Claude Fable 5.1

Written by Claude (drafted by Sonnet 5.5, checked by 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: Claude Fable 5.1 (claude-fable-5-1) on Anthropic's API, reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens
• Benchmark: Large Barren Desert construction, version 1.5.6 (commit 9c34b50), from the save the human reference game started from; 33 min 20 s of game time (60,000 ticks) at speed 40, the length of the person's game; no playbook
• Run 86a73ff9, series 20261016T160206-0bdb051d, 2026-10-16: Fable's first-round game on this map, on the version the other models' first desert games used, a fresh series with no memory of its other games. Its other desert game, on 1.6.3 (run edc045df), was played earlier that day and scored −0.7.

Result

A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth ended 2,752 above leaving the game alone, 57% of the person's growth of 4,792. The score is the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity): +45.9 from net worth, +3.5 from population and +4.8 from popularity. The game counts on the website's leaderboard. The 5,192 of leaving the game alone leaves out the part of the starting package that waits for storage room (about 1,150 at the sell price, per docs/benchmark.md), which this game took in; against the whole package, about 6,500 by the rules, the town ended about 1,450 higher.

The stored goods are 586 stone (4,102), 99 iron (2,277), 20 pitch (200), 9 ale (90), 48 planks (48) and 7 bread (28); stone and iron are 95% of them. The pitch and 9 of the ale came with the start. The town ended with 22 idle peasants and 17 free places in its hovels, 7 food, and popularity falling slowly (food −4, tax +1, inn +2).

How the game went

Times are game time; for a call, when it began.

An opening on stone and iron, 0 to 3 minutes. map_overview in its first reply (0:01) listed four stone deposits 83 to 106 tiles west of the keep and four iron ores 57 to 69 tiles east, and no farmland, oil or tree groves. A marketplace at 0:01 and three hovels at 0:15. At 0:34 the stockpile held 192 planks and no empty pile, so it added three more stockpiles (16 piles) with expand_storage; the rest of the starting package (stone 50, iron 15, pitch 20, ale 20) was in by 1:13. find_sites gave four iron mine spots at 1:13 and it placed four mines at 1:15 (done 1:39); a second search around (562, 403) found none. At 1:54 it went west, find_sites gave five quarry spots, and it placed four quarries at 2:02 (done 2:28) and four ox tethers beside them at 2:35 (done 3:00). At 3:09 it had 30 people in 34 places and 47 planks.

Food, taxes and the first town buildings, 3 to 8 minutes. At 3:09 it bought 100 planks, 40 bread and 40 cheese in one reply (1,040 gold, done 4:54), and set taxes from none to High at 4:54 (−6 popularity a month, 34 gold a month). place_near put 1 of 3 hovels beside the keep at 5:06 ("no more room flush against the keep"); four hovels from find_sites at 5:28 brought housing to 74. At 6:03 it looked up the chapel and the inn and built both (done 6:21: 250 gold; 20 planks and 100 gold) and cut taxes to Average. At 6:42 it placed four more quarries at the second deposit (done 7:12) and at 7:20 three tethers; with the inn at +4 it put taxes back to High at 7:43. Planks ran down to 7 at 8:00. The first iron beyond the starting 15 reached the stockpile at 4:16; the first stone at 7:55, 5 min 27 s after the first four quarries were placed.

Planks, bread and a compaction, 8 to 20 minutes. Two bread-and-apple orders at 8:32 and 8:53 stopped short (see Market), two more quarries went up at 9:35 and four tethers at 9:58 (planks down to 2 at 10:30), and orders for 100 bread and 60 planks at 10:39 took 96 game seconds. At 12:26 the town reached its 74 places with 23 idle and the context was compacted; the handoff note says that market buys "sometimes stop early ... but the units do arrive". Four hovels at 12:33 brought housing to 106. Cheese, apples and 100 planks at 14:01 to 15:45, taxes to Average at 15:52 and Low at 16:39, two more quarries and a tether at 16:05, a tether at 16:51 and, at 18:40 and 19:12, eight tethers beside the quarries, the last building that gave jobs (done 19:42). Population stood at 74 or 75 from 12:26 to 16:00, dipped to 71, then rose to 91 by 20:42. Popularity fell from 89 at 8:00 to 58 at 16:00 under High taxes, then rose to 67 by 20:00 on cheese, apples and lower taxes.

Half rations, no taxes and long waits, 20 to 29 minutes. At 19:52 it set half rations and at 19:58 no taxes, then waited 150 seconds. Food was 15 at 22:46; it bought 40 bread, 30 cheese and 30 apples (800 gold), added two more stockpiles (24 piles) at 24:17 (stone had 182 of room), waited 120 seconds, bought 30 bread at 26:38 and set Low taxes at 27:07, and waited 150 seconds. Popularity peaked at 77 at 27:00. From 19:42 to the end it placed nothing but those two stockpiles.

The end, 29 to 33 minutes. At 29:48 food was 31 and popularity 62. In one reply it set taxes to none, asked for 15 bread and waited 120 seconds. Food was 0 from 31:59 to 32:31, popularity went from 56 to 50 in those 32 seconds, and the observation that ended the wait (32:18) showed food 0 and popularity 52 (−5 a month: food −8, tax +1, inn +2). It bought 20 bread at 32:18 (landed 32:31 to 32:39) and waited out the last 60 seconds. Popularity ended at 48 and two people left, at 33:01 and 33:14.

Each column is the last reading at or before that minute. Up to 30 minutes the net worth row counts gold, planks, stone, iron and food (at 4) as the recording logs them; pitch (200) and ale (200 at the start, 90 at the end) are left out, so it reads 300 to 400 low until the End column, which is the game's reading.

Where the starting gold went. The 5,000 gold was in by 0:34.

5,000 − 4,440 − 1,280 − 350 + 2,269 = 1,199. Nothing was sold. The 2,269 is every rise in the gold reading after the package was paid in, in 42 monthly payments of 13 to 74 gold: 1,932 from 5:13 to 20:20 and 337 from 27:26 on. The food and planks figures count the lots that reached the game (175), not the lots the tool counted (171; see Market).

The goods: about 245 planks came with the start and 320 were bought. 517 went into buildings (4 iron mines 80, 12 quarries 240, 21 tethers 105, 12 hovels 72, the inn 20; building_info lists the marketplace as "Free / 5 W", and the sums fit it as free) and 48 are in store. The mines delivered 84 iron on top of the starting 15, and nothing was built with or sold from it. The quarries delivered 536 stone on top of the starting 50. The start's 55 meat and the 555 bought were eaten but for 7 bread; the inn used 11 of the 20 ale.

By cause, net worth went from about 6,560 (the package as the rules list it) to 7,944:

(The planks line uses the rules' "about 245".) What the town dug and taxed, 7,953, paid for what it ate, built with and drank, 6,569.

Beside its other games

Its 1.6.3 desert game, played earlier that day from the same save (run edc045df), scored −0.7 and ended 440 below leaving the game alone; this one ended 2,752 above. The prompts differ on weapons: the 1.5.6 rules (this game) say weapon and armour workshops "add nothing to net worth" and name quarries "with ox tethers beside them" first among the ways to grow; the 1.6.3 rules list weapons and armour as stored value. This game's opening plan called iron mines and quarries with ox tethers "the real value producers"; the 1.6.3 plan listed weapons at 15 to 30 and put quarries near the end of its list ("otherwise skip (far away, low value)"). That game put 1,500 gold into 13 workshops and built no quarry; this one built no workshop and 12 quarries.

Both bought food at 8 for a town that stalled at the 24 idle peasants, and both mined about the same iron. The stone that game never had is worth 3,752 here (536 mined), more than the 3,192 of net worth between the two.

Its map score is now the mean of its two games, 26.8, which is fifth of the ten models by their average desert scores. Its other games that day were on other maps, each a fresh series:

This is the highest of its five scores that day. On Oasis by the Sea it put its gold into iron mines and quarries as well; here find_sites found room for four mines, and the quarries carried the game.

Beside the other models

The first-round games on this map (the version each model's first desert game used), by the website's formula, from each run's own results.json and run.json:

Fable is third of ten on score and on net worth. Eight of the ten built quarries; the two that did not (Haiku and Sonnet) ended 1,500 to 1,700 below Fable. Fable held the most stone of the ten (586) and 99 iron, as much as Opus and one less than Luna, and had the fewest turns of any model that built quarries. Its popularity of 48 is the second lowest (Sonnet 24).

Claude Opus 5.5 is the nearest above it: 813 more net worth, 13.4 more score (+13.6 from net worth, +1.1 from popularity, −1.3 from population).

Both fed the town from the market for about the same food (555 and 540 units, 4,440 and 4,320 gold); Fable fed 89 people and Opus 58, a number Opus held on purpose (its interview: "taxes from an idle peasant didn't cover their food"). The gold gap of 1,314 is 1,110 more spent by Fable (640 on planks, 350 on the chapel and inn, 120 on food) and about 200 less in taxes (Fable 2,269; Opus about 2,470, from its end gold and the market spend its tool counted); Fable held 501 more in stored goods.

Gemini 4 Argon ended 309 above Fable with 185 people at popularity 63: 12 quarries, as many as Fable, with 34 tethers, plus 33 bakeries, 5 mills, 13 breweries, 7 inns and 6 water pots, a bread town of the kind the person describes. Its 10.6 score points over Fable are 5.2 from net worth, 3.9 from population and 1.5 from popularity. GPT-6.1 Sol (88 people, popularity 66) and GPT-6 Luna (106 people, popularity 57) also built quarries with tethers (11 and 12 quarries, 314 and 530 stone) and ended 503 and 590 below Fable.

What held it back

• Food bought at the market. 555 food for 4,440 gold, 89% of the starting gold and 61% of the 7,269 it had in all (5,000 and 2,269 in taxes). Each unit cost 8 and counts 4, and all but 7 bread were eaten, so food, with the start's meat, took 4,632 off net worth. The 91 people ate about 16 food a minute at half rations (27 a minute at full rations with 74 people). Taxes paid back 51% of the food bill.
• The jobs ran out twice. New peasants stop arriving while 24 stand idle. Idle stood at 24 from 13:16 to 16:02 (population 75), fell to 13 at 16:51 when the two quarries and the tethers it added at 16:05 gave work, and was back at 24 from 22:46 to the end (population 91, 15 to 17 places free). Its last search for quarry sites began at 14:01 and returned two spots at 16:02, both built at 16:05; after 19:42 it made no search and placed only two stockpiles, its plan and notebook stayed empty, and 5 of its 15 waits (all after 20:00) ran 60 to 150 seconds.
• Taxes against popularity. Taxes at High from 7:51 to 15:52 brought 1,120 gold in 18 payments while popularity fell from 89 to 58 (the monthly change went from 0 to −4). It then cut taxes in three steps and had none from 20:07 to 27:16 (7 minutes, about 16 game months) and again from 29:57. A Low-taxes payment was 54 gold, 0.9 of a score point; popularity rose from 67 to 77 in the tax-free stretch, +1.0 of a score point.
• The chapel. 250 gold (4.2 score points) bought a religion factor of +2 that two readings show, at 12:26 and 12:34, and none after. The chapel stood to the end; the 1.5.6 status leaves a factor out when it is zero, so the model could not see why (see the interview).
• Planks at 4 for 1. 320 planks cost 1,280 gold and counted 320; with the start's, they paid for the 517 planks of buildings, 345 of them the stone chain. Planks ran to 7 at 8:00 and to 2 from 10:30 to about 11:50, and the 10:39 reply bought bread and planks for the four hovels it built at 12:33. The four plank orders took 37 to 62 game seconds each.
• Nothing it bought was turned into more. Food, planks and the chapel and inn were all spent. The person ended with 8,574 gold, bread among its main sources, and Gemini built 33 bakeries and reached 185 people. The prompt it had says net worth rises through "turning goods into goods worth more than their inputs"; this game never traded wheat, and did not look at a mill or bakery (building_info was called for the iron mine, marketplace, chapel and inn).
• Food ran out 81 seconds before the end. See below.

When food ran out, and whether it noticed. Food reached 0 at 31:59 and stayed there until the first of the 20 bread landed at 32:31 (the last at 32:39, food 18). The last reading before the outage, at 29:48 (3 min 32 s left), showed 31 food at half rations. From 27:30 to 31:59 food fell 16 a minute (68 to 27 by 30:00, then 32 to 0), so the 3.5 minutes to the end needed about 57 and it had 31. Its reply asked for 15 bread, set taxes to none and waited 120 seconds, all in one reply; 5 bread landed, the tool counted none, and the other two lots were never clicked. So even the full 15 would have left it empty about 40 seconds before the end. The result of the order reached the model only with the end of the wait, in the observation of 32:18, when food was 0, popularity 52 and the next month −5; its reasoning there reads "Food's run out since the bread purchase failed and consumption was higher than expected". Consumption was the 16 a minute it had had for two minutes before. None of its 15 waits used until, which the prompt offers for food; no game event or warning told it food was low (1.5.6 has none).

What the outage cost, in score: popularity fell 6 points in the 32 seconds with no food (56 to 50) and ended at 48; before it, it had fallen about 1.6 a month (63 to 56 in 2 minutes). At that rate it would have ended near 51, so about 3 points (0.3 of a score point), and the two people who left at 33:01 and 33:14 (0.08). The 20 bread bought at 32:18 cost 160 gold for 28 of bread left, −132 net worth, 2.2 score points.

What worked

• Quarries with ox tethers beside them. 12 quarries and 21 tethers, placed by tile from find_sites (but for one tether) in ten build_structure calls between 2:02 and 19:12, cost 345 planks and delivered 536 stone, worth 3,752 and more than the whole 2,752 the town gained over leaving the game alone. The stone arrived late and then quickly; the rate went on climbing for 8 minutes after the last tether (19:42):

  Game minutes	Quarries / tethers	Stone a minute
  8 to 11	8 to 10 / 7 to 11	5.3
  11 to 16	10 / 11	11.2
  16 to 19.5	12 / 12 to 17	16.0
  19.5 to 24	12 / 21	22.7
  24 to 28.5	12 / 21	30.7
  28.5 to 33	12 / 21	33.8

  Storage kept ahead of it: 4 piles at the start, 16 at 1:13, 24 from 24:37, never full of stone (230 of room at 22:46, 334 at 32:18).

• Mines first, by tile. Four iron mines placed at 1:15 on every site find_sites returned, no screenshot needed; they delivered 84 iron over 29 minutes, about 2.9 a minute, worth 1,932.

• Room for the package at 0:34. The stockpile was full of planks at 0:34; three stockpiles went in at once and the stone, iron, pitch and ale were in by 1:13.

• Placement by tile and retry. 57 of 60 placements went through. The three that did not were two hovels asked of place_near (made up by tile at 5:28) and a tether placed by pixel at 16:05 (redone by tile at 16:51). No tool call was refused.

• The inn. 100 gold, 20 planks and 11 ale gave +4 popularity from 7:20 to 8:32 and +2 from 9:32 to the end.

• Half rations at 19:52. Food fell about 30 a minute at full rations (89 to 59 between 19:01 and 20:00, 82 to 88 people) and 16 a minute at half (59 to 19 between 20:00 and 22:30, 88 to 91 people): about 190 food over the rest of the game, some 1,500 gold at the 8 it paid, for −4 popularity a month, with popularity between 67 and 77 until 28:00. This is an estimate from the readings.

• Growth early. 59 people at 9 minutes and 73 at 12, with popularity at 81 or more until 12:00.

• A handoff that was right. At 12:26 it wrote down that market buys "do arrive" when they stop early, and the recording bears that out for every stop (see Market).

Market

21 market_trade calls, all purchases; nothing was sold. 175 lots (875 units) reached the game: 64 lots of planks, 62 of bread, 26 of cheese and 23 of apples, for 5,720 gold. The tool counted 171 of them (855 units, 5,560 gold). The purchases lost 3,180 net worth against the sell price (planks 4 for 1, food 8 for 4; selling leaves net worth unchanged).

In short: every click the tool made bought goods, and none was lost. Four calls (8:32, 8:53, 10:39 and 29:57) were cut short after a lot that reached the game but that the tool did not see, so each reported one lot too few and left the rest of its order unclicked; the 29:57 order of 3 lots got 1.

Whether a lot reached the game was checked two ways: the recording's input log (one click on the market's Buy button per lot, 175 in the 21 call windows) and the recording's gold and stock readings (every one of those clicks is followed 0.9 to 3.4 seconds later by a drop of exactly 20 gold with the planks up 5, or 40 gold with the food total up by about 5 (4 when a unit was eaten in the same reading); the one lot that fell in the very reading of a month's taxes shows as +34 gold with planks up 5). The tool's own count is a third record.

What went through. Every lot the tool clicked reached the game, and the tool never reported a lot that did not. In 17 of the 21 calls its count equals what landed. In four it stopped one lot early and left that lot out of its count: bread at 8:32 (3 landed, 2 counted), apples at 8:53 (5 and 4), bread at 10:39 (16 and 15) and bread at 29:57 (1 and 0). Each of those four calls ended there: the 1.5.6 tool counts a lot only when the reader shows the stock or the gold move by exactly that lot's amount within 2 seconds of the click, and otherwise stops clicking. The four orders were therefore left unfilled: 75 bread asked at 8:32 and 15 landed, 50 apples at 8:53 and 25, 100 bread at 10:39 and 80, 15 bread at 29:57 and 5. The tool said so each time ("Stopped: a purchase did not show in the reader within 2 seconds", with the remedy "Observe; if the stock did not rise, call market_trade again"), but it under-reported by the one lot that did land.

Why the four were missed. The logs do not settle it. In all four a month's tax payment (+56, +59, +68 and +27 gold) had landed in the 0.2 to 1.9 seconds before the missed lot's gold fell, and that fall came 2.0, 1.2, 1.7 and 2.8 seconds after its click. But in eight other calls a payment landed during the call and the lot after it was counted, and 33 of the 34 click-to-drop gaps over 2 seconds (median gap 1.6 s over all lots) were counted anyway. The 1.5.6 source (harness/server/economy.ts at commit 9c34b50) compares one reader sample with the next, so a reader that runs a little behind the recording would fit, but the logs do not show the reader's own timing.

The gold in the results. In 1.5.6 the result's gold change is the gold after the call minus the gold before it, so taxes landing during the call are in it. In 9 of the 21 results the cost shown is lower than the lots counted cost, by 43 to 148 gold each and 691 in all (for example 20 cheese shown as −86, cost 160, with −6 net worth; the real change was −80). The stock and gold fields are the reading at the last counted lot, so they trail by uncounted lots and by taxes.

The model's readings of it.

• 9:32 ("Market buys seem stuck, maybe granary-related"; logged at 9:35). Half right: the 8:32 and 8:53 orders had stopped early (the tool counted 30 of 125 units asked; 40 landed). The granary had 193 of room, so it was not storage. It re-ordered 100 bread at 10:39.
• 12:33 ("the stats still show gold 3057 and bread 64, wood 62, while the trade tool reported gold 2984, bread 83 ... some lag"). No disagreement: bread 83 was the tool's reading at 11:34 (88 counting the lot it missed) and 64 is a minute of eating at about 24 a minute; gold 2,984 was the reading at 12:15 and 3,057 is a month's taxes (+73 at 12:20).
• 13:16 ("the market purchases actually failed even though the numbers suggested otherwise"; logged at 13:17). Wrong. Planks were 2 at 10:30; the 60 bought at 11:34 took them to 62 at 12:15 (the tool's stock 62 and the 12:26 reading 62); four hovels at 12:33 used 24 and left 38 at 13:16. It counted the 60 as still to arrive. Gold 3,205 against 3,057 is two tax payments of 74. The bread (stock 83 in the tool, 67 at 12:26) also arrived. It also contradicts its handoff note of 12:26, which says the units do arrive.
• 32:18 ("Food's run out since the bread purchase failed"). Right that the 29:57 order did not fill: 5 of 15 landed and the tool said 0. The order was also too small for the minutes left (see above).

Cost and speed

35 turns, 93 tool calls (21 market_trade, 15 waits, 14 build_structure, 13 find_sites, 8 set_tax, 6 go_to_tile, 4 building_info, 3 place_near, 2 observe, 2 expand_storage, and 1 each of map_overview, inspect_building, center_on, get_inventory and set_rations), 1.79 million tokens and $2.540 at the profile's prices (preparation $0.397, play $2.032, compaction $0.111). The prices are $10 per million input tokens, $50 output, $0.25 cache read and $12.50 cache write. The interview cost about $0.752 more, none of its 57,337 tokens read from the cache (see below). The agent run took 31.9 real minutes, 5.3 of them waiting for the model (longest reply 19.8 seconds); the context was compacted once, at 12:26 (20 seconds, from an estimated 73,492 tokens to 43,466), and ended at 57,527 of 120,000.

Tools that act ran for about 1,250 game seconds (63% of the budget) and waits for 626 (31%), and the game ran throughout both. Of the acting time, market_trade took 673 seconds (175 lots in 21 calls: about 2 seconds a lot plus about 12 to open and close the market; 4 lots took 21 to 24 seconds, 20 lots 51 and 62), build_structure 365, set_tax 70 (9 seconds a call), place_near 46, expand_storage 44 and go_to_tile 38. 1.5.6 has no fast waits: a 150-second wait took 114 real seconds.

Providers and the prompt cache

Every request went to Anthropic's API with no provider routing. All 35 gameplay requests read the prompt cache, 95.9% of the input tokens (1,605,903 read, 69,393 written, 92 uncached). Of the $2.032 for play, output was $0.762, cache writes $0.867 and cache reads $0.401. The preparation request wrote 27,079 tokens ($0.397). The interview, 7 minutes 14 seconds after the last reply, wrote 56,387 tokens to the cache again (see For the harness).

The interview

Fable called its result clearly behind the person: better than leaving the game alone, far behind on population (89 against 250) and popularity (48 against 100). It put the gap down to treating the map as "raw materials plus taxes" with no value-adding chain (the person's wheat, mills, bakeries and sold bread), to food bought at 8 that counts 4, to reactive popularity management, and to the game time of market clicks. It said food ran out in the final minute because a bread purchase "silently failed". Playing again it would build the bread chain from the start on bought wheat, add a church and several inns early, keep the quarries with many tethers and all iron sites as a side income, use fear-factor buildings once popularity has headroom, expand housing, and not be at zero food at the end. It found find_sites with tile targets, build_structure retries, expand_storage and the stats reliable, the market slow and sometimes stopping, the reader sometimes lagging, and the religion factor vanishing without explanation; it asked for a cheaper way to buy many lots at once, a production rate per building and a hint that chains on bought inputs are viable.

Claims checked against the run:

• "Food ran out in the final minute because a bread purchase silently failed." Food ran out at 31:59, 81 seconds before the end, and was back from 32:31. The purchase did not fail silently: the tool returned not_traded with a note and a remedy, though it missed that one of the three lots had landed. The order was also too small for the minutes left (see above).
• "market trades ... occasionally stopped or failed without the goods arriving". It stopped four times (8:32, 8:53, 10:39, 29:57). The goods of every click sent arrived; what did not happen is the clicks the tool never sent after it stopped.
• "the reader sometimes lagged so gold/stock disagreed between tools". The tool's gold and stock were readings at the last counted lot, and its gold change included taxes (9 of 21 results); the model's one comparison of such figures with the status (12:33) was a minute of eating and a month's taxes. I found no reading in the logs that was wrong.
• "each ~3 game seconds" per market click. About 2 seconds a lot plus about 12 a call; 3.8 seconds a lot over the whole game (673 seconds, 175 lots).
• "the extra tethers tripled my stone rate". Matches: 11 a minute from 11 to 16 minutes, 32 from 24 to 33 minutes (2.9 times), with 11 tethers then and 21 at the end; two more quarries came in between.
• "idle peasants were never my constraint once jobs existed". In this game they were: 24 idle capped arrivals from 13:16 to 16:02 and from 22:46 to the end.
• The religion factor "disappeared without explanation". Matches: +2 at 12:26 and 12:34, gone by 13:16, the chapel standing to the end. The 1.5.6 status leaves out factors that are zero; 1.7.0 shows religion and the inn at 0 while one stands (CHANGELOG).
• Matches: 7,944 against 9,984 and 5,192; 89 against 250 people and popularity 48 against 100; "my value was almost all stored stone and iron" (95% of the goods) and the person's "was gold" (8,574 of 9,984); food bought at 8 that counts 4; "the person found a chain" (the person's settlement shown to it lists 95 bakeries and 12 mills).
• Not testable here: the bread chain's margin (wheat bought at 23, milled, bread sold at 4, one wheat giving several bread). The prices are right (wheat buys at 23 and sells at 8, flour sells at 10, bread at 4, per the harness's price table), but this game never traded wheat.
• "the rules focus on farms, which this map lacks". Not what the rules say: the map's rules say no farm can be built and list quarries and iron mines first, and the trading paragraph says net worth rises through "turning goods into goods worth more than their inputs".

For the harness

• market_trade in 1.5.6 missed 4 lots in 4 calls and showed a taxes-netted gold change in 9. The counting rule (stock or gold up or down by exactly the lot within 2 seconds) and the gold change (gold after minus gold before) both changed later: 1.6.0 waits 5 seconds and reports the gold at the market's price, and 1.6.3 counts a lot when the stock rose and the gold fell in one sample. Whether those would have counted these four lots was not replayed.
• A reply's results arrive together. The model saw the 29:57 not_traded only with the end of its 120-second wait, 2 min 19 s later; no tool in 1.5.6 stops a wait when food runs low.
• No warnings in 1.5.6. The host's food, popularity and gold warnings arrived in 1.7.0 (CHANGELOG), and the observations carried no game events but one placement message. By the changelog's rule (food below two game months of what the people eat) the food reading would have crossed the line at about 31:10 on this game's own rate of 16 a minute, 49 seconds before it hit 0; this was not replayed.
• The interview missed the prompt cache. The last gameplay reply ended at 16:34:34 UTC; the series log has "Run completed" at 16:35:42 and the game saved and scored at 16:41:48, 6 minutes 6 seconds later with nothing logged between. The interview began at 16:41:48, 434 seconds after the last reply, past Anthropic's 5-minute cache life, so all 56,387 tokens were written again ($0.705 at $12.50 per million, against $0.014 read at $0.25) for $0.752. Fable's other games had gaps of 130 seconds (Sinkhole 1.7.1, about $0.10), 270 (Oasis 1.5.1, $0.13), 341 (Oasis 1.6.3, $0.96) and 451 (desert 1.6.3, $0.95).
• Two tools threw "image too old" in a long reply. inspect_building at 10:30 ("Game image expired, older than 30 seconds of play") after a 32-second build_structure in the same reply, so the model never saw a quarry's workers while stone sat at 66; and a tether placed by pixel at 16:05 was not_placed ("image_too_old"). Placing by tile avoids it; 1.7.0 raised the limit to 40 game seconds.
• place_near for 3 hovels placed 1 at 5:06 (the keep's flush spots were taken); its remedy named find_sites, which worked at 5:28. One build_structure (begun 18:40) reported "reader unavailable; placement errors may be missing"; all four tethers are in the final count.
• The map probe. Fable called map_overview once, in its first reply (0:01). It listed stone and iron with distances and "Tree groves (woodcutters): none on this map", which is right: the cactus patches that 1.5.0's probe counted as groves in the other models' 1.6.3 desert games are not in what it saw. This game ran 1.5.6's own reader.
• Fable's games were the first played with the host running on the game machine itself; that does not change what the game plays.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("claude fable 5-1 1-5-6 86a73f", in this folder).