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; all 136 preparation, play and compaction requests in the run's cost events were billed to OpenAI), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens
• Benchmark: Oasis by the Sea construction (no arms), 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 store count nothing toward net worth; sold at a marketplace, they bring their gold.
• Run 37272798, series 20261017T110149-e6a5f069, 2026-10-17: Luna's no-arms game, a fresh series with no memory of its others. Its weapons-counted game on this version (run 942133fb, series 20261017T100904-17a7e98e) was played earlier that day; its Oasis games from earlier rounds are run e096e3e3 (1.6.3) and run 8057df86 (1.5.0). This game counts on the website's leaderboard.

Result

A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 7,414 over leaving the game alone, 40.5% of the person's 18,293. By the website's formula (80% net worth share, 10% each population and popularity, the net-worth share clipped to −1..2) the score is 41.9: 32.4 points from net worth, 4.1 from 85 people and 5.4 from popularity 54. Iron is 59% of net worth (222 units, 5,106), gold 26% and stone 12% (145, 1,015); the rest is flour, wood, apples, bread, wheat and cheese (297), and 4 spears that count nothing. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 13 free places in its hovels and 14 food, three kinds eaten.

How the game went

Times are the game clock when a call began, read from the recording. The "Game time left" in tool results and observations agrees with it to within about a second in this run (over 100 results compared). A build call keeps the game running while it clicks (up to 34 s here).

The opening, 0 to 5 minutes. Its first find_sites calls asked for woodcutters, a granary, an orchard and a hovel; the granary answer said a new one must touch one it has, and it placed none. It built a woodcutter, an orchard and a hovel at 0:00, two woodcutters, a dairy farm and a hovel at 0:34, low taxes at 1:22, the marketplace at 2:22, its first iron mine at 2:45, three stockpile piles at 3:02, three woodcutters at 3:20 and three orchards by 4:59. Gold stayed near 1,000 for six minutes; average taxes from 5:16 pulled popularity down.

Mines, and the first workshops, 5 to 13 minutes. Iron mines at 6:01 and 6:19 (four in all), woodcutters at 6:34 (eight), a hovel at 8:20. At 8:35 it built an armory and at 8:47 asked for three poleturner's workshops; two fit. A wait for spears at 9:00 was ended after 69 s by a warning that popularity had fallen from 67 to 57, with no spear yet. It set no taxes at 10:11, double rations at 10:47 (food +8 a month), extra at 11:52 and full at 12:26, and built mines at 10:19 (two), 12:08 and 12:34 (eight in all). The first five spears sold at 12:51.

Stone, and the last mines, 13 to 21 minutes. Quarries with ox tethers at 13:00, 15:50 and 18:47 (a tether found no room within 4 tiles at 15:50; two went up at 16:15), two more mines at 19:15 (ten), the chapel at 19:43, a hovel and a third workshop at 20:42, 15 bread at 21:03 and a wheat farm at 21:14. Its find_sites for iron at 19:35 and 20:37 and for quarries at 20:37 and 21:03 found nothing within 25 tiles of the spots asked.

Workshops, bread and the end, 21 to 33 minutes. Four more workshops at 24:13, 24:23, 24:53 and 25:12 (a call at 23:47 was one wood short), 20 bread at 25:40, high taxes at 25:50 (popularity 75, then 54 at 28:17), and at 28:26 a mill and a bakery, its last buildings. Then 20 spears sold at 29:56, 20 planks bought at 30:09, more spears sold at 31:29, 32:42 and 32:53, and no taxes at 33:03.

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; flour and wheat (146 at the end) are left out, so it reads a little low, and the last column is the true net worth.

Weapons

It built them, although the rules said they count nothing in store. The rules (in the run's inputs.json) say that what the workshops make "counts nothing" in the armory and that "sold at a marketplace, it brings its gold". Its reasoning at 8:20 took that as a trade: making weapons "is allowed even if their value remains zero in the armory until sold", and it could "build a poleturner and armory, then sell spears". At 12:51 it wrote that it should sell as soon as it had five. It never called set_workshop; the workshops kept their default product, spears (1 wood each, from building_info).

It built the armory (5 wood) at 8:35 and seven poleturner's workshops (100 gold and 10 wood each, as the build results report): two at 8:47, then one each at 20:42, 24:13, 24:23, 24:53 and 25:12. That is 700 gold and 75 wood with the armory. They made 74 spears (74 wood): 70 sold in ten lots of 5 to 20 for 700 gold, and 4 were left in the armory, worth nothing. Each sale read a net worth change equal to its gold (+50 for five spears), as 1.7.3 intends.

So 700 gold and about 150 wood went in and 700 gold came out: roughly 150 of net worth below building none, 0.65 points, plus 119 game seconds of placing and selling (6% of the budget) and 20 planks (80 gold) bought at 30:09, which its reasoning tied to keeping spear production going. By the game's readout the first two workshops made 1.0 spear a minute each (10 gold) and returned 200 gold by 20:37, about what they cost. The five built from 20:42 on cost 500 gold and 50 wood; with five to seven standing, the readout gave 0.5 to 0.8 a minute per workshop. From 20:37 to the end the armory took in 53 spears; the first two at their early rate account for about 25, so the five made about 28, 280 gold (my estimate). At 25:50 its reasoning noted that the payback "won't be immediate within the current run". An iron mine gave 1.0 to 1.1 iron a minute (23 to 25 gold) for 20 wood and no gold, but from 19:35 its searches found no mine site left. Gold was not short (never under 1,148 after 8:19, 2,216 at the end); wood was (one wood short at 10:55 and 23:47). What else was open: the bread chain, which it began at 21:14.

The weapons-counted game on this version built an armory, two fletcher's workshops and a blacksmith's workshop (400 gold, 65 wood) for 330 in held weapons. Of the six finished no-arms games, two built weapon workshops: GLM's five fletchers sold 14 bows for 210; this game sold 70 spears for 700.

Beside its other games and the other models

Luna's four Oasis scores are 39.0 (1.5.0, where weapons counted nothing and no tool offered the Armory), 25.9 (1.6.3), 25.7 and 41.9 (1.7.3, weapons counted and not). Weapons in store were worth 375 and 330 in the two weapons-counted games, 1.6 and 1.4 points, against drops of 13.1 points (1.5.0 to 1.6.3) and 16.2 (no arms to weapons counted). What separates the high games from the low is iron: 9 and 8 mines by 15 minutes against 4 and 2. This game's lead of 3,636 over the weapons game is 3,680 in iron (5,106 against 1,426) and 923 in gold, less 616 in stone, 330 in weapons and 21 in the rest. These games do not settle whether weapons pulled the model off the mines: the weapons game built its armory and a first fletcher at 7:29 and then only two mines, while this game built its armory and two workshops at 8:35 to 8:47 and then six more mines; and since it built weapon workshops anyway, there is no weapon-free Luna game on this version. Each cell is one game.

Beside the other models. Among the six finished no-arms games 41.9 is the highest (Fable 40.5, Opus 37.7, Sonnet 31.4, Haiku 26.9, GLM 23.3), and 8,634 the highest net worth (Fable 7,664, Opus 7,540). Of the 14 finished 1.7.3 games it is third by both, behind the weapons-counted games of GPT-6.1 Sol (82.3, 16,661) and Gemini 4 Argon (67.4, 13,174). Against earlier rounds it would stand fifth among the 1.6.3 round's second games (behind Gemini 68.0, Sol 54.6, Fable 45.2 and Sonnet 44.9) and seventh in the first round, below Sol's 43.4.

What held it back

• Sites ran out at ten mines and three quarries. The 1.5.0 game fit twelve mines and six quarries on the same map. From 19:30 there was no further iron or stone site in range, and gold went unspent.
• Jobs, not housing, capped the population. Idle peasants were never under 19 in a reading from 2:45 on (24 at 4:16 and at the end) and open jobs were 0 in every reading but two. The rules say new peasants stop arriving at 24 idle. Population stood at 85 from 29:25 with 13 places free.
• Popularity spent on taxes, twice. It set taxes 20 times, between none and low for most of the game, with a spell at average from 5:16 (88 to 57 by 10:10, ending in a warning) and at high then average from 25:50 (75 to 54 by 28:17). Popularity ended 54 against 95 at the start, 4.1 points of score. The tax gold was about 2,000 (2,046 by subtraction: end gold, less the 1,000 start and the 700 of spear sales, plus the 580 of purchases and the chapel and workshops), 24% of net worth.
• A chapel that registered nothing. 250 gold (1.1 points); religion read 0 in every reading from 19:58.
• The bread chain came late. The wheat farm stood at 21:24, wheat first showed in store by 28:26, and the mill and bakery went up at 28:26, under 5 minutes before the end. Its reasoning there took the bakery for a food variety measure, since flour (10) is worth more than the bread (4) baked from it.
• Stone arrived late. The first quarry went up at 13:00; the 16:07 readout showed two quarries with nothing delivered, and stone stayed at 25 until 18 minutes.

What worked

• Iron. Eight mines by 12:46 and ten by 19:30, 1.0 to 1.1 iron a mine-minute; 222 iron is 59% of net worth, against 153, 110 and 62 in its other games.
• Taxes within a popularity floor. About 2,000 gold, with popularity never under 52. It answered the 10:10 warning with no taxes at 10:11, and the food warning at 11:51 (28 food for 53 people on double rations) with rations cut to extra at 11:52 and full at 12:26.
• Placements held. All 53 build_structure, 3 place_near and 5 expand_storage placements reported as placed are in the final count. Five did not go through (an orchard and the third workshop for room, a tether for room within 4 tiles, a dairy farm and a workshop one wood short), each with a remedy in the result. No call was refused and no model request failed.

Market

35 planks (140 gold: 10 at 2:36, 5 at 4:50, 20 at 30:09) and 55 bread (440 gold: 15 at 21:03, 20 at 25:40, 20 at 29:33) bought for 580 gold, which lost 325 of net worth against the sell price (planks 105, bread 220). It sold only spears: 70 for 700, each lot adding its gold to net worth because weapons in store count nothing. No iron, stone or other good was sold, so 6,121 of iron and stone sat in store. These are units at the market's fixed prices. The 16 market calls took 86 game seconds (4.3% of the budget), 52 of them for the ten spear sales.

Cost and speed

132 turns, 220 tool calls (69 find_sites, 36 building_info, 32 build_structure, 20 set_tax, 16 market_trade, 15 waits, 12 status, 8 inspect_building, 12 others), 6.41 million tokens and $0.132 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.003, play $0.124, compaction $0.006). The interview cost $0.001 more, with 63,748 of its 65,504 tokens read from the cache. The run took 55.0 real minutes, 26.3 of them waiting for the model (12 s a reply); the context was compacted three times (77 s). All 132 requests read the prompt cache, 97.0% of the input tokens. Five waits late in the game ran fast-forwarded (270 game seconds in 100 real seconds).

Of the 2,000 game seconds the 15 waits took 900, build_structure 416 over 32 calls, inspect_building 88, market_trade 86, set_tax 55 and the rest 56; the 69 find_sites calls took no game time. build_structure placed 53 buildings: 7.8 game seconds per building. Its weapons game took 7.3 (330 s for 45), the 1.6.3 game 9.7 (641 s for 66) and the 1.5.0 game 2.7 (153 s for 56). Both 1.7.3 games had the host on the game machine; the 1.5.0 and 1.6.3 games did not (before this batch only Fable's games of 2026-10-16 did). Luna's 1.7.3 games were not slower per building than its 1.6.3 game.

The interview

Luna put the gap down to treating raw materials and stockpiling as the core of the economy and not turning them into cash, to investing in poleturners "whose output I sold" instead of the bread economy, and to housing and jobs that stopped supporting growth. Playing again it would build a bread chain early (buying wheat if farmland ran short), build housing with jobs, add a church and cathedral, consider fear buildings and spend little on weapons. It found the placement, inventory, production and inspection tools useful and asked for a clearer early signal of which chains pay back.

Against the game these match: 8,634 against 19,513 and 85 against 202; iron and stone as most of the value (6,121 of 8,634); the person's 18,304 gold; poleturners whose output was sold (70 spears, 700 gold); a population that stopped at 85; popularity above 50 throughout (lowest reading 52). Three points need care. Housing was not what stopped growth: 13 places stood free and 24 peasants had no work. "Cash" would not have raised the score: selling iron or stone leaves net worth unchanged, and what it lacked was something to put the 2,216 gold into. And the bread economy as "much more productive" is the person's account, not tested here: its one bakery ran under 5 minutes, and its own reasoning at 28:26 priced bread below flour. The signal it asked for was already in the status readings: the per-building production readout showed a mine at 0.8 iron a minute at 10:11 and a workshop at 0.5 spears a minute at 10:47.

For the harness

• The granary line. The rules' Start paragraph says to place the granary. Here the find_sites answer said a new granary must touch one it has, and no Granary call was made, so none was rejected (its weapons-counted game did call it, at 0:00, and was rejected).
• Weapon prices outside the rules. The no-arms rules leave out weapon prices, but the market_trade description lists them (spears 20 buy, 10 sell; pikes 36 and 18), and Luna's reasoning at 8:20 and 29:56 used them: bows 15, maces worth 7 over their iron, pikes 18 against spears 10.
• The last wait_and_observe was answered "Session deadline" and logged as an error, as at the end of other games. The game's memory watchdog forced one collection at 12:34 after a 20 s stall; no request failed.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("gpt-6 luna 1-7-3 372727").