Muse Wonder

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: Muse Wonder (meta/muse-wonder) on OpenRouter, served only by Meta (no fallbacks), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens
• Benchmark: Oasis by the Sea construction, version 1.7.3 (the series records commit e0e0eb4, 1.7.3 relocked with a compaction-retry fix that leaves play and scoring unchanged; the version was first recorded at 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 606aaedb, series 20261018T104237-1ff2ab88, 2026-10-18: Muse Wonder's weapons-counted game of the 1.7.3 batch, a fresh series with no memory of any other game. Its first attempt, on 2026-10-17, failed on an OpenRouter key limit. Its no-arms game was still playing when this was written and is not in the tables.

Result

A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 5,786 over leaving the game alone, 31.6% of the person's 18,293. With 91 people and popularity 50 the score is 34.7 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 11.0 above its 1.6.3 game (net worth +12.5, population +0.2, popularity −1.7) and 16.7 below its 1.5.1 game (net worth −11.4, population −0.6, popularity −4.7); with weapons counted for nothing it would be 33.9.

The stored goods are 148 iron (3,404), 102 stone (714), 65 flour (650), 64 bread (256), 134 wood (134), 4 metal armour (120), 9 wheat (72), 2 crossbows (60) and 3 cheese (12). Iron and stone are 59% of net worth, gold 23%. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 15 empty places in its hovels, low taxes (54 gold a month) and 67 food, one of two foods eaten.

How the game went

Times are the game clock when a call began (the recording's clock; the run clock in the observations reads a few seconds later). The game is paused while the model replies; a build call keeps it running for 16 to 98 seconds (median 47).

Waiting for wood, 0 to 9 minutes. After a status reading, map_overview, seven find_sites searches and a plan (none uses game time), its first call at 0:01 placed three woodcutters, two hovels, an apple orchard and a wheat farm, using 41 of its 45 wood. It then waited 121 s for wood to reach 35. Two hovels, an iron mine and the marketplace followed at 3:01, an iron mine and a quarry at 4:12 (a dairy farm, an orchard, a woodcutter and a tether were refused for 1 to 10 wood). Idle peasants were 21 at 3:00 and 24 at 4:11. At 5:34, with 18 food for 34 people, it set half rations (−4 popularity a month). Gold stood at exactly 1,000 from 0:55 to 8:08, when 20 apples were its first purchase; planks (50) first at 9:36.

Bread, the first workshops and iron, 9 to 21 minutes. Six buildings at 9:57. Popularity fell from 100 at 5 minutes to 67 at 11:40, and full rations came at 11:41. Food was 14 for 49 people at 12:32 (a warning); 30 apples and 20 bread at 14:09 and 14:23 took gold from 640 to 240. The armory and a fletcher's workshop went up at 15:17, low taxes at 16:18, an armorer's workshop at 18:05 (see Weapons), then two woodcutters and two iron mines at 19:24 and two more mines at 20:48.

Jobs, 21 to 28 minutes. A food warning cut a wait short at 22:11 (23 for 68 people); six searches for wheat, apple, dairy and hops farm sites found none. The context was compacted at 22:21. Two bakeries at 22:24, the ninth iron mine at 23:30 (the last site find_sites listed on the ore strip), a mill at 24:23, a quarry, a bakery and a hovel at 26:36, the seventh bakery at 27:30.

Average taxes, then the end, 28 to 33 minutes. Average taxes at 28:20 (66 gold a month, −4 popularity) and four more buildings at 28:30. Popularity went from 72 at 27:29 to 57 at 30:24; it set low taxes again at 30:34, placed two woodcutters at 30:44 and a stockpile pile at 31:10 (its last building), and waited at 31:27 and 32:28; the last wait ended at the deadline.

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, wheat and weapons are left out, so it reads low (the flour, 650 at the end, and the weapons are in the End value only).

Weapons

It built one armory, one fletcher's workshop and one armorer's workshop, and no blacksmith, poleturner or tanner. Its plan at 0:01 listed "Weapon workshops + armory" as the fourth step. At 15:07, just after a gold warning (240 left), it read building_info for the armory and four of the five workshops; at 15:17 it placed the armory (5 wood), an iron mine and the fletcher's workshop (20 wood, 100 gold); set_workshop moved the fletcher from bows to crossbows at 16:10 (8.6 game seconds); the armorer's workshop (20 wood, 100 gold) followed at 18:05.

Output came late and slowly. Inspections at 18:41 (fletcher) and 20:10 (armorer) found each staffed, working and not short of input, and the readouts showed no deliveries until 22:24; the first crossbow and the first suit were in the armory at 23:29, at least six minutes after the fletcher's workshop was placed and three and a half after the armorer's. After that the readouts show at most one item per three minutes from each: 2 crossbows and 4 suits of metal armour in all, 180 at the rules' prices (30 each), 2.6% of net worth, 6 of the armory's 50 places. The model took the silence for a possible fault: its reasoning summary at 20:48 put "reliable iron and quarry output over workshops", its handoff at 22:21 said "Do NOT build more workshops until a first delivery appears", and it built none. It sold no weapon.

Against its cost: by the mechanics table the three buildings took 200 gold and 45 wood, and the output used 6 wood and 4 iron (92 at the sell price). That is 343 of net worth (200 + 51 + 92) for 180 back, 163 behind (0.7 points), though the weapons themselves added 0.8 points to the 34.7. The 200 gold, held, would count 1:1 (0.9 points); the 45 wood was the scarce input of this game (below). In the readouts from 28:29 an iron mine delivered 1.0 to 1.1 iron a minute (23 to 25 gold), a workshop 0.3 items (9). The two jobs are worth at most two people (0.1 points). The other uses its logs show it pricing are the iron mines it placed after the workshops (the strip had free sites until 23:30) and a chapel (250 gold, looked up at 15:07, never built).

Beside its other games and the other models

Against its 1.6.3 game this one has more mines, quarries, tethers and bakeries and a quarter of the weapon buildings (3 against 12, which cost 1,100 gold and 225 wood by the table for 630 back). Without weapons its net worth is 6,826 against 3,507 there and 9,603 in the 1.5.1 game, where no armory was on offer. So the weapons' own value does not explain either move: they were 0, 630 and 180 in the three games while the score went 51.4, 23.7 and 34.7 (without weapons 51.4, 20.9 and 33.9). Whether the 1.6.3 workshops' spending cost the rest of that town something one game cannot say.

Among the nine weapons-counted games of the batch (Wonder's no-arms game is not in it), 34.7 is fifth, behind GPT-6.1 Sol 82.3, Gemini 4 Argon 67.4, Claude Fable 5.1 37.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 36.5 and ahead of Claude Opus 5.5 32.9, GPT-6 Luna 25.7, Claude Haiku 5.5 23.0 and GLM 5.3 Flash 18.9. By net worth it is sixth (Sonnet, Fable and Opus are above it), by population third (Gemini 167, Sol 150), and its 50 popularity is equal third lowest. Its 180 in weapons is the second smallest of the nine (Fable 45; Gemini 1,272 the largest). Among the 1.6.3 round's second games it would stand fifth (above Opus 28.9, below Sonnet 44.9); the best of the 1.5.x round was Opus's 52.0, 0.6 above its own 51.4.

What held it back

• Wood. Nine of the eleven placements that did not go through were refused for want of wood (1 to 10 short), six of its ten waits were waits for a wood level (507 of the 2,000 game seconds), and it bought planks twice, 100 in all, with 1,000 gold untouched until 8:08. From 24:06 gold was 710 or more while wood stood between 7 and 66 until 30 minutes. Net worth, by the recording's measure, stayed under its starting 1,404 until 17:05.
• Half rations and thin food. Six minutes of half rations (5:34 to 11:41) took popularity from 100 to 67; food stood between 5 and 65 all game, and 80 apples and 20 bread were bought (800 gold).
• Popularity from 85 to 50. It was 85 at 17 minutes, then fell with low taxes (−2 a month from 16:18), the average-tax window (28:20 to 30:34, −4) and, at the end, one food type of two eaten; no chapel. The 22 points between 72 (27:29) and 50 are 2.2 score points.
• Jobs, not houses. Idle peasants were 19 to 24 at every reading from 3:00, open jobs 0. The standing buildings' jobs (mechanics table: 9 mines at 2, 4 quarries at 3, 7 bakeries, 2 mills at 3, 12 woodcutters, 4 tethers, 6 farm buildings, 2 workshops) come to 67, and 67 plus 24 idle is the 91 people.
• Nine iron mines. find_sites listed one site left on the strip at 23:30; the 1.5.1 game fitted twelve and ended with 225 iron against 148.

What worked

• Iron. 148 iron (3,404) is 49% of net worth; nine mines delivered 1.0 to 1.1 each a minute from 28:29.
• A bread chain. Seven bakeries and two mills fed 91 people; the readouts to 32:27 show 59 bread delivered in three minutes against 22 flour and 15 wheat, and 65 flour (650) stood unused at the end.
• Placements. Every one reported as placed is in the final count (60, and 3 stockpile piles), and the 44 find_sites searches used no game time.
• Compaction. One request wrote the handoff (stop, 33.8 s, $0.059, 73,204 of 77,847 tokens from the cache); the estimate fell from 74,264 to 49,010 of the 120,000 budget.

Market

100 planks (4 each, worth 1), 80 apples and 20 bread (8 each, worth 4) were bought for 1,200 gold, and 35 stone sold for 245. The purchases lost 700 net worth against the sell price (3.1 points; planks 300, apples 320, bread 80); selling leaves net worth unchanged. Planks were bought at 9:36 and 19:06, food at 8:08, 14:09, 14:23, 25:35 and 30:24. These are units at the market's fixed prices. All nine market calls traded in full and took 121 game seconds.

Cost and speed

53 turns, 108 tool calls (44 find_sites, 19 build_structure, 10 waits, 9 market_trade, 9 building_info, 17 others), 2.54 million tokens and $1.447 billed by OpenRouter, every request to Meta (preparation $0.098, play $1.290, compaction $0.059). The interview cost $0.053 more, with 51,956 of its 54,848 tokens read from the cache. The agent run took 37.0 real minutes, 10.1 of them waiting for the model (11.5 s a reply, longest 22 s) and 34 seconds more on the compaction; three fast waits saved 55 s. All 53 gameplay requests read the prompt cache, 96.5% of the input tokens, and no gap between a reply and the next request passed 95 seconds.

Of the 2,000 game seconds, build_structure took 895 (19 calls, 60 buildings placed of 71 asked, 14.9 s a building, 47 s a call), the waits 716, market_trade 121, other acting calls 115, and the host's holds about 133 (24 acts without a screenshot request, 5 s each, and two top-ups to the 8-second minimum turn). Its 1.6.3 game came to 9.2 s a building (21 calls, 60 buildings) and its 1.5.1 game to 4.6 s (29 calls, 70 buildings). Neither earlier game ran with the host on the game machine; this one did, so against them the slower building mixes the version and the host's place.

The interview

Wonder called its result "respectable" against doing nothing but put the person's net worth at nearly three times its own, and read the gap as composition (1,584 gold and 5,422 in stock against 18,304 and 1,209) and population (91 against 202, "repeatedly stalled at 24 idle peasants"). Playing again it would make bread the central industry (it had 2 wheat farms, 2 mills and 7 bakeries against the person's 10, 7 and 57), buy wheat for the mills, sell continuously, build a church and cathedral, use the fear factor ("my biggest blind spot"), grow housing and jobs together, and build more mines, quarries and tethers. It called its main mistake valuing goods "too statically" and building "a little of everything". It asked for automatic-trade controls and per-building inputs and outputs; it said the weapon workshops "appeared broken for a long time before eventually delivering single items" and that compaction "lost some strategic nuance".

Against the game: the building counts, the 24 idle, no church, no fear buildings (efficiency 100%), the stone-only sales and the slow workshops match, and so do iron 23, flour 10 and wheat 8 at the sell price; the wheat buy price it quotes (23) is in the harness's price table, and the run bought no wheat. Two statements do not match. "I bought wheat only indirectly through emergency food purchases": it bought no wheat, only planks, apples and bread. "I used low/average taxes for several hundred gold": by difference, taxes brought about 1,700 (gold rose 1,344 from 15 minutes while 640 went on planks, food and workshops and 245 came from stone). One holds only partly: the idle count did sit at its cap of 24, but the population grew from 36 at 7:17 to 91 as jobs were added. "Too few tethers" cannot be told from the logs (each of four quarries delivered 0.9 to 2.7 stone a minute in the readouts). The handoff it called accurate is so in its counts of buildings and housing; one failed attempt in it is mislabelled (the dairy farm at (449, 379) was refused at 4:12 for 10 wood, not for room). There is no automatic-trade tool; the only route would be raw game_action clicks.

For the harness

• The granary line. The rules' Start paragraph says to place the required granary; the save has one, and the first status showed it. No call tried one.
• Silent workshops. inspect_building said "working" with no missing input from 18:41, the readouts showed 0 deliveries until 22:24, and the first items came at least six minutes after the fletcher was placed. The logs do not say why; the model took it for a fault and built no more workshops.
• Placement refusals. 11 of the 71 placements asked did not go through (9 for wood, 2 for room), all with feedback empty; the wood refusals' remedy named a wait or a purchase, and it waited or bought.
• Compaction. It ran once, at 22:21; the first and only summary request wrote the handoff (outcome stop), so the text-only retry that e0e0eb4 resizes was not exercised.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("muse wonder 1-7-3 606aae").