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. The
drafter is the same model as the player.
- Model: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (
claude-sonnet-5-5) on the Anthropic API, reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens - Benchmark: Oasis by the Sea construction, version 1.7.3 (commit b967c65), 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. Weapons and armour in the armory count toward net worth at the rules' prices, as since 1.6.0.
- Run 1fefeb89, series 20261016T192138-297b5b78, 2026-10-16: Sonnet's weapons-counted game of the 1.7.3 batch, a fresh series with no memory of any other game. Its no-arms game (run 1d0a2c40, series 20261016T194728-2f79fee8) was played right after.
Result
| This game (1.7.3) | Its 1.7.3 no-arms game | Its 1.6.3 game | Its 1.5.0 game | The person | Left alone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 7,832 | 6,567 | 10,107 | 8,633 | 19,513 | 1,220 |
| Gold | 1,053 | 1,165 | 1,324 | 1,147 | 18,304 | |
| Stored goods, at the sell price | 6,779 | 5,402 | 8,783 | 7,486 | 1,209 | |
| Population / housing | 55 / 90 | 43 / 82 | 26 / 98 | 60 / 74 | 202 / 202 | |
| Popularity | 50 (+1 next month) | 60 (+3) | 49 (+1) | 84 (+2) | 100 | |
| Idle peasants | 16 | 15 | 0 | 24 | ||
| Score | 36.5 | 31.4 | 44.9 | 43.6 | 100 |
A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 6,612 over leaving the game alone, 36% of the person's 18,293. With 55 people and popularity 50 the score is 36.5 by the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity, the net-worth share clipped to −1..2); this game counts on the website's leaderboard. It is 5.1 above its no-arms game and 8.4 and 7.1 below its 1.6.3 and 1.5.0 games.
The stored goods are 224 iron (5,152), 183 apples (732), 480 wood (480), 25 stone (175), 8 bows (120) and 4 crossbows (120). Iron is 66% of net worth. The town ended with 35 empty places in its hovels and one food eaten.
How the game went
Times are the game clock (game time used) when a call began. The game is paused while the model replies, so a reply costs no game time; a build or buy call keeps it running for 20 to 117 seconds while it clicks.
The opening, 0 to 7 minutes. The first call, at 0:07, tried to place a granary and was rejected ("Needs to be placed adjacent to the granary": the save has one). Three woodcutters followed at 0:42 and two hovels at 1:22. At 2:11 one call placed an iron mine and the marketplace; both apple orchards in it failed for want of wood, and the call took 86 s. At 4:09 the 26 people filled the 26 places, 21 of them idle with no open job. Planks were bought at 4:11, and at 4:58 two orchards, two iron mines and two woodcutters went up in a call that ran to 6:55. At 6:57 the granary held 8 food for 26 people ("Food is low"); two stockpiles came at 7:00.
Mines and housing, 7 to 15 minutes. Four orchards at 7:41, two hovels at 8:34, high taxes at 9:00, four iron mines and two hovels at 9:19. A warning at 10:13 said popularity had fallen from 98 to 84; taxes went to low at 10:15 and none at 12:42. At 11:34 it placed the seventh orchard and eighth mine, one site each. The 12:41 reading was the first with 24 idle. It placed five woodcutters at 12:58 and bought 100 planks at 13:46.
Weapons and the last mines, 15 to 19 minutes. One call from 14:53 to 16:20 placed the armory, two fletcher's workshops and four hovels; gold fell from 626 to 426. At 18:10 its reasoning called bows too slow next to mining and ore sites exhausted; it set average taxes, and a search around tile (435, 335) at 18:21 found two ore sites. Its two mines at 18:30 made ten, the last production buildings of the game.
Waiting, 19 to 33 minutes. It built nothing more but three stockpiles (23:50); the last 14 min 21 s went on six waits of 110 to 280 s and tax changes. The host noted the waiting at 23:48 and 28:27. At 28:29 it set high taxes, writing "set taxes for gold at the very end (popularity buffer 84)". Warnings ended the next two waits (30:02, popularity 84 to 66; 31:22, 66 to 48); it waited again after the first and set taxes to none at 31:24. Popularity was under 50 from about 31:13, people left, and the town ended at 55.
| Game minute | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 1,408 | 1,335 | 1,141 | 1,210 | 1,785 | 2,197 | 2,706 | 3,597 | 4,487 | 5,347 | 6,389 | 7,832 |
| Gold | 988 | 1,000 | 780 | 780 | 966 | 626 | 426 | 644 | 644 | 644 | 796 | 1,053 |
| Iron | 0 | 0 | 2 | 7 | 18 | 42 | 68 | 92 | 125 | 156 | 189 | 224 |
| Stone | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 | 25 |
| Wood | 45 | 4 | 96 | 54 | 22 | 142 | 177 | 214 | 281 | 360 | 415 | 480 |
| Food | 50 | 39 | 11 | 10 | 52 | 72 | 91 | 112 | 128 | 145 | 164 | 183 |
| Population | 4 | 20 | 26 | 28 | 49 | 57 | 59 | 63 | 63 | 63 | 63 | 55 |
| Popularity | 95 | 100 | 100 | 100 | 75 | 77 | 83 | 68 | 74 | 81 | 67 | 50 |
Each column is the last reading at or before that minute. Up to 30 minutes the net worth row counts gold, wood, stone, iron and food (at 4) as the recording logs them; weapons are left out, so it reads low.
Weapons
It built an armory and two fletcher's workshops, no other workshop and no armour. At 11:34 its
reasoning weighed fletchers (bows 15) against poleturners and blacksmiths (swords 30) and chose
fletchers on margin. A place_near for the armory found no free spot beside the stockpile at 12:12 and one for the
fletchers was 11 wood short at 12:27; the call at 14:53 placed them. No weapon was in the armory at 17:34; at 17:36
inspect_building showed a fletcher working on bows, and at 17:52 one was set to crossbows. Three bows
were in store at 20:07, and from 23:48 the readout showed a bow and a crossbow every 3 minutes, 0.3 items
a workshop a minute. The end value is 8 bows and 4 crossbows, 240 at the rules' prices: 3.1% of net
worth and about 1.0 of the 36.5 points (35.4 with weapons worth nothing).
The cost, from prompt/game-mechanics.md: 200 gold and 40 wood for the workshops, 5 wood for the armory
and 28 in the items (bows 2 wood, crossbows 3): 200 gold and 73 wood. The town ended with 480 unspent wood,
so wood counts at its sell price, 1: the weapons returned 240 for 273, about 33 less than keeping both
(252 less with wood at the 4 gold a plank cost it). A workshop made about 7 gold a minute; an iron mine,
24 (1.0 to 1.1 iron at 23). The two jobs let two more peasants arrive (below), 0.1 point.
The same 200 gold and 45 wood could have stayed as gold, which counts 1:1 (gold sat at 644 for 8 minutes); paid for a chapel (250 gold), which its no-arms game built (religion +2, popularity 60); or gone to buildings that cost only wood and that it never built: wheat farm, mill and bakery (15, 20 and 10 wood), or a quarry (20) with tethers (5). Its iron-site searches found 3 sites at 2:11, 4 at 9:13, 1 at 11:34 and 2 at 18:21, and none came after that.
Beside its other games and the other models
| This game (1.7.3) | No-arms game (1.7.3) | 1.6.3 game | 1.5.0 game | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Iron mines | 10 | 10 | 12 | 10 |
| Last production building placed | 18:30 | 17:10 | 8:53 | 12:10 |
| Food | 7 orchards | 4 orchards, dairy | 6 orchards, wheat, mill, bakery | 4 orchards, dairy, 2 wheat, mill, 2 bakeries |
| Weapons / chapel | armory, 2 fletchers / none | none / chapel | none / none | none / none |
| First planks bought | 4:11 | 3:57 | 1:10 | 0:36 |
| Planks bought | 155 | 115 | 250 | 290 |
Against the 1.6.3 game this one ended 2,275 lower: iron −1,748 (224 against 300), flour −390, gold −271, apples −268, wood +162, weapons +240. The iron gap follows the mines: twelve by 8:53 there; here three at the 4:58 call, seven at 9:19 and ten at 18:30. Its marketplace went up at 2:11 (0:25 in the 1.5.0 game). Against its no-arms game it ended 1,265 higher: apples +396, wood +373, iron +368, weapons +240, gold −112. So weapons were 240 of that gap, and they worked against the 1.6.3 fall.
In the 1.7.3 batch so far, 36.5 is the best of four finished games (Haiku 23.0 with weapons, 26.9 without; Sonnet 31.4 without). Weapons mattered unevenly: 240 of Sonnet's net worth, 810 (19%) of Haiku's 4,163, whose weapons game scored below its no-arms game. Among the 1.6.3 round's second games on this map (Gemini 68.0, Sol 54.6, Fable 45.2, Sonnet 44.9, Opus 28.9 down to GLM 15.3), 36.5 would stand fifth; the versions differ. The first round's best was Opus at 52.0.
What held it back
- No new production from 18:30. In the 14 min 21 s after that call ended it added nothing that makes goods, with 461 to 1,053 gold and 141 to 480 wood in hand. Population is employed plus 24 here: 59 with 24 idle at 16:23 (35 employed, the workers its buildings need), 63 with 24 at 20:07 (39, after two mines), and the same at 31:22. The rules say new peasants stop arriving at 24 idle; its reasoning at 17:34 read it as "new ones just join the idle pool".
- The last tax raise. From 28:29 to 31:24 taxes at 62 gold a month took gold from 644 to 1,053 (+409, 1.8 points) and cost popularity 84 to 50 (3.4 points against holding at 84) and 8 people (0.4): about −2 net, 38.5 against 36.5. It had raised taxes three times; the first two dips healed at +1 a month, the last had no time.
- A slow start. 21 idle at 4:09 with 1,000 gold and 40 wood, three woodcutters until 4:58. Its 155 planks (620 gold) lost 465 of net worth, 2.0 points. It meant to buy 40 at 13:46: its reasoning says "buy 40 wood for 160 gold", the call asked 20 lots of 5. It ended with 480 wood.
- One food, no bread, no stone. Its plan listed a wheat farm; none of its 23 reasoning blocks
mentions wheat, flour, a mill, a bakery, a church or religion. Stone stayed at 25; it never asked
find_sitesfor a quarry (at 9:00 it weighed "a distant stone quarry" and chose mining). - A popularity warning not acted on. Taxes were cut within 2 s of the warnings at 10:13, 20:07 and 31:22; after 30:02 it waited again and lost 18 more points.
What worked
- Ten iron mines. 224 iron (5,152) was 66% of net worth, at 0.9 to 1.1 iron a mine a minute in every readout from 16:23.
- Food and storage held. Seven orchards fed up to 63 people on full rations (food was 8 once, at 6:57); stockpiles were expanded at 7:00 and at 23:50 with 2 of 12 piles empty.
- Every placement reported as placed is in the final count. Five calls had one that did not go through (the granary, two orchards at 2:11, a hovel at 8:34, the armory at 12:12, the fletchers at 12:27). An iron mine, a fletcher and a hovel were placed 5, 1 and 4 tiles from their targets, and the result said so. No call was refused; the only tool error was the last wait, at the deadline.
Market
155 planks (at 4, worth 1) bought for 620 gold and nothing sold: 465 net worth lost against the sell price. The first buy, at 4:11, got 55 of 80 asked (the tool stopped for storage room); the 100 at 13:46 came just before the call that used 69 wood, 45 of it on weapon buildings. The two took 105 game seconds.
Cost and speed
26 turns, 59 tool calls (14 find_sites, 11 waits, 10 build_structure, 7 set_tax, 17 others), 1.51
million tokens and $0.409 at the profile's prices ($2 per million input, $10 output, $0.10 cache read,
$2.50 cache write): preparation $0.078, play $0.330, no compaction. The run took 23.3 real minutes, 2.7
of them waiting for the model. All 26 requests read the prompt cache (96.9% of input tokens). Waits took
about 960 of the 2,000 game seconds, build_structure 570. The interview cost about $0.022, with 75,628
of its 77,918 tokens read from the cache.
The interview
Sonnet put its result at about 40% of the person's, its growth "linear" against their compounding, and
named four causes: no bread chain, population stalled at 55 to 63 with 24 idle, no stable tax, and
wasted time. Playing again it would build bread first, a church and fear buildings, housing and jobs and
quarries, and skip the fletchers ("close to worthless"). It found the tools good, said some replies cost
"1–2 minutes" of game time it had not meant, and said open_jobs: 0 with 24 idle confused it.
Against the game, its figures match (7,832 and 19,513, 1,220, 55 and 202, popularity 50 and 100, no bread
chain, stone skipped, fletchers 0.3 items a minute at 100 gold). Not matching: it said its goods were
mostly wood and iron, but wood is 7% of them and iron 76%; the 40% is of net worth, the score is 36.5;
the minutes were build calls (86, 117 and 87 s), not replies, which use none; open_jobs: 0 was right,
since employed matched the workers its buildings need at 12:41, 16:23 and 20:07, so there was no open job
to fill, and housing (90) was already ahead; and "close to worthless" is about break-even here. The last
result of each of the 26 turns carried the game clock, but no call reports its own duration.
For the harness
- The granary line. The rules' Start section says to place the required granary; the save has one
(
docs/benchmark.md), so the first call of this game and of the no-arms game was rejected; here it cost 20 game seconds. - Lots against units.
market_tradetakes lots of 5, as its text says; a 40-wood intent became 100 planks. The slip is the model's, but a units argument would remove it. - Waiting warnings and notes worked as built: the model acted on three of four popularity warnings; after the host's two notes its next calls were a stockpile (23:50) and a tax change (28:29), not new production.
- The reader's memory watchdog forced one collection at about 22:18 (a 20 s stall); the game ran on. It saved correctly at the end ("claude sonnet 5-5 1-7-3 1fefeb").