0 |
| Score | 17.1 | 21.1 | 100 | 0 |
A full-budget score: the run used all 2,700 game seconds. Net worth grew by 5,091 over leaving the game alone, 13% of the person's growth, against 6,969 (18%) in the 1.6.2 game. The score is the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity); this game is not on the website. It is the lowest of this round so far; GLM 5.3 Flash's 1.7.1 game scored 22.6.
Of the stored value, 1,127 is 49 iron from five iron mines, 1,120 is 50 weapons and armour, 790 is 79 flour and 228 is 57 bread. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, no open jobs and 15 empty places in its hovels.
How the game went
A careful start, 0 to 10 minutes. Two hovels and three woodcutters in the first turns, a marketplace at 0:55, planks bought in lots of 25 to 40, orchards, a dairy farm and three iron mines by 3:20, a bakery, a wheat farm and a mill by 6:24 and 50 meat bought at 5:52. An armory at 6:24, then a fletcher's and a poleturner's workshop beside it and a blacksmith at 10:03. Taxes stayed at none for the first 10 minutes; the town had 24 idle peasants from 5 minutes on.
Out of gold, 10 to 25 minutes. High taxes at 9:55, average at 11:53. A chapel, a second wheat farm and bakery, another fletcher, an inn, a hops farm and a brewery by 16:08, and from 18:00 two more poleturners and blacksmiths and two armourer's workshops, with planks bought in between. Gold fell from 1,040 at 10 minutes to 42 at about 20; popularity fell to 43 by 22:14 and the town shrank from 58 to 42 by 24:06.
Selling weapons, 25 to 45 minutes. Four hovels from 22:22 and the town came back to 65 by 29
minutes. expand_storage found no room beside the armory at 26:28, and from 27:26 it sold spears,
bows, swords and pikes every few minutes to keep the armory from filling, while adding six more
fletcher's workshops, two more poleturners and two iron mines (eighteen weapon workshops in all).
High taxes from 27:55, average from 36:02, low from 42:49. Gold rose to 3,647 and net worth to
7,286.
| Game minute | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 2,415 | 2,056 | 1,591 | 1,709 | 1,969 | 2,339 | 3,525 | 4,448 | 5,477 | 7,286 |
| Gold | 2,000 | 1,800 | 1,040 | 685 | 454 | 353 | 976 | 1,748 | 2,646 | 3,647 |
| Iron | 0 | 0 | 10 | 20 | 27 | 26 | 27 | 30 | 34 | 49 |
| Weapons and armour | 0 | 0 | 0 | 9 | 20 | 40 | 46 | 48 | 36 | 50 |
| Population / housing | 6 / 10 | 36 / 42 | 43 / 58 | 49 / 58 | 55 / 58 | 42 / 74 | 65 / 90 | 70 / 90 | 73 / 90 | 75 / 90 |
| Popularity | 100 | 100 | 100 | 63 | 61 | 48 | 78 | 67 | 56 | 54 |
Each column is the last reading at or before that minute.
Beside its 1.6.2 game
Much the same plan both times: a varied village with an inn, a chapel, a few farms of each kind, and a large weapons quarter (eleven fletchers there, eighteen workshops here). This game had fewer people (75 against 91) and kept less in goods; the money crisis around 20 minutes and the loss of 16 people that followed are the main difference.
What held it back
- Eighteen weapon workshops on five iron mines. Eight fletchers, five poleturners, three blacksmiths and two armourers, fed with bought planks and the iron of five mines. They made about 140 weapons and armour; 93 were sold for 1,685 gold, which leaves net worth unchanged, and 50 were kept. Kimi said in its interview this was wasted effort.
- Gold run down to nothing. Workshops, planks and food bought from the market took gold to 42 at 20 minutes, with popularity falling under average and high taxes; the town lost a quarter of its people.
- 24 idle peasants. In 24 of 41 readings, with no open jobs; the town stopped at 75 with room for
- Food bought, not grown. 90 meat, 15 cheese and 5 apples bought at twice their value; only one kind of food was eaten at the end.
What worked
- It kept the armory from stalling its workshops by selling as it filled, after
expand_storagefound no room. - Every placement reported as placed is in the game's final count of its buildings.
Market
165 planks, 90 meat, 15 cheese and 5 apples bought for 1,540 gold, a loss of 935 net worth against the sell price (planks 4 for 1, food 8 for 4); 35 spears, 23 bows, 30 swords and 5 pikes sold for 1,685, which leaves net worth unchanged. One purchase of meat at 11:58 bought nothing.
Cost and speed
43 turns, 140 tool calls (29 find_sites, 24 market_trade, 23 waits, 20 build_structure, 15
place_near), 2.15 million tokens and $1.553 at Moonshot's list prices (preparation $0.073, play
$1.384, compaction $0.096), with 93.8% of input read from the cache. The interview cost about $0.034
more, with 43,659 of its 45,904 tokens read from the cache. The agent run took 52.2 real minutes, 21.0
of them waiting for the model (about 29 seconds a turn); the context was compacted twice (85
seconds).
The interview
Kimi called the gap "enormous" and put it down to scale: it treated stored goods as the goal and
never sold food, while the person sold bread from 161 bakeries. Playing again it would rush inns and
bought ale, cut rations and sell the bread, build the bread chain by the dozen, break the idle cap
with cheap jobs such as water pots, use the fear factor, skip most weapons and keep taxes near zero.
It praised find_sites, tile targets, the stats and the direct tax, ration and market actions. It
named as obstacles placement retries that moved buildings about 9 tiles, one of which it says helped
box in its armory; food variety it could not keep up; and the idle cap having no signal in the
game. It asked for a warning when idle peasants block immigration and an automatic selling tool.
For the harness
- Placements moved far by retries. Eight placements were placed at another spot by the tile-map retry, five of them 9 to 11 tiles from the target (a wheat farm, an orchard, a poleturner's, a blacksmith's and an armourer's workshop). Each result gave the new tile and the offset, but Kimi read them as silent moves; a retry that far may not be what a model meant.
- No room beside the armory (26:28).
expand_storagefound no free ground; the stockpile kept room here (4 empty piles at the end). place_nearfound no room against its anchor five times (a mill, an armory, a chapel, a brewery and a hovel).- No provider errors, stalled replies or refused calls; the game saved at the end ("kimi k3 1-7-1 ff80a5", in this folder).