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: The Sinkhole construction, version 1.6.2 (commit 1e52aca), from the save "The Sinkhole start"; 45 min of game time at speed 40, the length of the person's game (44 min 58 s); no playbook; every wait played at speed 40 (fast waits came in 1.7.0)
- Run c849942f, series 20261016T164759-e6519477, 2026-10-16: Fable's game in The Sinkhole's first round, on 1.6.2, the version the other models' first Sinkhole games used. It was played after its 1.7.1 game on this map (run 06cc59ca) as a fresh series with no memory of it.
Result
| This game | Its 1.7.1 game | The person | Left alone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 14,382 | 13,107 | 41,631 | 2,195 |
| Gold | 4,450 | 3,133 | 39,977 | |
| Stored goods, at the sell price | 9,932 | 9,974 | 1,654 | |
| Population / housing | 98 / 114 | 50 / 138 | 506 / 506 | 4 |
| Popularity | 49 (no change next month) | 0 (−4 next month) | 99 | 0 |
| Score | 31.5 | 23.1 | 100 | 0 |
A full-budget score: the run used all 2,700 game seconds. Net worth grew by 12,187 over leaving the game alone, 31% of the person's 39,436. The score is the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity); the game counts on the website's leaderboard. It is made of 24.7 points for net worth, 1.9 for population and 4.9 for popularity, and is fifth of the ten models' first games on 1.6.2 (Gemini 4 Argon 69.4 first, Claude Haiku 5.5 8.0 last). The mean of Fable's two Sinkhole games is 27.3.
Of the 14,382, 7,728 (54%) is 336 iron from 17 iron mines, 4,450 is gold, 901 is the 50 weapons in the armory (37 pikes, 4 crossbows, 5 bows, 4 spears), 840 is 84 flour, 191 is wood, 140 is the 20 stone it started with, 84 is 21 bread and 48 is apples and wheat. Iron alone is worth 15.7 of the 31.5 points. By the recording's gold series, the 2,000 it started with became 4,450 through about 5,370 from taxes and 815 from sales, less 2,080 spent at the market, 1,400 on fourteen weapon workshops and 250 on a chapel. The town ended with 24 idle peasants and 16 empty places in its hovels.
How the game went
Times are game time: for readings, the host's clock (what the model's observation says); for calls, the start of the call in the recording, which agrees with that clock to within about 3 seconds.
Opening, 0 to 6 minutes. map_overview and three find_sites came before the first build call,
which placed four woodcutters at the grove 39 tiles from the keep; a marketplace followed at 0:35 and
two hovels at 0:51. It bought 100 planks at 1:10 (400 gold, 48 game seconds for 20 clicks) and placed
four iron mines at 1:58: three on the ore field 52 tiles from the keep and one at (383,421). Three
apple orchards (a dairy farm was not placed) at 2:41 and three hovels at 3:22. Food had fallen from
55 meat to 30 with 29 people at 3:56, when it bought 30 cheese and 30 bread (480 gold); it set average
taxes at 4:44 with popularity at 100, and placed two dairy farms and two wheat farms at 4:53. The
first iron reached the stockpile at 5:05. At 6:02: 43 people in 50 places, 24 of them idle,
popularity 97.
Weapons, a mill and no mines, 6 to 16 minutes. After reading the cost of an armory and a quarry
with building_info at 6:01 it bought 100 more planks (400 gold, 60 game seconds) and placed an
armory beside the marketplace at 7:01, one fletcher's workshop at 7:24 (the second and two
poleturner's workshops found no room there), three woodcutters at 8:00, three poleturner's workshops
and a fletcher's at 8:36 (100 gold each) and a mill, a bakery and a hovel at 9:14. Gold fell to 534
at 9:13 and stood between 534 and 1,205 from 5 to 28 minutes. It set the three poleturners to pikes
and the fletcher to crossbows from 9:56, and added orchards (one not placed, one moved 11 tiles) and,
at 11:47, 25 meat (200 gold), two dairy farms and two hovels (one of them reported unverified; the
housing figures show it was never built). Popularity fell from 100 to 81 by 11:47 as the foods eaten
fell from four to two. No iron mine was placed between 2:31 and 13:39, although wood stood at 125 to
178 from 8:36 and five mine sites had been listed at 0:03. At 13:39 its reasoning called mines the
best value by far, "roughly 23 gold worth of iron per minute for just 20 wood", and it placed seven
(an eighth had no open side). At 15:19 housing was full (66 of 66) and popularity 66.
A chapel, taxes and the last mines, 16 to 22 minutes. Low taxes at 16:39 (popularity 58, falling 4
a month with one food eaten). A chapel found no room beside the keep (16:04), so it was placed with
find_sites at (350,460) in the call of 17:45, with five iron mines and two bakeries; the 250 gold
went at 18:52. No taxes from 19:50, to wait for the chapel's effect. The context was compacted at
20:34. The 17th and last mine went down at 20:52; a search for more around (400,439) found nothing
within 25 tiles (21:06), and at 21:13 its reasoning called the iron mines "tapped out". It made no iron
search after that. At 21:13 it placed two fletcher's workshops, a poleturner's workshop and a hovel
(300 gold); expand_storage for a second armory found no free ground around the first (22:17).
Workshops, then waiting, 22 to 45 minutes. Average taxes again at 22:24, three poleturner's workshops and a hovel at 23:48, and three more with a hovel at 26:33, done at 27:05: the last placements of the game. The population reached 98 at 27:19 and stayed at 97 to 98 to the end. After that it changed taxes, sold weapons, bought cheese, set workshops (31:24), failed to expand the stockpile (35:16) and waited in waits of 30 to 120 game seconds.
| Game minute | 0 | 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 | 40 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 2,415 | 1,713 | 1,484 | 2,125 | 2,888 | 3,751 | 5,637 | 8,043 | 10,109 | 14,382 |
| Gold | 2,000 | 1,127 | 613 | 912 | 994 | 669 | 1,163 | 1,986 | 3,143 | 4,450 |
| Iron | 0 | 0 | 18 | 34 | 64 | 113 | 169 | 229 | 285 | 336 |
| Stone | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 | 20 |
| Food | 55 | 86 | 48 | 49 | 60 | 73 | 83 | 108 | 24 | 27 |
| Population | 6 | 39 | 53 | 65 | 80 | 95 | 98 | 98 | 98 | 98 |
| Popularity | 100 | 99 | 88 | 68 | 53 | 57 | 61 | 52 | 72 | 49 |
| Iron mines placed | 0 | 4 | 4 | 11 | 16 | 17 | 17 | 17 | 17 | 17 |
Each column is the last reading at or before that minute. Before the end the net worth row counts gold, wood, stone, iron and food (at 4) as the recording logs them; flour (about 800 at 40 minutes, 840 at the end) and weapons (901 at the end) are left out, so it reads low. Its lowest point was 1,374 at 9:17, and the starting 2,415 was passed again at 16:26. The iron delivered in each five minutes was 0, 18, 16, 30, 49, 56, 60, 56 and 51.
Taxes against popularity
Taxes started at none (level 3). It changed them ten times, between none, low, average and once mean.
The set_tax replies give each level's popularity factor (none +1, low −2, average −4, mean −8 a
month) and the gold a month it brought at the time.
| Set at | Level (factor; gold a month) | Popularity then | 3 min later | Gold taken in the spell | Reading and note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4:44 | Average (−4; 30) | 100 | 93 | about 1,040, to 16:48 | −1 a month at 6:02 (food +3). Popularity first fell below 100 at 4:53 and was 58 at 16:39 |
| 16:39 | Low (−2; 42) | 58 | 53 | about 320 | −4 a month with one food eaten |
| 19:50 | None (+1; 0) | 53 | 66 | 35 | Chapel paid at 18:52; no religion factor until 23:48 |
| 22:24 | Average (−4; 73) | 67 | 55 | about 480 | Its reasoning said "raise tax slightly to 4"; the call set 5 |
| 25:25 | Low (−2; 56) | 55 | 62 | about 290 | |
| 27:39 | Average (−4; 78) | 62 | 61 | about 1,010 | Longest spell (5 min 50 s); popularity 63 when it took effect, 53 at the end |
| 33:29 | Low (−2; 58) | 54 | 56 | about 450 | Reading of 33:30: no religion factor, cheese out (food +1) |
| 36:39 | Average (−4; 78) | 57 | 75 | about 450 | Extra rations on from 35:58 (+4): +3 a month at 39:09 |
| 39:09 | Mean (−8; 117) | 75 | 55 | about 575 | Rations back to full in the same turn: −4 a month at 41:16 |
| 41:16 | Average (−4; 78) | 58 | 50 | about 660 | A later change to low (reasoning of 43:04) was not made |
Spells are counted from the moment each reply came back, when the level took effect (a call takes about 10 game seconds), so each starts a few seconds after the time in the first column. They add to about 5,300 gold; payments that landed in the same frame as a purchase make that about 60 low. Average taxes brought about 3,630 gold in 27 minutes, low taxes about 1,055 in 8.6, mean taxes 575 in 2.1 and the one payment at none 35.
After 16:39 popularity stood between 50 and 76 until the last 27 seconds, when it read 49 (from 44:33). The food factor was as large as the tax factor: the readings give +3 a month for four foods eaten, +2 for three, +1 for two and none for one, and +4 more for extra rations. Taxes brought about 5,370 gold over the game, worth 10.9 points at the formula's weights; the popularity between 49 and 100 is worth 5.1. What the changes between low and average swapped was about 20 gold a month (78 against 58 at 98 people) for 2 popularity points a month.
Three things in the log:
- Cheese for variety. Of the 85 units of cheese it bought (680 gold, below), each purchase kept a third or fourth food in the granary for several minutes (the first 30 units lasted from 4:20 to about 15:19, the last 20 from 34:28 to about 39:09); the food factor read +2 with cheese in stock and +1 without in the readings of 31:24 and 33:30.
- Two changes that did not follow the reasoning. At 22:24 it wrote "raise tax slightly to 4" and set level 5, and popularity fell from 67 to 55 in the next 3 minutes. At 43:04, with popularity 53 and 1 min 56 s left, it wrote that it would set taxes to 4 "for a small late popularity bump"; the turn's calls were a pike sale and a 120-second wait. Low taxes are +2 a month against average, up to 9 points over the 4.4 months left, 0.9 of a point.
- Mean taxes at 39:09. Popularity was 75 and rising 3 a month. The call set mean taxes and, in the same turn, full rations. Of the 7 points a month that took off the monthly change (+3 to −4), 4 were the tax. In the 126 seconds it stayed on mean taxes (to 41:27) it took in 575 gold in five payments, about 185 more than average taxes would have (5 × 78), 0.4 of a point; 4 points a month for 4.75 months is about 19 points of popularity, 1.9 points of score. Popularity read 58 at 41:16 and 49 at the end.
The bread chain
It built two wheat farms (placed by 5:43), one mill (9:14) and four bakeries (9:14, 15:18 and two at 17:45), and no inn or brewery. The 1.6.2 readings carry no production figures (the readout came in 1.7.0), so what it baked is not known; the stocks say the following.
- Flour outran the bakeries. It was first in the stockpile by 11:47 (9). At 15:19, with flour at 27 and bread at 6, its reasoning noted flour piling up and it placed a bakery; at 17:46, with flour at 39, "flour is piling up" again, and it placed two more. Flour kept rising, to 62 at 29:23 and 84 at the end: three stockpile piles of 32, worth 840 net worth at 10 a unit, against 4 a unit for the bread it makes.
- Bread grew from about 22 minutes. Granary bread (the 30 units bought at 4:20 and 20 at 17:14 included) was 0 at 16:37, 25 at 17:46, 10 to 12 until 22:25, 28 at 23:48, 49 at 29:23, 71 at 36:39 and 21 at the end.
- It was eaten, not sold. No bread was sold; the only bread trades are the two purchases. Under extra rations from 35:58 the granary's food fell from 99 (36:39) to 53 (39:09) while bread fell from 71 to 47, and the granary at the end holds 21 bread and 6 apples, 27 food of 250 room.
Beside its other game and the other models
Its other Sinkhole game, on 1.7.1 (run 06cc59ca, 23.1), is a different town with one thing in common: both ended on exactly 336 iron, seven full piles (25 mines stopped at 44:36 there, 17 here at 44:22).
| This game (1.6.2) | 1.7.1 game | |
|---|---|---|
| Iron mines / iron | 17 / 336 | 25 / 336 |
| Quarries / stone | 0 / 20 | 3 / 220 |
| Food | 5 orchards, 4 dairy farms, 2 wheat farms, 1 mill, 4 bakeries | 12 orchards, 2 dairy farms |
| Weapons | 14 workshops, 100 made, worth 1,616 at the sell price | 4 fletcher's workshops, 30 bows (450) |
| Chapel | 1 | none |
| Taxes taken in | about 5,370 | 2,533 |
| Population / popularity at the end | 98 / 49 | 50 / 0 |
| Turns / tool calls | 43 / 123 | 48 / 75 |
| Cost of the game | $2.889 | $2.751 |
That game ended in a collapse (taxes raised at 32:42 with the food running out, popularity 91 to 0, 61 people gone). Here food never fell under 21 (39:51), popularity never under 49 and nobody left. Net worth is 1,275 higher: gold +1,317, goods other than iron and stone +1,358, stone −1,400. Of the 8.4 points between the scores, 5.9 are population and popularity.
The ten models' first games on 1.6.2, by score (Claude Opus 5.5 played the round twice; its second game, 37.4, with 16,193 net worth, 144 people, popularity 62, 26 mines and no taxes, is left out):
| Net worth | Gold | Population | Popularity | Iron mines | Bakeries | Quarries | Taxes at the end | Score | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gemini 4 Argon | 30,996 | 25,454 | 246 | 62 | 30 | 56 | 4 | Extortionate | 69.4 |
| GPT-6.1 Sol | 20,610 | 14,557 | 183 | 79 | 28 | 27 | 4 | Extortionate | 48.8 |
| Muse Wonder | 15,781 | 5,534 | 136 | 82 | 22 | 8 | 4 | Low | 38.4 |
| Claude Sonnet 5.5 | 16,810 | 10,777 | 83 | 68 | 16 | 4 | 0 | High | 38.0 |
| Claude Fable 5.1 | 14,382 | 4,450 | 98 | 49 | 17 | 4 | 0 | Average | 31.5 |
| Claude Opus 5.5 | 13,921 | 1,157 | 147 | 48 | 22 | 1 | 4 | Low | 31.4 |
| GPT-6 Luna | 11,177 | 1,764 | 108 | 52 | 27 | 1 | 0 | Average | 25.5 |
| Kimi K3 | 9,164 | 2,356 | 91 | 52 | 4 | 6 | 1 | Average | 21.1 |
| GLM 5.3 Flash | 5,084 | 1,992 | 78 | 79 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Low | 15.2 |
| Claude Haiku 5.5 | 3,312 | 1,716 | 37 | 51 | 0 | 0 | 0 | None | 8.0 |
Fable is fifth by net worth, gold and score, sixth by population and ninth by popularity. Sonnet 5.5 built a similar town (16 mines, 4 bakeries, a mill, 5 wheat farms, a chapel and an inn, no weapons workshops), ended on High taxes (−6) with food +2, religion +2 and the inn +2, popularity 68, and had 10,777 gold against 4,450, 2,428 more net worth and 6.5 more points. The two best games built bakeries in number (56 and 27, with 9 and 4 mills and 17 and 7 wheat farms), 8 and 5 inns, ran double and extra rations and ended on Extortionate taxes (344 and 256 gold a month), with 25,454 and 14,557 gold; Fable built no inn. Six of the ten built one to four quarries; Fable, Sonnet, Luna and Haiku built none.
What held it back
- Nothing built after 27:05. It had 618 gold then. In the next 18 minutes taxes brought about
3,260 gold and sales 815, and gold ended at 4,450, 31% of the net worth. The population, which rose
from 74 at 17:46 to 98 at 27:19 as it added six mines, two bakeries and nine workshops, did not move
again: it stood at 98 of 114 with 24 idle (24 in 17 of its 30 readings, every one from 23:48), the
cap the game reference in its prompt describes ("New peasants stop arriving while 24 stand idle at
the campfire: each job that takes one of them lets another come"). Its reasoning gave its grounds:
at 21:13 the iron mines were "tapped out", and at 29:23 the workshops "barely break even now" and
with idle peasants capped there was "not much left to optimize". Still open in its own logs: a stone
field of 361 tiles 84 tiles from the keep, which its opening plan named ("a quarry + ox tethers")
and
building_infodescribed at 6:01, never built (stone stayed at 20; in its 1.7.1 game three quarries delivered 220 stone, 1,540 net worth, 3.1 points); a fourth iron field it never searched (below); inns and ale, which its reasoning skipped at 11:47 and 16:39; and the 84 flour that four bakeries had not used. - Taxes against popularity. The ten changes kept popularity between 50 and 76 from 16:39, near the 50 below which peasants leave. By the arithmetic above, the last two decisions cost points: mean taxes at 39:09 took about 1.9 points of score in popularity for 0.4 in gold, and the late change to low taxes (reasoning of 43:04) was never made.
- Storage. The 16 stockpile piles all held a good from 35:16 (empty piles: 6 at 29:23, 4 at
31:24, 3 at 33:30, 0 at 35:16); at the end 7 held iron, 4 wood, 3 flour, 1 stone (20 of 48) and 1
wheat (3 of 32). Both
expand_storagecalls found "no free ground touches it on any side" (armory at 21:59, stockpile at 35:16); the remedy offered selling or demolishing, and it sold but never demolished. The game reference in its prompt says "leave room beside it to expand", and its opening plan said to "expand stockpiles ahead of filling"; its first stockpile expansion came with no empty pile. The armory (50 weapons) read full at 43:04 and again at the end. - Mines late, then capped. Five mine sites were listed at 0:03 and four mines stood by 2:31; seven went down at 13:39–15:07, five at 17:45–19:33 and one at 20:52. A mine delivered about 0.7 iron a minute (the 16 to 17 gave 56 to 60 in each five minutes from 25 to 40 minutes, 51 in the last). Iron filled its seventh pile at 44:22 (336) and nothing arrived in the last 38 seconds, about 7 iron (160 net worth, 0.3 of a point); mines beyond these would have needed free piles. The three nearest listed ore fields held 3, 5 and 6 of the mines and an unlisted cluster near (381,419) the other 3; the fourth listed field, 132 tiles at (341,575), 130 tiles from the keep, was never searched.
- A weapons wing near break-even. 14 workshops cost 1,400 gold and 180 wood to build; by the
prompt's wood per item they used about 180 wood more, and made 100 weapons worth 1,616 at the sell
price (below): about 144 less than their cost of 1,760. Two of the ten poleturner's workshops
stayed on their default, spears (value 10, against 18 for pikes), one because
set_workshopwas never called for it and one because it failed (below); three of the four fletcher's workshops stayed on bows (15, against 30 for crossbows). - Plan and notebook unused.
update_planandnotebook_writewere never called (plan and notebook empty at the end), so only the handoff of 20:34 crossed the compaction. It said 13 iron mines while listing 16 tiles, and the next reasoning (20:38) doubted its mines: afind_sites, aninspect_building(the mine was staffed, 2 of 2) and 14 game seconds.
What worked
- Iron. 17 mines delivered 336 iron: 54% of the net worth, 63% of the growth over leaving the game alone, 15.7 of the 31.5 points. At the end they delivered about 11 a minute, about 250 net worth a minute, against about 4 weapons a minute (about 65) from 14 workshops.
- Food and popularity held. Food never fell under 21 (39:51), popularity never under 49, nobody left, and the population stayed at 98.
- Extra rations. From 35:58 they added 4 a month. With taxes back at average from 36:50, popularity rose from 52 (35:16) to 76 (39:32), +3 a month in the reading of 39:09, while the granary fell from 100 to 34. It ended them at 39:34.
- Backing out. It cut taxes at 58 (16:39) and 53 (19:50); none at 19:50 took popularity from 53 to 67 in 154 seconds.
- The chapel. Religion read +2 in 9 of the 13 readings from 23:48 to 43:04 and in the final one, for 250 gold once; one tax step (average to low) is the same 2 points a month and costs about 20 gold a month at 98 people.
- Placement. Of 78 placements asked (66 in
build_structure, 12 inplace_near), 70 were placed (62 and 8; 2 of them by the tile-map retry, a hovel 2 and 5 tiles and an orchard 11 and 11 tiles away); 7 were not placed and one wasunverified, all with a remedy, and the final count of every building type equals what was placed (theunverifiedhovel was not built). It worked fromfind_sitestile targets and saw nine images in the game. - Weapons sold to keep the armory open. It read 46 of 50 at 33:30 and sold 15 weapons in the next minute; the armory first read full at 43:04, and 100 weapons were made in all (Market).
Market
Bought: 200 planks in two 100-plank trades (1:10 and 6:01: 800 gold, 48 and 60 game seconds for 20 clicks), 85 cheese (680 gold), 50 bread (400) and 25 meat (200). That is 2,080 gold for goods worth 840 at the sell price: 1,240 of net worth (2.5 points) went at the moment of purchase, and the food was then eaten and the planks built with. The tool's own report counted 70 cheese and 1,960 gold. Six cheese orders, for popularity (variety, above):
| Order at | Asked | The tool reported | The recording's gold series |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3:56 | 6 lots (30 units) | 6 lots, 240 gold | 6 drops of 40 (4:08 to 4:18) |
| 16:48 | 4 lots | "a purchase did not show in the reader within 5 seconds": none | 1 drop at 17:00, food up by 4 |
| 22:35 | 4 lots | the same: none | 1 drop at 22:47, food up by 5 |
| 24:33 | 3 lots | 3 lots, 120 gold | 3 drops (24:46 to 24:52) |
| 27:48 | 3 lots | 1 lot, the same note | 2 drops (27:59, 28:01), food up by about 5 each |
| 34:08 | 4 lots | 4 lots, 160 gold | 4 drops (34:19 to 34:26) |
A lot is 5 units at 8 gold. The clicks of the three stopped orders had bought, so the game charged 3 lots (120 gold, 15 units) the tool did not count. Its handoff recorded one such order as not registered and "retry if needed"; it retried none of the three.
Sold: 50 weapons for 715 gold and 100 planks for 100, nine weapon trades in six turns (29:23, 33:29,
36:39, 39:09, 41:16, 43:04), mostly "to free up armory space" in its reasoning, and planks (20 at
35:44, 40 at 37:20 and 40 at 41:41) to make room for iron. Selling leaves net worth unchanged (every
reply says netWorthChange 0). The 23 market_trade calls took 510 game seconds, 19% of the 45
minutes.
| Weapon (sell price) | Workshops ending on it | Made | Sold | In the armory | Worth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pikes (18) | 8 poleturner's | 42 | 5 for 90 | 37 | 756 |
| Spears (10) | 2 poleturner's, others until set | 29 | 25 for 250 | 4 | 290 |
| Bows (15) | 3 fletcher's | 20 | 15 for 225 | 5 | 300 |
| Crossbows (30) | 1 fletcher's | 9 | 5 for 150 | 4 | 270 |
| All | 14 | 100 | 50 for 715 | 50 | 1,616 |
"Made" is what is in the armory plus what was sold. The first three poleturner's workshops were set to
pikes at 10:06 to 10:26 and five more from 31:51 to 32:56; the poleturner's workshop at (375,455) was
never targeted and the one at (379,459) answered not_a_workshop at 31:42 (a hovel drawn over it) and
was not retried. The fletcher's workshop at (367,445) was set to crossbows; the three others made bows.
Cost and speed
43 turns, 123 tool calls (23 market_trade, 21 find_sites, 21 wait_and_observe, 18
build_structure, 10 set_tax, 10 set_workshop, 7 place_near, 4 observe, 3 building_info, 2
each expand_storage and set_rations, one each map_overview and inspect_building), 2.27
million tokens and $2.889 at the profile's prices (preparation $0.389, play $2.403, compaction
$0.097), the highest of the eleven first-round games logged (Claude Opus 5.5's two games cost $2.47
and $2.64). Play was 19,733 output tokens ($0.99), 2.07 million tokens read from the cache ($0.52),
71,729 written to it ($0.90) and 100 uncached. The interview cost $0.821 more. The agent run took 41.4
real minutes, 5.8 of them waiting for the model; the context was compacted once (17 seconds). The 21
waits used 854 game seconds, 32% of the 45 minutes; the acting calls took 1,713 (63%): the 18
build_structure calls 775 (43 seconds on average; 30 to 84 for the calls of three or four
placements), the 23 market_trade calls 510, 10 set_workshop 132, 7 place_near 130, 10 set_tax
102 and 2 expand_storage 46. The rest, about 100 seconds, passed between calls, five times as the
host's 5 game seconds after a turn without a screenshot.
Providers and the prompt cache
Every request went to Anthropic's API and none failed; all 43 gameplay requests read the prompt cache, 96.7% of the input tokens (2,073,597 read, 71,729 written, 100 uncached). The first read the 28,968 tokens the preparation request had written; the compaction request at 20:34 read 70,609 and wrote 2,377, and the first request after it read 29,512 and wrote 3,838. The interview request came 373.9 seconds after the last gameplay reply, outside the cache's 5 minutes: it read nothing and wrote 61,173 tokens, $0.76 of its $0.821, against $0.102 in the 1.7.1 game, where it came 129.5 seconds after. The runner's log has the run complete at 17:30:43 and the game saved at 17:35:03 (4 min 20 s); the interview began as the save ended.
The interview
Fable put the gap to the person down to scale and compounding: it called its own play a linear,
conservative accumulation game against the person's loop of cheap input, sold output, more buildings
and more people. It said it would reinvest instead of sitting on gold, go all in on the bread chain
and sell the bread, build inns and ale early and spend the popularity on lower rations rather than
taxes, scale iron mines and quarries harder, skip the chapel and the weapons workshops, and use water
pots as job sinks. It praised build_structure by tile, find_sites, expand_storage and the stats
JSON, and complained that a workshop's 100-gold cost was not obvious, that expand_storage failed with
no warning, that find_sites "only searches 25 tiles", that market purchases did not always register
and that the compaction cost continuity; it asked for per-building production rates and for a clearer
early hint that selling and reinvesting is the dominant strategy.
Several claims do not match the run:
- "I stopped at 14 mines because
find_sitesshowed no more nearby; I should have usedmap_overviewto find other deposits." It built 17 mines (its handoff said 13 and listed 16 tiles), and it calledmap_overviewonce, at 0:00. That overview listed four ore fields: three of them held 3, 5 and 6 of its mines, and a cluster near (381,419) that the overview does not list (it shows the four largest) held the other 3; the fourth listed field, 132 tiles at (341,575), was never searched. - "
find_sites... told me 'no more iron' when there was plenty elsewhere." The reply it acted on (21:06) said "Nothing fits within 25 tiles of (400, 439)" and pointed tomap_overviewand tile searches. Its six iron searches were at 0:03, 13:39 (two), 17:45, 20:38 and 20:52; none came after 21:06. "Plenty elsewhere" rests on that one listed field; whether mines there would have fitted or delivered from 130 tiles away is not in the logs. Later searches for fletcher's and poleturner's workshops listed iron-ore spots at (388,423) (21:13) and (396,439) (23:48), but they were not mine searches. By 35:16 iron was also limited by storage (above). - "the 100-gold workshop cost wasn't obvious until placed". The game reference in its prompt lists the Fletcher at 20 W + 100 G and the Poleturner at 10 W + 100 G. Its reasoning at 8:36 listed only wood costs, and "Workshops are 100 gold each" came at 9:56, after four were placed.
- "market purchases sometimes didn't register". In the game they did: the tool's report was wrong for three cheese orders (Market, above).
- "I never addressed the housing/jobs loop aggressively" and "Build hovels in large batches early so the 24-idle cap never binds." The cap is on jobs, not housing: at 6:02 it had 43 people in 50 places with 24 idle, and the rules say it lifts as jobs take idle peasants. From 17:45 to 26:33 it did add jobs (six mines, two bakeries, nine workshops; its reasoning at 23:48 cites the idle peasants), and the population followed, from 74 to 98, then stalled once it stopped.
- "Skip the chapel-for-tax approach and the weapons workshops; they were low-return for the time left." The workshops were near break-even (above). The chapel gave +2 a month in most readings for 250 gold once, the same as a tax step that costs about 20 gold a month.
- "The context compaction mid-run cost me continuity." It did, once: the handoff's wrong mine count (above).
The rest checks out: 4,450 gold and 9,932 in stored goods; no quarry or ox tether ("Quarries plus oxen
I skipped entirely"); find_sites searching 25 tiles around a given tile; both expand_storage
failures; cheese bought repeatedly (six orders) and taxes changed ten times; 24 idle peasants.
For the harness
- Fable's games were the first played with the host running on the game machine itself; that changes nothing the game plays.
- A market check that stopped after a click that had worked. In 1.6.2
market_tradewaits for a reader sample showing exactly the stock and gold change of each click and stops when none shows within 5 seconds. Three cheese orders (16:48, 22:35, 27:48, of 23 calls) stopped that way after clicks that had bought: 0, 0 and 1 lots reported, 1, 1 and 2 bought. The 1.6.3 changelog describes the cause (food the town was eating and part of the month's taxes in the same sample) and counts a purchase from 1.6.3 when the stock rose and the gold fell in one sample. - Storage boxed in. Both
expand_storagecalls (armory 21:59, stockpile 35:16) were refused for want of free ground. A rule that keeps a spot beside the stockpile free came in 1.7.0 and was corrected in 1.7.2; the changelog says the correction is not yet tried in the live game. map_overviewlists the four largest ore fields. A cluster near (381,419) held three of the 17 mines and was not listed; the list is still capped at four.set_workshopand a building drawn over another. The call at (379,459) opened a hovel ("Another building is drawn over this one; give a pixel on its body from a screenshot"); the model did not retry, and the workshop stayed on its default, spears. The poleturner at (375,455) was never targeted.- Readings it lacked. The religion factor was left out of the factors when it was 0 (changed in
1.7.0), so the readings of 25:26, 33:30, 35:16 and 36:39 could not tell a chapel at 0 from none, and
at 33:29 the model took the absence as "religion gone". There were no job or production figures
(
open_jobsand the production readout came in 1.7.0); the model twice wondered whether its buildings were staffed (20:38, 26:22) and asked for production rates. The monthly change was 0 at 43:04 and at the end (food +2, tax −4, religion +2) while popularity fell from 53 to 49 in the last 1 min 56 s, about a point every 30 seconds; the factor behind that is not itemised. - The interview missed the cache because the end-of-run save took 4 min 20 s (above); 1.7.0 types the save's name in one request instead of about 100 keys.
- A little over the budget at the end. From the tick the save was loaded at (2,109) to the final reading (83,302) the game ran 2,706.4 game seconds for a budget of 2,700: 6.0 seconds passed between the load and the first pause, and the budget counted from there (the final reading is 2,700.4 seconds after the first recorded frame).
- No refused calls or stalled replies; 43 requests, none failed. The game saved correctly at the end ("claude fable 5-1 1-6-2 c84994", in this folder).
