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, providers openai then azure (no other fallbacks), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens; all 96 billed requests went to OpenAI
• Benchmark: Large Barren Desert construction, version 1.7.3 (commit e0e0eb4), 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. Commit e0e0eb4 is 1.7.3 relocked with a fix to the compaction retry that leaves play and scoring unchanged; the batch's first games record b967c65.
• Run 8433f913, series 20261018T120404-5a1fc1f7, 2026-10-18: Luna's weapons-counted game of the 1.7.3 desert batch, a fresh series with no memory of any other game, played after the first attempt failed on an OpenRouter key limit on 2026-10-17. Its no-arms game is still playing and is left out. Its desert games from earlier rounds are run f2a35309 (1.5.6, series 20261012T123257-cf634001) and run 04b070e6 (1.6.3, series 20261014T091943-e0b00398).

Result

A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth ended 400 below leaving the game alone, −8.3% of the person's growth of 4,792. By the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity, the net-worth share clipped to −1..2) the score is 5.7: −6.7 from net worth, +3.1 from population and +9.3 from popularity; this game counts on the website's leaderboard. It is 9.1 above its 1.6.3 game and 40.2 below its 1.5.6 game. The 5,192 of leaving the game alone leaves out the part of the starting package that waits for storage room (about 1,150 at the sell price, per docs/benchmark.md), which this game took in by 2:17; against the whole package, about 6,500 by the rules, the town ended about 1,700 lower.

The stored goods are 47 iron (1,081), 154 stone (1,078), 21 bows (315), 28 ale (280), 4 swords (120), 3 crossbows (90) and 22 apples (88): gold, iron and stone are 36%, 23% and 22% of net worth, weapons 11%. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 2 free places in its hovels and 22 food, all apples, which the host's last warning called low (23 for 80 people).

How the game went

Times are game time; for a call, when it began (the recording's clock; the run clock in the observations reads a second or two later).

The opening, 0 to 3 minutes. Its first replies (all at 0:01) ran nine find_sites searches and put up, in one build_structure call of 68 s, the marketplace, three hovels, a chapel, an inn and two iron mines by tile. Its opening plan named woodcutters; find_sites had said no trees stood within 12 tiles, and it built none. The stockpile had no empty pile at 1:14; three stockpiles at 1:25 let the rest of the starting package in by 2:17. At 2:18 one call placed an armory, two fletcher's workshops and two hovels.

Taxes, food and the wing's start, 3 to 17 minutes. Mean taxes at 3:08, when the inn read +8 and religion +2, and extortionate at 5:35; the first two fletchers were set to crossbows at 3:24 and 3:41. With food at 25 it bought 100 apples (4:12) and 100 cheese (4:55). At 6:00 it placed two more iron mines on the sites find_sites returned; at 6:49 a quarry and a tether on the western stone (93 tiles from the keep), a blacksmith's workshop and a hovel. Wood read 1 at 7:40, when the first piece, a crossbow, reached the armory; 100 planks (8:02) paid for four more fletchers and the ninth and last hovel (8:40). The context was compacted at 10:12. Then 100 meat (10:14), 100 planks twice (10:51, 13:23) and fletchers one to three at a time (place_near placed one of three, "no more free spots", 11:27): 13 stood by 15:31, six of the later ones set to crossbows at 14:03 to 16:06. The second quarry went up at 16:36.

The first long wait and the food bills, 17 to 22 minutes. A 180 s wait at 17:15 began with 5 wood in the stockpile, and wood read 0 from 17:51 to 21:55. Then 100 apples (20:18), 100 cheese (20:54), a gold warning (298 left, 21:31), 20 pitch sold and 100 planks (21:32, 21:49).

Quarries, 22 to 28 minutes. High taxes (22:27), average (24:26); six quarries and five tethers between 22:50 and 27:45, its last placements. 40 iron sold for 920 (24:04); the second compaction (24:24); 90 apples and 20 ale (24:31, 24:58; the apples stopped at 90 of 100 on a full granary), which brought a second gold warning (394 left, 25:13); 100 planks in two lots (25:52, 26:17).

Waiting, 28 to 33 minutes. The armory could not be expanded (28:06: no free ground beside it), so 15 crossbows and 5 swords were sold for 600 (28:23, 28:32). The population reached 80 at 28:21. After a plan update at 29:04 it waited 180 s, 55 s and 16 s; nothing was bought or built, wood read 6 to 14 and then 0 from 29:37, and gold rose from 436 to 1,740. The food warning ended the last wait after 14 of its 16 seconds.

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 and ale are left out, so it reads low. At 29:03 the armory held 17 bows, 1 crossbow and 2 swords (345) and the stockpile 29 ale (290), which puts the 30-minute figure near 4,000, not 3,395.

Where the starting gold went. The 5,000 gold was all in by 0:25.

5,000 − 4,720 − 2,000 − 400 − 1,500 − 350 + 1,720 + 3,990 = 1,740; the recording's gold gains, less the sales and the package, give 3,910 for taxes.

Weapons

It built one armory (5 wood, 50 places), 13 fletcher's workshops and one blacksmith's, and no poleturner, armorer or tanner. The armory and the first two fletchers were done by 3:02, the blacksmith's in the 6:49 call, the other eleven fletchers from 8:40 to 15:31. Eight fletchers were set to crossbows; five never were and made bows. The first piece reached the armory at 7:40, 4:38 after the first fletchers stood; the first sword came at 10:50, the first bow at 12:55. The 3-minute readouts gave the 13 fletchers 0 to 4 pieces a minute together (about 2 in the last ones) and the blacksmith 0 to 0.7.

It made 21 bows, 18 crossbows and 9 swords: 48 pieces, worth 1,125 at the rules' prices (bows 15, crossbows 30, swords 30). At 28:23 the armory held 39 of its 50 places and could not grow, so it sold 15 crossbows and 5 swords for 600; 525 stayed in store, 11% of net worth and 8.8 of the 5.7 points (with weapons worth nothing the same town scores −3.1).

By the table in prompt/game-mechanics.md the fletchers cost 1,300 gold and 260 wood, the blacksmith's 200 gold and 20 wood and the armory 5 wood; the pieces took 96 wood (2 a bow, 3 a crossbow) and 9 iron (1 a sword). That is 1,500 gold, 381 wood and 9 iron, about 2,090 at the store prices (wood 1, iron 23), for 1,125 made: the wing ended about 960 (16 points) below the same gold, wood and iron held. The 381 wood is half of the town's 745 (about 245 from the start, 500 bought at 4), and the 13 fletchers made 39 pieces in about 290 fletcher-minutes. Wood stood at 10 or less for 722 of the 2,000 seconds, 299 of them in one stretch (16:59 to 21:58).

What else the town could have done shows in the last readouts. The 13 fletchers delivered 4 bows and 2 crossbows in 3 minutes (40 gold a minute at the rules' prices; 95 at their best, in the windows ending 27:44 and 28:45). The 8 quarries delivered 13 to 15 stone a minute (93 to 107 gold at 7) and the 4 iron mines 0.7 to 0.8 iron each (15 to 19 gold), neither taking an input. The eight quarries and tethers cost 200 wood, but came late: the second at 16:36, six more after 22:50. No fifth iron site came up in searches at 6:00, 7:41 and 25:14. The gold could also have stayed gold, which counts 1:1.

Beside its other games and the other models

Weapons do not explain Luna's scores across versions. Its two weapons-counted games differ by 9.1 points while the weapons held fell by 1,215 (1,740 to 525); the gain came from stone (154 against none, +1,078), gold (+1,203) and a town of 80 people at popularity 93 against 50 at 78. Pieces per workshop over the game were alike (3.3 in the 1.6.3 game, 3.4 here). The 1.5.6 game, with no weapons and no armory, scored 40.2 above this one: its 12 quarries and 39 tethers gave 530 stone (3,710) against 154.

Six weapons-counted desert games of the batch are finished (GPT-6.1 Sol, Gemini 4 Argon and Muse Wonder are being played again after a key-limit failure on 2026-10-17):

Luna is fourth by score and by net worth; in the 1.6.3 round this score would have stood seventh of ten. Its 80 people are the most of the six and its popularity the second highest. The one town with no weapons workshop (Sonnet) scored highest, but the other five do not follow the weapons held (525 here for 5.7, 1,095 for Opus's 19.1). Opus has the nearest plan, 13 fletchers (and 3 poleturners) and an armory, with 7 quarries (the first at 10:31) and 12 tethers; it ended 1,073 higher with 33 crossbows (990), 266 stone and 107 iron, at 66 people, popularity 53 and no food.

What held it back

• Wood bought at 4. There are no trees. The 500 planks lost 1,500 of net worth, buildings took 639 of the 745 wood and the stockpile held 10 or less for 36% of the game.
• Stone late and small. The first quarry (6:49) gave its first stone at 13:06; with six of the eight quarries up after 22:50, 104 stone (728) was mined.
• Food bought at 8, worth 4. 590 food for 4,720 gold lost 2,360. It fed a town of 32 to 80 people whose taxes brought about 4,000.
• Jobs set the population. Idle peasants read 24 in 52 of 69 readings from 3:23 (19 to 24 in the rest), with an open job in one. Between 16:36 and 27:45 seven quarries and six tethers added 27 jobs and the population rose from 54 to 80, two short of the 82 places of its nine hovels and the keep (the last hovel placed at 8:40).
• Nothing built after 27:45. Gold stood at 436 to 1,740 from 28:22. Its reasoning at 28:23 put one more quarry and tether at about 35 stone (245) against 150 lost on the wood, a gain of about 95; at 28:45, 29:04 and 32:07 it weighed a quarry or a fletcher again and built nothing.

What worked

• A chapel and an inn in the first call. The inn read +4 to +8 and religion up to +6 against a tax factor of −8 to −12 from 3:08 to 21:31; popularity stayed 90 to 100 (low 90 at 24:22) at tax levels 5 to 8, extortionate for six minutes (5:35 to 11:45), and ended at 93. Taxes brought about 4,000 gold.
• Storage at 1:25. Three stockpiles, 11 seconds after the 1:14 reading showed no empty pile, took in the whole starting package by 2:17.
• Placement. All 46 build_structure placements went through; four were moved 1 to 6 tiles from the target and each result said so. No tool call returned an error (149).

Market

17 calls: 13 purchases and 4 sales, 236 clicks and 419 game seconds (21% of the budget, 1.8 s a click).

Sold: 20 pitch (21:32), 40 iron (24:04), 15 crossbows (28:23), 5 swords (28:32): 1,720. The purchases lost 4,060 of net worth against the sell price (planks 1,500, apples 1,160, cheese 800, meat 400, ale 200), 85% of the final value; selling leaves it unchanged. The food kept the town fed, so not all of it was waste. After the ale purchase the inn used 2 more (10 at 24:23, 28 at the end).

Cost and speed

94 turns (the last, at 33:20, ended empty with the budget), 149 tool calls, 4.50 million tokens and $0.098 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.003, play $0.091, compaction $0.004). The interview cost $0.002 more, with 58,511 of its 62,046 tokens read from the cache. The run took 48.3 real minutes, 21.8 of them waiting for the model; all 93 completed requests read the prompt cache, 96.8% of the input tokens. The context was compacted twice, at 10:12 and 24:24, each in one request that returned its handoff (32 s and 23 s; 74,634 and 72,318 of 120,000 tokens before). Neither needed the text-only retry that e0e0eb4 re-sized.

Of the 2,000 game seconds the 4 waits took 436 (fast-forwarded: 430 of those seconds in 159 real seconds), build_structure 474, market_trade 419, the host's 60 top-ups 300, inspect_building 151, set_workshop 85 and the rest under 40 (the parts sum to 1,958); the 45 find_sites calls took no game time. build_structure placed 46 buildings in 19 calls: 10.3 game seconds a building (7 to 13 in the multi-building calls, 11 to 17 in the ten single-building ones). On the same measure its 1.6.3 game took 7.0 s (230 s for 33) and its 1.5.6 game 3.6 s (248 s for 68). This game had the host on the game machine and the two earlier ones did not, so the rise mixes the version with the host's location.

The interview

Luna called its result poor: below leaving the game alone, with far fewer people and less popularity than the person. It said its production did not earn back its costs, that it had spent gold on imported wood, food and ale, and that its population stalled at 80 with 24 idle. Playing again it would test the bought-wheat, flour and bread chain early, plan housing, jobs, ale, religion and fear buildings together, and make mines and quarries secondary. It found the readings, inventory, terrain search and tile placement useful, asked for clearer guidance on chain yields and a quicker comparison of a chain's inputs, outputs and net worth, and said it waited while the economy was no longer growing.

Claims checked against the run:

• Match: 4,792 against 5,192; 80 people with 24 idle; the wood, food and ale bought (7,120 gold); one chapel and one inn; full rations all game; no fear buildings, wheat, mill or bakery; two 180 s waits while the town was not growing (17:15, 29:04), 436 s of waiting in all.
• "Stalled at 80": the population was still rising until 28:21 (57 at 17:19) and met its 82 places then. The town grew with its jobs.
• "Less popularity": 93 against 100, the second highest of the six games; the shortfall is small.
• A quicker comparison of a chain: every observation from 1:14 lists each producing type's deliveries and per-minute rates, and building_info the inputs per piece; neither gives a value per building.
• Not testable here: the bread chain's yield; this game never traded wheat.

For the harness

• Armory ground. expand_storage for an armory found no free ground at 28:06 and named selling or demolishing; the model sold 20 pieces, which leaves net worth unchanged.
• Panels behind other buildings. Three of 11 inspect_building calls (7:41, 9:40, 12:56; 54 game seconds) returned the chapel's or the quarry's panel with a warning that no click reached the blacksmith's or a tether, so those were not read.
• The first reply's searches repeated one tile. find_sites listed (474, 396) first for the hovel, chapel, marketplace, armory and blacksmith's, and the model gave it to the marketplace and the chapel; the chapel was moved 6 tiles. The 6:49 hovel reused a tile of the 6:00 call and was moved 4.
• The game saved at the end ("gpt-6 luna 1-7-3 8433f9", 3,537,836 bytes in episode.json).