GPT-6 Luna

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: GPT-6 Luna (openai/gpt-6-luna) on OpenRouter, served by OpenAI or Azure (no other fallbacks), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens; all 119 requests were billed to OpenAI
• 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 942133fb, series 20261017T100904-17a7e98e, 2026-10-17: Luna's weapons-counted game of the 1.7.3 batch. It is a replay: the first attempt (run 73286477) was cut off when the game machine restarted overnight, and this is a fresh series with no memory of any other game. Its no-arms game (run 37272798, series 20261017T110149-e6a5f069) was played right after.

Result

(The no-arms game's goods leave out its 4 spears, which count nothing there.) A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 3,778 over leaving the game alone, 21% of the person's 18,293. With 70 people and popularity 58 the score is 25.7 by the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity, the net-worth share clipped to −1..2): 16.5 points from net worth, 3.3 from population, 5.8 from popularity. This game counts on the website's leaderboard. It is 16.2 below its no-arms game, 0.2 below its 1.6.3 game and 13.3 below its 1.5.0 game.

The stored goods are 233 stone (1,631), 62 iron (1,426), 7 crossbows (210), 31 cheese (124), 4 swords (120), 26 apples (104) and 90 wood (90). Stone and iron are 61% of net worth. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 20 empty places in its hovels, 7 empty stockpile piles and 57 food, which the game counts as five months'.

How the game went

Times are the game clock when a call began (the recording's clock; the run clock in the observations reads under a second later). The game is paused while the model replies; a build call keeps it running for 6 to 37 seconds while it clicks, and the host lets 5 to 8 more seconds pass after each acting call.

The opening, 0 to 4 minutes. The first call (0:00, 38 s) asked for seven placements: the granary was rejected ("Needs to be placed adjacent to the granary"; the save has one), a hovel found no room, and the marketplace, two woodcutters, a hovel and an apple orchard went up. Average taxes at 0:51; an iron mine, a dairy farm and two hovels at 1:08. A popularity warning (89 to 79) ended a wait at 3:02; taxes went to low at 3:13 and none at 3:50. Two hovels and an orchard at 3:21 (a second orchard found no room within 11 tiles), a third orchard at 3:58, when 24 peasants stood idle.

Stone and the weapons start, 4 to 11 minutes. Two woodcutters at 4:22, three stockpiles at 4:36, the first quarry and tether at 5:02 and 5:16, then a 120 s wait for 30 wood. The armory and a fletcher's workshop went up at 7:29. No stone had arrived by 8:59 (25); a second tether went down at 8:37 and stone read 33 at 9:52. A second quarry at 10:03, two hovels at 10:28 (housing 66).

Iron, a blacksmith and the food warning, 11 to 19 minutes. A second iron mine and a blacksmith's workshop at 11:04, a second dairy farm at 11:51. A food warning ended a wait at 14:23 (16 food for 48 people): half rations for 9 s, then two dairy farms at 14:40, the last farm sites it found; ten farm searches at 15:06 found nothing. The second fletcher's workshop went up at 15:06. Average taxes at 15:31 cost 10 popularity points by 16:57 and were dropped. The third iron mine came at 17:14, three hovels at 17:52 (housing 90).

Chapel, double rations, an empty granary, 19 to 24 minutes. A quarry at 19:12, a tether at 19:28, a chapel at 19:41 (250 gold), double rations at 19:55 and mean taxes at 20:03. The granary went from 25 food to 0 by 21:50; popularity fell from 88 to 78 with next month at −16 (food −8, tax −8). Full rations at 21:50 and no taxes at 21:58. Two quarries at 23:22 and two tethers at 23:34.

Bought food, then waiting, 24 to 33 minutes. Low taxes at 25:44, two woodcutters at 25:53, 40 apples at 26:10 and 40 cheese at 26:24 (640 gold), two tethers at 26:49: its last placement. Waits of 120 and 181 s followed; the host noted at 32:06 that it had only waited and read for five minutes, and the model set mean taxes the same minute. Popularity went from 74 to 58 by the end.

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 (the 330 in weapons is in the End value only).

Weapons

It built an armory, two fletcher's workshops and a blacksmith's workshop, and no armorer, poleturner, tanner or armour. The armory and the first fletcher went up at 7:29 and the fletcher was set to crossbows at 7:52. The blacksmith (11:04) was never set; an inspection at 11:33 read "making swords". The second fletcher came at 15:06 and was set at 15:19. The first crossbow was in the armory by 14:23 (none at 12:23), the first sword by 15:06, and the armory read 5 weapons at 21:50, 8 at 26:24 and 11 at 32:15: 7 crossbows and 4 swords. The readouts gave the fletchers 0 to 0.7 crossbows a minute together (0.2 to 0.3 a workshop in the last windows) and the blacksmith 0 to 0.3. At 25:44 and 25:53 its reasoning judged more workshops not worth their output, and at 26:37 it looked for a third fletcher site and placed none. Five inspections found the fletchers staffed and working.

The end value is 330 at the rules' prices: 6.6% of net worth and 1.4 of the 25.7 points (24.2 with weapons worth nothing). By the table in prompt/game-mechanics.md the workshops and armory cost 400 gold and 65 wood (each fletcher 100 gold and 20 wood, the blacksmith 200 gold and 20 wood, the armory 5 wood), and the goods took 21 wood (3 per crossbow) and 4 iron (1 per sword): 400 gold, 86 wood and 4 iron, about 580 at the store prices, for 330. The chain ended about 250 (1.1 points) below the same gold, wood and iron held.

Gold was not short (646 to 1,151 from 3:00 to 26:10), wood was, and the 86 wood is four iron mines' cost. Two mine sites, (417, 345) and (421, 345), were listed at 11:04 and 15:39 and never used. The three mines delivered 1.0 to 1.1 iron a minute each in the last readouts (23 to 25 gold a minute at the sell price), against about 6 gold a minute of crossbows from a fletcher. Two more mines placed with the third (17:14) would have added about 25 iron, 550 gold (an estimate from the readouts, if the sites held and idle peasants staffed them). The 400 gold could also have stayed as gold, which counts 1:1.

Beside its other games and the other models

Against its no-arms game this one ended 3,636 lower: iron 3,680 lower (62 against 222, three mines against ten), gold 923 lower, wheat, flour and bread 162 lower, against 616 more stone, 188 more in apples and cheese and the 330 in weapons the other rules do not count. Of the 16.2 score points between them, 15.9 are net worth. Weapons are not what separates them: the no-arms game built an armory and seven poleturner's workshops itself and sold 70 spears for 700 gold. It started its bread chain late (wheat farm at 21:14, mill and bakery at 28:26) and ended with 13 flour, 4 bread and 2 wheat.

Against its 1.6.3 game, which scored the same, this one put up 3 weapon workshops where that one put up 12 (1,600 gold and 250 wood by the table) and ended with 330 in weapons against 375, the same 7 crossbows and 4 swords, with 3 bows there. With weapons worth nothing both would score 24.2. Against its 1.5.0 game, which had no weapons and scored 39.0, it had 3 iron mines against 12, 10 hovels against 18, 70 people against 86 and popularity 58 against 81; with weapons worth nothing here the gap would be 14.8 points, so weapons do not explain it.

Among the eight finished weapons-counted games of the batch so far (Muse Wonder's failed on a key limit), 25.7 is sixth by score and by net worth, ahead of Haiku (23.0) and GLM (18.9) and behind Sol (82.3), Gemini (67.4), Fable (37.5), Sonnet (36.5) and Opus (32.9); among the 1.6.3 round's second games it would also stand sixth. Five of the six models with both 1.7.3 games finished scored higher with weapons left out (Sonnet, 36.5 against 31.4, is the exception), and Luna's gap of 16.2 points is the largest; the others lie between 3.0 and 5.1.

What held it back

• Three iron mines. The iron strip is 19 tiles from the keep with 178 ore tiles (map_overview, 15:06). Mines came at 1:08, 11:04 and 17:14, and iron ended at 62 (1,426, 29% of net worth), where the no-arms game's ten mines left 222 (5,106). Of six mine searches (each for 3 or 5 sites), the last (23:45) was centred on the stone zone (392, 388), over 50 tiles from the strip's centre (419, 342), and answered that nothing fit within 25 tiles. None of the three hand-offs (10:19, 15:39, 23:11) names a free iron site.
• Wood. Four woodcutters stood from 4:22 to 25:53 and gave 12 to 20 wood a minute; wood stood at 0 to 56 from 8:00 to 24:00 (17 or less in 43% of the recording's readings). Eight waits had a wood target (20 to 50), and it bought 45 planks in all.
• No farmland found, and no bread. After the 14:40 placements every farm search found nothing: ten at 15:06, four at 22:15. Three orchards and four dairies gave about 10 apples and 10 cheese a minute; food fell from 25 at 20:03 to 0 at 21:50 under double rations. It never searched for a wheat farm, mill or bakery; at 15:06 its reasoning planned to buy cheese or apples if food did not recover. The 640 gold of food at 26:10 and 26:24 lost 320 of net worth (1.4 points).
• Jobs, not housing. Idle peasants stood at 17 to 24 in every reading from 3:58 (24 in 51 of 81) with at most two open jobs; the population never passed 70 against housing of 90, and 46 jobs were filled at the end. The rules say new peasants stop arriving at 24 idle. After 23:34 it placed only woodcutters and tethers (one worker each).
• Taxes. No taxes ran 13.2 minutes, low 13.2, average 3.8 and mean 3.2 (20:03 to 21:58, and from 32:06). The last raise took gold from 1,052 to 1,293 (+241, about 130 more than low taxes would have paid) and popularity from 74 to 58: about 0.6 points of net worth against 1.6 of popularity.
• The last 6.5 minutes. Nothing was placed after 26:49; 91 wood, 217 stone and 1,052 gold stood unspent when the host's note came at 32:06.

What worked

• Stone. Five quarries and eight tethers (about 140 wood) gave 233 stone (1,631), 33% of net worth; the last readouts gave 13 to 19 stone a minute, up from 8 at 27:04, after the tethers of 26:49.
• Placements. 45 of 48 were placed in 24 calls. The three misses were the granary, a hovel (no room within 5 tiles) and an orchard (none within 11). Every placement reported as placed is in the final count, no call was refused, and the only tool error was the last wait ("Session stopped while waiting").
• Reversals. The popularity warnings of 16:57 and 21:50 were answered in the next call (no taxes; full rations, then no taxes at 21:58), the one of 3:02 11 s later (low taxes), and half rations were undone after 9 s (14:32).
• Storage held. After the stockpiles of 4:36 the empty piles never fell below 7.

Market

45 planks (4 each, worth 1), 40 apples and 40 cheese (8 each, worth 4) bought for 820 gold; nothing sold. The purchases lost 455 net worth against the sell price (planks 135, apples 160, cheese 160), 9% of the final value and 2.0 points. The five calls took 30 game seconds. These are units at the market's fixed prices.

Cost and speed

115 turns, 200 tool calls (68 find_sites, 30 building_info, 24 build_structure, 16 set_tax, 14 waits and 48 others), 5.47 million tokens and $0.115 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.003, play $0.108, compaction $0.005). The interview cost $0.001 more, with 56,978 of its 59,346 tokens read from the cache. The agent run took 50.3 real minutes, 23.5 of them waiting for the model (about 12 s a reply); the context was compacted three times (at 10:19, 15:39 and 23:11, 57 s in all). All 115 requests read the prompt cache, 96.6% of the input tokens (4,988,783 of 5,163,818).

Of the 2,000 game seconds the 14 waits took 1,147 (five fast-forwarded: 440 game seconds in 153 real seconds), build_structure 331 over 24 calls (median 11 s), the host's 62 top-ups 329, inspect_building 80, set_tax 41, market_trade 30 and the rest under 50 (the parts sum to 2,009: the clock readings overlap by a few seconds); the 68 find_sites calls took 0.1 s in all. build_structure placed 45 buildings: 7.4 game seconds per building (7.1 with the three stockpiles and their 11 s). On the same measure its no-arms game took 7.9 s (416 s for 53), its 1.6.3 game 9.8 s (646 s for 66) and its 1.5.0 game 2.7 s (154 s for 56). Both 1.7.3 games had the host on the game machine; none of Luna's earlier games did (only Fable's of 2026-10-16 did), so the rise from 1.5.0 mixes the version with the host's location. On this map in the batch the measure ranged from about 6 s a building (GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini 4 Argon) to 14 to 20 s (the Claude models), so it depends as much on how a model builds as on the version.

The interview

Luna put the gap to the person at bread: the person turned wheat into a higher-value product and sold it, while it accumulated raw goods and made few weapons, built too little housing and too few productive buildings to use its idle peasants, and raised taxes late at a cost in popularity. It called the food it bought an expensive, late remedy. Playing again it would build a bread economy early, check whether the marketplace can sell bread automatically, build housing, a church and a cathedral, use fear buildings, and stop adding quarries "without enough evidence". It found the structured readings and tile placement helpful and asked for clearer summaries of the bread chain, marketplace automation and ox-tether capacity.

Against the game, the totals, the raw-goods share (85% of stored goods are stone, iron and wood), the bread chain it never built, the missing fear factor (no good or bad things in the town), the idle workforce with no jobs and the late food purchase all match, and marketplace automation is not a harness tool (market_trade only), as it surmised. Three statements do not. It had housing enough: 90 places for 70 people, and jobs were the cap. It did not rely on taxes: they were off for 13 of the 33 minutes and low for 13, and the late raise was to mean (level 7), not high. And its quarries were not the weak spot: 1,631 in stone for about 140 wood, against 330 in weapons for 400 gold and 86 wood (its three mines did better per wood still: about 1,518 in iron for 60 wood). It said it had focused on raw materials, "especially quarries and iron"; the iron had 3 mines against 10 to 12 in its other games, and the interview does not name that as the gap to its no-arms game.

For the harness

• The granary line. The rules' Start paragraph says to place the required granary; the save has one (docs/benchmark.md). The first call included a Granary and it was rejected; the remedy named expand_storage (kind granary).
• A tile search that finds nothing names no ore. The mine search of 23:45 returned "Nothing fits within 25 tiles of (392, 388)" and pointed to map_overview; a search without a tile names the nearest ground (searchedAround). Naming the nearest iron strip here would have been a remedy; the model placed no mine after it.
• Farm searches against the farmland list. At 15:06 map_overview listed 1,454 farmland tiles around (453, 394) and 185 around (444, 375), and ten farm searches centred inside them found no spot. What blocked them (open sides, route to the keep, oasis share, trees) was not checked here.
• The first tether could not be inspected (8:18): inspect_building answered with the quarry's panel and a warning that no click reached the tether. Stone read 25 until 8:59.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("gpt-6 luna 1-7-3 942133").