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 (no arms), version 1.7.3 (the series records commit e0e0eb4, 1.7.3 relocked with a compaction-retry fix that leaves play and scoring unchanged; 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 store count nothing toward net worth; sold at a marketplace they bring their gold, which counts.
• Run 56c3ee21, series 20261018T112154-c97aa1e3, 2026-10-18: Muse Wonder's no-arms 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 weapons-counted game of the same version is run 606aaedb (series 20261018T104237-1ff2ab88, played earlier the same day); the Weapons and Beside sections compare the two.

Result

The weapons game's stored goods include 180 of weapons at the rules' prices, the 1.6.3 game's 630; this game's count none. A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 6,877 over leaving the game alone, 37.6% of the person's 18,293. With 98 people and popularity 64 the score is 41.2 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 6.5 above its weapons-counted game of the same version (net worth +4.8 points, population +0.3, popularity +1.4), 17.5 above its 1.6.3 game and 10.2 below its 1.5.1 game, where no armory was on offer.

The stored goods are 161 iron (3,703), 158 flour (1,580), 89 stone (623), 240 wood, 12 bread (48) and 1 apple (4); the armory is empty, because all 13 crossbows it made were sold. Iron is 46% of net worth, gold 23%, flour 20%, stone 8%. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 32 empty places in its hovels, low taxes (58 gold a month) and 13 food for 98 people.

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 5 to 72 seconds (median 35).

The opening, 0 to 5 minutes. Its first call at 0:01 placed two woodcutters, an iron mine and an orchard; the pixel-targeted granary was rejected and the pixel-targeted hovel came back screenshot_expired after the call's 72 s. Two hovels at 1:20, then a 121 s wait for wood. Dairy farms were not placed at 3:42, 4:12 and 4:23; the marketplace went up at 4:37. Idle peasants were 24 at 5:01.

Food, iron and a tax test, 5 to 10 minutes. 70 planks at 5:31 and 30 apples at 6:30; a mill, a bakery and two iron mines at 6:49, two more mines at 7:53. Average taxes at 7:41 (28 gold a month, −4 popularity) took popularity from 100 to 81; taxes went back to none at 9:56.

Weapons and bread, 10 to 15 minutes. The armory and a fletcher's workshop at 10:07, a second fletcher at 11:31; a wheat farm, two hovels and a second mill by 13:11. The first crossbow reached the armory between 13:10 and 13:50. The context was compacted after the wait that ended at 14:47.

Wood and food shortages, 15 to 24 minutes. Wood stood at 1 to 3 from 15:59 to 17:16 and food reached 0 at 17:16; it sold 10 iron (230 gold), bought 40 planks and 20 apples (320), and at 17:50 placed two bakeries and its seventh mine. The eighth mine (the last site find_sites listed), the first quarry and a tether came at 18:55; 5 crossbows were sold at 19:45.

Taxes and the end, 24 to 33 minutes. Low taxes at 24:25, average at 26:56, low again at 27:44; 5 crossbows sold at 27:50; two mills and two hovels at 28:18; two woodcutters and a hovel at 29:00, its last building. It waited 110 s and 50 s, selling its last 3 crossbows at 31:58 and 32:12. Food reached 0 again at 32:12 and popularity went from 99 at 24:31 to 64.

Each column is the last reading at or before that minute. Before the End column the net worth rows count gold, wood, stone, iron and food (at 4) as the recording logs them; flour, wheat and weapons are left out, so they read low (the flour, 1,580 here and 650 in the weapons game, is in the End values only).

Weapons

It did not leave weapons alone: one armory and two fletcher's workshops, 13 crossbows made and all 13 sold for 390 gold. It built no poleturner, blacksmith, armorer or tanner.

When and why. Its opening reply already planned to sell weapons at the marketplace ("must sell weapons, armory value is 0"). At 8:51, with 557 gold and 2 wood, it read building_info for the fletcher, armory, blacksmith, chapel, inn and brewery. At 10:07 one call placed the armory (5 wood) and a fletcher's workshop (20 wood, 100 gold), done by 10:47; set_workshop moved it from bows to crossbows at 10:53. A second fletcher at (451,361) was refused at 11:08 ("Too close to signpost"); it went up at (430,350) in the 11:31 call and was set to crossbows at 11:55. The logs hold only one-line reasoning summaries (24 of the 82 replies, no visible text), and none says why the workshops were built. Its notes do: the notebook at 13:51 ("crossbow sells 30 for 3 wood"; sell weapons from the armory at the market, "they count 0 stored") and the handoff at 14:47 (the fletchers an "expensive gold sink, only 2 built"; crossbows "SLOW; do not over-invest in fletchers until rate proves out"; weapons "must be SOLD before end"). The 30-gold price is in the market_trade description, which lists weapon prices the no-arms rules leave out.

What they made. The readouts show the two workshops at 0.3 to 1.0 crossbows a minute together, 0.7 most of the time. Sales: 5 at 19:45 (150 gold), 5 at 27:50 (150), 2 at 31:58 (60), 1 at 32:12 (30), 32 game seconds in four calls; none went unsold. At 17:03, with wood at 1 to 3 since 15:59, a summary shows the model checking the fletchers' use of wood; at 0.7 crossbows a minute they use about 2 wood a minute (3 each), small against the 20 a minute the readouts credit to the woodcutters, and the logs do not settle why the stock stayed so low.

Cost against return. By the mechanics table the two fletchers and the armory cost 200 gold and 45 wood (the placement results say the same) and the 13 crossbows 39 wood. At the game's values (gold 1, wood 1) the outlay is 284 and the 390 gold leaves 106 ahead, 0.5 points of the 41.2. With wood at 4, the price it paid for planks, the outlay is 536 and it ended 146 behind. Gold stood unspent at 439 from 11:53 to 17:02, so wood, not gold, was short.

What else. An iron mine costs 20 wood and no gold and delivered 1.0 to 1.1 iron a minute (23 to 25 gold); a fletcher about 0.35 crossbows (about 10 gold), for 100 gold and wood. At 14:50 find_sites still listed three free mine sites; the sixth to eighth mines came at 14:50, 17:50 and 18:55. The workshops' 45 wood is two mines and 5 over. A chapel (250 gold) and an inn, looked up at 8:51, were not built.

Beside its other games and the other models

Against its weapons game. The 1,091 of net worth between the two games, item by item:

• The weapons. Both games spent the same on the buildings (200 gold, 45 wood). Net of that and of the wood or iron the items used, the chain was 106 ahead here and 163 behind there (180 held against 200 gold, 45 wood, 6 wood and 4 iron): a 269 difference, 1.2 of the 6.5 points. The no-arms rule cost this game nothing, since every crossbow was sold at the price the weapons rules would have counted. Here the first crossbow was in the armory within 3 minutes of the first workshop being set; there nothing was in the armory at 22:24 and the first two items came at 23:29, more than 6 minutes after the fletcher was set (16:10). The logs do not say why; the layouts differ: these fletchers stand 3 and 10 tiles from the nearest stockpile pile, that game's 37, and its armory and armorer 42.
• Gold. Purchases were 840 here against 1,200 there and sales 620 against 245, so the market left it 735 better off; taxes, by difference from the 1,000 start, were about 1,320 against 1,740. The weapons game taxed low from 16:18 and average from 28:20 to 30:34; this one held none until 24:25 but for the test at 7:41 to 9:56.
• Flour, bread and iron. Five wheat farms and four mills against two and two, four bakeries against seven: 158 flour and 12 bread here, 65 and 64 there (wheat, flour and bread together 1,628 against 978). Five iron mines stood by 8:29 here; the weapons game had two until 9:57 and its ninth came at 23:30.
• People and popularity. The weapons game ran half rations from 5:34 to 11:41 (popularity 100 to 67) and ended at 50; this one kept full rations, held popularity at 94 to 100 from 13:50 to 24:31, and ended at 64. It had 15 hovels against 12 and 74 jobs against 67.

So the weapons explain about a quarter of the net-worth gap; the rest (822 of net worth, 3.6 points, and 1.7 points of population and popularity) comes from a different town. These are two single games.

Against its other games. Weapons held were worth 0, 630 and 180, then 390 sold, across the 1.5.1, 1.6.3, 1.7.3 weapons and no-arms games, while the scores went 51.4, 23.7, 34.7 and 41.2; with weapons counted at nothing the 1.6.3 game would score 20.9 and the 1.7.3 weapons game 33.9. Their value does not explain the first two moves, and about a fifth of the last (1.2 of 6.5 points).

Beside the other models. Of the nine no-arms games of the batch, 41.2 is fourth: Gemini 4 Argon 86.2, GPT-6.1 Sol 62.4 and GPT-6 Luna 41.9 are above it; Claude Fable 5.1 40.5, Claude Opus 5.5 37.7, Claude Sonnet 5.5 31.4, Claude Haiku 5.5 26.9 and GLM 5.3 Flash 23.3 below. The no-arms game beat the same model's weapons game in seven of nine pairs (by 3.0 to 18.8) and trailed in two (Sonnet −5.1, Sol −19.9); Wonder's +6.5 is the third largest. Four models built weapon workshops anyway and sold: Luna 70 spears for 700, Wonder 13 crossbows for 390, Gemini 27 spears for 270, GLM 14 bows for 210; five built none.

What held it back

• Wood in the first 17 minutes. Four of its nine waits were waits for a wood level (301 of the 2,000 game seconds), wood stood at 1 to 3 from 15:59 to 17:16, and 110 planks were bought (440 gold, 330 of net worth lost). No placement was refused for wood, against nine in the weapons game.
• One bakery from 6:49 to 17:50. The handoff at 14:47 called a second bakery reasonable; food stood at 8 (14:47), 3 (15:59) and 0 (17:16, popularity −7 next month). At the end 158 flour (1,580) stood unbaked.
• Jobs, not houses. Idle peasants were 16 to 24 at all 44 readings from 3:40, open jobs 0 at each; the 74 jobs plus 24 idle are the 98 people, with 32 places empty (a person is worth 0.05 points).
• Taxes against popularity. From 24:25 the low and average taxes brought about 1,160 gold (5.1 points by difference) while popularity went from 99 to 64 (3.5 points), including a month at −10 when food hit 0 at 32:12 with 1,695 gold in hand: about 1.6 points ahead, unless lower popularity also slowed growth.
• Late and thin stone, eight mines. The first quarry came in the 18:55 call; three tethers for four quarries gave at most 8 stone a minute (30:05). The 18:55 search listed one mine site; the weapons game fitted 9 mines and the 1.5.1 game 12.
• Nothing built after the 29:00 call. From 30:00 it held 1,315 to 1,899 gold and 114 to 240 wood; a mine placed then would deliver about 3 iron (80 gold) at best, for 20 wood.

What worked

• Iron. 161 iron (3,703) is 46% of net worth, plus 10 sold; five mines stood by 8:29, each delivering 1.0 to 1.1 a minute.
• The weapons chain paid its gold back (390 against 200), with nothing left unsold.
• Full rations and no taxes held popularity at 94 to 100 from 13:50 to 24:31, after the one tax test.
• Placements. All 67 reported as placed are in the final count; 10 of 77 asked did not go through (5 no free spot, 3 refused at the signpost, the granary and the expired hovel). No call was refused and no request failed.
• Compaction. One request wrote the handoff (outcome stop, 26.2 s, $0.050, 4,452 bytes, 73,844 of 75,998 input tokens read from the cache); the estimate fell from 74,929 at 13:51 to 46,767 of 120,000.

Market

110 planks (4 each, worth 1) and 50 apples (8 each, worth 4) were bought for 840 gold: planks at 5:31 and 17:17, apples at 6:30 and 17:34. The purchases lost 530 of net worth against the sell price (2.3 points; planks 330, apples 200). Sold: 10 iron for 230 at 17:03 and the 13 crossbows for 390; selling leaves net worth unchanged except that the crossbows add their gold. Seven of the nine market calls traded in full; the last two sales were partly traded, since only 2 and then 1 crossbow stood in the armory. The nine took 108 game seconds. It bought no wheat.

Cost and speed

82 turns, 145 tool calls (63 find_sites, 25 build_structure, 20 building_info, 9 waits, 9 market_trade, 19 others), 4.17 million tokens and $2.071 billed by OpenRouter, every request to Meta (preparation $0.096, play $1.925, compaction $0.050); the weapons game took 53 turns and $1.447. The interview cost $0.055, with 66,804 of its 69,623 tokens read from the cache. The agent run took 40.0 real minutes, 13.2 of them waiting for the model (9.7 s a reply, longest 67 s) and 26 s on the compaction; four fast waits saved 141 s. Of the 82 gameplay requests, 81 read the prompt cache (96.5% of input tokens); the 60th (the reply at 18:55) read none, 49 s after the one before it, and cost $0.178 against about $0.02.

Of the 2,000 game seconds, build_structure took 845 (25 calls, 67 buildings placed of 77 asked, 12.6 s a building, 34 s a call), the waits 678, market_trade 108, the other acting calls 126, find_sites 4, and the host's 41 holds of 5 s after acts without a screenshot request 205. Its weapons game came to 14.9 s a building (19 calls, 60 buildings), its 1.6.3 game 9.2 s (21 calls, 60 buildings) and its 1.5.1 game 4.6 s (29 calls, 70 buildings). This game and its weapons game ran with the host on the game machine (their recordings sit in that machine's checkout); the older two did not.

The interview

It ran 34 s after the run ended: 4 answers. Wonder called its result "respectable" against doing nothing and put the person at more than double its net worth. It read the gap as composition (1,899 gold and 6,198 in stock against 18,304 and 1,209: "a stockpile" against "a throughput machine"), population ("repeatedly" at the 24-idle cap) and the person's fear buildings (140% efficiency), which it "never used at all". Playing again it would make bread the core industry, buy wheat for the mills, sell bread continuously, use fear buildings with a church, match housing to jobs, and build more mines, quarries and tethers. It named its two fletchers a mistake ("production was glacial") and its framing of stored goods as "as good as gold" its biggest error. It asked for auto-trade controls, a shorter delivery window, and a statement of conversion ratios and of the fear-factor effect.

Against the game: the building counts (5 wheat farms, 4 mills, 4 bakeries, 8 mines, 4 quarries, no church, no fear buildings), the 24-idle cap, the early wood and apple purchases, the late and reversed taxes, the slow fletchers, "too few tethers" (3 for 4 quarries; the person has 33 for 10), the 40-second screenshot limit, the 8-action cap and the 3-minute readout window match. Several statements need care. The fletchers were not a loss in gold: the 13 crossbows brought 390 against their 200, and bakeries (10 wood) and mines (20 wood) cost no gold, so the 200 gold could not have bought them; wood was short. "A unit of flour yields multiple bread" fits the readouts (from 14:49 flour in store rose by 142 while the bakeries delivered 15 to 21 bread a minute from 22:12), but the worry that baking destroys value cannot be checked, as the reasoning is not logged. "A fuller search would have found more" mine sites is not checked: the logs show only the 18:55 search, which listed one. The 17:17 "panic" purchase was partly real (food was 0) and partly timing (wood read 1, then 76 half a minute later, 40 of the 75 being the planks just bought). Buying wheat at 23 for profit is not tested: the run bought none. There is no tool for auto-trade thresholds, and the fear effect is in the game reference behind building_info, which the model never queried for a fear building.

For the harness

• The granary line. The rules' Start paragraph says to place the required granary; the save has one, and the first reading showed it. The first call tried one at a pixel and it was rejected ("Needs to be placed adjacent to the granary").
• find_sites against the game. Four dairy-farm and orchard spots it listed were not placed (no free spot or no open side, 3:42 to 4:37), and a fletcher spot (11:08) and a hovel spot (12:32) it listed were refused as too close to the signpost. The weapons game met the same dairy and orchard refusals.
• Prices in the tool text. The no-arms rules leave weapon prices out, but the market_trade description lists them, and the model's notes use them.
• Compaction. It ran once, at 14:47; the first and only summary request wrote the handoff (outcome stop), so the text-only retry that e0e0eb4 resizes was not exercised.
• One cache miss. The 60th gameplay request read nothing from the cache 49 s after the previous reply; the logs do not say why.
• The reader's watchdog forced one collection after a 20 s stall at about 26:31; all 25 build_structure results reported feedbackCoverage: reader_active. The game saved correctly ("muse wonder 1-7-3 56c3ee").