GPT-6.1 Sol

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-6.1 Sol (openai/gpt-6.1-sol) on OpenRouter, served by OpenAI or Azure (no other fallbacks; all 73 requests of the run were billed to OpenAI), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens
• Benchmark: Large Barren Desert construction, weapons and armour in the armory counted toward net worth, version 1.7.3 (the series records commit e0e0eb4: 1.7.3 relocked with a fix to the compaction retry that leaves play and scoring unchanged; this game never compacted), 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
• Run 5aad0460, series 20261018T133946-f693cdb3, 2026-10-18: Sol's weapons-counted game of the 1.7.3 batch on this map, a fresh series with no memory of any other, 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 of the tables. Sol's desert games from earlier rounds played 1.5.6 (series 20261012T144338-060ec42e, run 6d57093f) and 1.6.3 (series 20261014T112858-49a607da, run 0608bbd7). 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 3,977 over leaving the game alone, 83.0% of the person's 4,792. With 104 people and popularity 51 the score is 75.6 by the project website's formula (80% net-worth share, 10% population, 10% popularity; shares run from doing nothing, 5,192 and 4 people, to the person, 9,984 and 250): 66.4 points from net worth, 4.1 from population and 5.1 from popularity. It is the best game of this batch on the desert so far (Claude Opus 5.5's no-arms game, 67.1, is next; Claude Sonnet 5.5's 27.6 is the best of the other weapons-counted games), above every first-round score (best 67.6) and every 1.6.3-round score except Sol's own 98.3. Sol's two desert games from earlier rounds average about 73. The stored goods are 474 stone (3,318), 59 iron (1,357), 207 bread (828), 34 bows (510), 27 flour (270), 20 pitch (200), 18 ale (180) and 1 wood. Stone is 36% of net worth, gold 27%, iron 15%, bread 9% and bows 6%. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 2 free places of housing and 10 empty stockpile piles.

How the game went

Times are the recording's game clock when a call began; the run clock in the observations reads a few seconds later. A build call keeps the game running for 14 to 103 s while it clicks, and the game is paused while the model replies. Its reasoning summaries are in the log (16 of 44 blocks have text).

Iron and bread on bought wheat, 0 to 4 minutes. map_overview in its first reply (0:01) listed stone 83 to 106 tiles west of the keep, iron ore 57 to 69 tiles east, and no farmland, oil or tree groves. Two stockpiles at 0:01, the marketplace at 0:27, four iron mines at 0:47 (every spot find_sites gave, placed by 1:22), three hovels at 1:29, then at 2:08 three bakeries and a mill and at 2:51 50 wheat for 1,150 gold. At 3:46 it had 29 people in housing for 34, 14 of them idle.

Quarries, a stockpile detour and the weapons wing, 4 to 9 minutes. find_sites found no further iron site at 4:12; it placed three quarries (4:12) and five ox tethers (4:50) and bought 100 planks (5:30). At 6:14 one call set seven stockpile targets in a row toward the iron: none was placed and the call ran 103 game seconds. At 8:03, after reading the chapel's entry, one call placed three bakeries, two fletcher's workshops, the armory, a hovel and a chapel (61 s). Housing stood at 34 from 1:47 to 8:58 and the population at that limit from about 4:50; food fell to 5 at 10:06 and stood under 20 for 206 s in all.

Taxes, quarries and more bows, 9 to 17 minutes. High taxes at 9:10 (popularity −6 a month) with no inn: popularity fell from 100 to 65 by 12 min. At 11:24 it placed the first inn, a hovel and three more fletcher's workshops, at 13:11 five more quarries (eight in all) and at 13:54 it sold 40 iron for 920 gold; it bought 100 planks at 10:45, 12:31 and 14:17. The first stone had reached the stockpile at 11:25, but the eight quarries had five tethers until about 16:40 and the stone readout fell from 13.3 a minute (13:55) to 2.7 (15:34, 16:45). At 15:35 it placed five tethers and three hovels and at 16:47 set low taxes (popularity 54).

Tethers, bakeries and the last gold, 17 to 25 minutes. 50 wheat (16:59), an inn, a mill and a second chapel (17:24), five tethers at 18:35 and five at 19:17 (20 in all), average taxes at 19:58, four bakeries and two hovels at 20:09 (twelve bakeries), 20 ale (21:38, 400 gold) and 50 wheat (21:56). Gold fell to 150 at 22:17 (host warning, 22:21); a hovel followed at 22:22 (one of two found room) and high taxes at 22:39. At 21:38 it had marked the plan's first two steps completed.

Waiting, 25 to 33 minutes. A 180 s wait from 22:50 ended after 150 s on a warning (popularity 80 to 69), at 25:21 with 103 people in housing for 106 and 24 idle. It placed a third inn at 25:22, its last construction. Waits of 150 s, 170 s, 65 s and 40 s followed; at 31:21 it set half rations (−4) and a warning at 32:35 (popularity 61 to 51) made it set full rations again.

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, bows, ale and pitch are left out, so it reads low (about 1,300 in those goods at the 28:28 reading). Iron falls at 15 minutes because 40 were sold.

Weapons

It built the armory (5 wood) and two fletcher's workshops at 8:03 and three more at 11:24, and never called set_workshop: all five made the default, bows (2 wood each, 15 at the sell price; the 14:57 inspection reads "making: bows"). It built no poleturner, blacksmith or armorer. No bow was in store at 11:23 and 2 were at 13:10; the five made 34 by the end, 1 to 2 a minute together from 16:45 in the readouts (about 0.3 each), worth 510: 5.6% of net worth and 8.5 of the 75.6 points. They fill 34 of the armory's 50 places.

The workshops cost 500 gold and 100 wood (100 gold and 20 wood each, prompt/game-mechanics.md), the armory 5 wood and the bows 68 wood: 500 gold and 173 wood, 673 at the sell price. So 510 came back for 673, about 163 below even (2.7 points); the 500 gold kept would have been worth 8.3 points. What else the town might have done: the same gold paid for its two chapels, whose religion factor read +2 on some readings and 0 on others (0 at the end). A quarry costs 20 wood and no gold and, with its 2.5 tethers, delivered about 4 stone a minute (28 in value) in the readouts, against 5 for a fletcher, though its first stone took about 7 minutes to arrive. Its 1.6.3 game used three poleturner's workshops instead (300 gold, 30 wood): 65 spears by the end (26 kept, 39 sold for 390), about 0.9 a minute from each from about 9:30, worth 650 for 400 of gold and wood, 250 above even against this wing's 163 below, a gap of about 410 of the 1,120 between the games.

Beside its other games and the other models

Against its 1.6.3 game (10,289, 98.3). Net worth is 1,120 lower. By stored good the gap is exact: gold −1,493, stone −392, flour −160, wheat −160, wood −35, iron +414, bread +336, bows over spears +250, ale +120. Selling moves value between gold and goods (the 1.6.3 game sold 56 iron and 39 spears for 1,678, this one 40 iron for 920), so that split says little. What differed:

• Taxes began 5 min 42 s later and brought in about 1,500 less. The host's level 3 paid nothing, so the first payment came at 9:15; the recording's payments sum to about 3,900 (54 payments) against about 5,400 (about 65). From 5 to 10 min this game collected 44, that one 512. Late on the rate was 1.0 gold a person a month (104 for 104) against 1.19 (136 for 114).
• Inns came late, so popularity fell further. With taxes at −6 from 9:10 and the first inn at 11:24, popularity was 55 at 18 min; the 1.6.3 game had its inn from 2:47 and never went under 66. At the end both held the tax factor against the inns (−6 and +6 here, −8 and +8 there), at 62 and 87; the last two minutes' half rations took this game to 51.
• A smaller, later town. Housing was 34 until 8:58; the 1.6.3 game had 58 by 3:53 and 90 by 9:07. The population gap was 19 at 12 min and 25 at 18 min, and 10 at 26.
• Weapons: about 410, above. Stone: the first stone arrived at 11:25 here and 11:24 there. The gap (88 at 27 min, 56 at the end) opened between 15 and 27 min, when this game's tethers were 5 until 16:40 and 20 only from 19:53 (the 1.6.3 game had 27 by 15:01); over the last 7 min this game gathered about 27 a minute, that one 23.
• Bread, iron and buying came out about level. Bread, flour and wheat in store differ by 16. Both mined about 83 iron (84 and 82 counting what was sold). The purchases lost 4,145 here and 4,040 there by market_trade, but the 1.6.3 game also set the marketplace's automatic trade through screen clicks (its reasoning at 9:14 to 10:17), and its wood stock stands at 34 to 36 from 14 min. Counting rises of wood paid at 4 gold a plank in its recording gives 607 planks against the 280 of market_trade (the same count finds 540 of this game's 565), so about 330 more planks, about 1,000 of net worth, are outside the 4,040. I did not reconcile that game's gold to the unit.
• Pace: 72 turns and $0.60 against 113 and $1.00 (one compaction there), 17 find_sites against 28.

Against its 1.5.6 game (7,441, 47.6). Net worth is 1,728 higher, 1,218 without the bows. That game counted no weapons and offered no Armory, taxed low (52 a month) with extra rations, and had 11 quarries, 20 tethers and 15 bakeries; this one ends with 474 stone against 314.

Against the batch's other weapons-counted games on this map:

Sol's weapons are the smallest share of the six that built any. Without them it would stand at 8,659, 2,211 above the next game, while Opus (4,770) and Haiku (4,614) would sit under the 5,192 of leaving the game alone. For Sol, weapons do not explain the moves between rounds: its three games stand at 7,441 with none, 10,289 with 260 in store (650 made) and 9,169 with 510. What set this game apart is the town: the only taxes above 64 a month, bread for 104 people, and 474 stone from 8 quarries (266 for the next, Opus). Its Oasis game of the same version (16,661, 82.3) also built five fletchers; they made 195 there.

What held it back

• Taxes and inns late, housing capped. Nothing was collected until 9:15, popularity fell from 100 to 65 in the first three minutes of high taxes with no inn, and the town sat at 34 people from about 4:50 to 9:00.
• A stockpile call that placed nothing. At 6:14 find_sites listed five spots flush with a stockpile; the model sent the first and then six more in a line five tiles apart. The first was not placed (the retry found no free spot nearby and the camera moved) and the other six drew the game's adjacency message. 103 game seconds, 5.2% of the budget; the notebook at 28:12 says the chain "failed adjacency and wasted time; avoid".
• Tethers behind the quarries. Five tethers served eight quarries from 13:48 to about 16:40 and stone fell to 2.7 a minute; it reached 21 to 35 a minute in the readouts only from 25:40.
• Planks. 565 planks cost 2,260 gold and 1,695 of net worth (18% of the final). The seven purchases took 205 game seconds (10%).
• Side bets. Fletchers, two chapels and three inns cost 1,300 gold. 18 of the 30 ale were still in store at the end.
• Nothing built after 25:36. With 24 idle peasants, housing 104 of 106 and gold from 694 (25:40) to 2,505, it waited the last 7 min 44 s. A quarry then would not have repaid (its notebook gives about 7 min for the first stone); a hovel (6 planks) and a job building would have let more people in, each paying about 1 gold a month and adding 0.04 points of population.

What worked

• A bread chain that fed 104 people. Mill and bakeries from 2:08, twelve bakeries by 21:07, 207 bread in store at the end. The 43 readouts add up to about 800 bread from about 140 flour and 150 wheat (my sum, not a game figure): 5 to 6 bread a wheat, about 21 at the sell price for the 23 paid. The bakeries' 37 to 46 a minute went almost wholly to eating (the store rose 3 a minute from 28:00 to 31:20).
• Stone and iron: 3,318 and 1,357 in store, 51% of net worth, from 8 quarries, 20 tethers and 4 mines.
• Inns as the licence to tax. From about 27 min popularity held at 62 with high taxes (−6) and three inns (+6), paying 104 gold a month.
• Batching. 15 build_structure calls placed 65 of 74 buildings; the nine that failed are the stockpile call (7) and a bakery and an inn short of wood. No call was refused.
• The warnings. Six host warnings arrived; the two that ended waits early (25:21, 32:35) were answered in the next call (an inn, full rations).
• The last two minutes. Half rations from 31:21 to 32:42 raised the granary by about 31 a minute against 3 on full rations: about 40 more food (160 of net worth, 2.7 points) for 11 points of popularity (1.1 points).

Market

150 wheat (3,450 gold), 565 planks (2,260) and 20 ale (400) were bought for 6,110 gold, which lowered net worth by 4,145 against the sell prices (wheat 23 for 8, 2,250; planks 4 for 1, 1,695; ale 20 for 10, 200), 45% of the final 9,169. It sold 40 iron at 23 (920 gold) at 13:54; selling leaves net worth unchanged. The 12 market calls took 296 game seconds for 155 clicks (1.9 s a click). Gold: 5,000 at the start plus about 3,900 to 4,000 of taxes and 920 from iron, less 6,110 at the market and 1,300 on buildings, ends at 2,505. It never sold bread.

Cost and speed

72 turns, 72 tool calls (17 find_sites, 15 build_structure, 12 market_trade, 5 waits, 4 each of place_near and set_tax, 3 each of expand_storage and inspect_building, 2 each of update_plan and set_rations, 1 each of map_overview, building_info, observe, notebook_read and notebook_write), 3.38 million tokens and $0.602 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.053, play $0.548); no compaction, the context ending at 73,478 of its 120,000 budget. The interview cost $0.017 more, with 71,915 of its 73,475 tokens read from the cache. The agent run took 35.2 real minutes, 11.7 of them waiting for the model (longest reply 33 s). All 72 requests read the prompt cache (98.5% of input tokens).

Of the 2,000 game seconds, build_structure took 672 over 15 calls, the five waits 566, market_trade 296, the host's default 5 s passes after 43 acting calls without a screenshot 215, inspect_building 64, place_near 52, expand_storage 51, set_tax and set_rations 38 and observe 8; find_sites took none. The five waits were played as fast waits (566 game seconds in 209 real seconds). build_structure placed 65 of the 74 buildings asked, 4.3 a call: 10.3 game seconds per building placed (8.8 without the 6:14 call). Its 1.6.3 game took 7.5 (71 placed in 25 calls) and its 1.5.6 game 4.3 (61 in 28). This game had the host on the game machine and Sol's earlier desert games did not, so the comparison mixes the version and the host's location.

The interview

Sol put its net worth about 8% below the person's, with fewer than half the people and half the popularity, and said the gap was scale and strategy rather than selling: it had put money into distant extraction and treated imported wheat as feed where the person ran bread as a business, and it had grown too conservative late. Playing again it would make bread from imported wheat the engine from the opening in a compact district, sell bread to fund growth, bring in religion and inns sooner, weigh a modest fear factor, and grow housing and jobs together. It found the production readings, storage reports, placement confirmations and inspections helpful and the tile tools valuable at the smaller screenshot; its main complaint was game time lost to construction, trade clicks and the host's default waits. It asked for storage placement diagnostics, production visible before delivery, and trade automation controls.

Against the game: 8% (8.2%), 2.4 times the population, no bread sold, the 24-idle limit (from 25:21, housing 104 of 106), slow stone (first at 11:25), the 43 default waits, the plan marked complete at 21:38 and the half ration cut (stored value up, popularity down) all match. Two statements need a note. "The first suggested site failed adjacency": the first target, a find_sites spot, was not placed because the camera moved after the retry found no free spot; the other six, which it added in a line, drew the adjacency message. And "I considered [the fear factor] but dismissed it without testing" cannot be checked: the reasoning summaries never mention fear and no call looked up a fear building, though the preparation prompt lists the fear-factor pages. Its remarks on the person's bakeries, mills, inns and efficiency come from the interviewer's text.

For the harness

• A chain of dependent stockpile targets. build_structure went on with six stockpile targets after the first was not placed, though none of them could touch a stockpile; that took 103 s. Stopping after a failed first target would have saved most of it (each result already names expand_storage).
• Default passes. After 43 acting calls the host let 5 game seconds pass (215 s, 10.8% of the budget); one build_structure call placed up to 8 buildings.
• Quarries placed 6 tiles from the target twice (4:12, 13:11); both results say so ("placed 6 tiles away").
• Trade automation. The game's marketplace can set automatic trade; Sol's 1.6.3 game did it by clicks, this game spent 113 plank clicks (205 s) and asked for a tool.
• Warnings (1.7.0) fired six times: low food at 8:01 and 9:37, popularity at 12:31, 25:21 and 32:35, gold at 22:21.
• The reader's watchdog forced one collection (event at 9:10, a 20 s stall); the game stayed up.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("gpt-6-1 sol 1-7-3 5aad04").