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: Gemini 4 Argon (
google/gemini-4-argon) on OpenRouter, served only by Google AI Studio (no fallbacks), reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens - Benchmark: Large Barren Desert construction, version 1.7.3 (commit e0e0eb4, the relock with the compaction-retry fix, which leaves play and scoring unchanged), 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, as since 1.6.0.
- Run 0996eaea, series 20261018T155704-115a5a74, 2026-10-18: Gemini's weapons-counted game on this map with version 1.7.3, a fresh series with no memory of its other games. Its no-arms game is still playing; its desert games from earlier rounds are run 956efdbe (1.5.6) and run 0dd24029 (1.6.3). Three earlier attempts at this game do not count: one failed on 2026-10-17 on an OpenRouter key limit, and two on 2026-10-18 (series 20261018T145652-b2f3dc25 and 20261018T150655-bfa2863d, both invalid) were stopped by the operator's cost guard, a script outside the harness that watches the prompt-cache share and misread normal cache behaviour (one early miss, judged at request 8; then misses on the first request after compactions at 1,972 of 2,000 game seconds); neither was a fault of the model or the game.
Result
| This game (1.7.3) | Its 1.6.3 game | Its 1.5.6 game | The person | Left alone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 8,369 | 7,494 | 8,253 | 9,984 | 5,192 |
| Gold | 1,089 | 4,612 | 1,327 | 8,574 | |
| Stored goods, at the sell price | 7,280 | 2,882 | 6,926 | 1,410 | |
| of which weapons and armour | 1,230 | 990 | 0 | ||
| Population / housing | 134 / 146 | 153 / 154 | 185 / 194 | 250 / 250 | 4 |
| Popularity | 52 (−1 next month) | 68 (−6) | 63 (−8) | 100 | 0 |
| Rations, taxes at the end | none, low (80 a month) | full, extortionate (214) | half, extortionate (258) | ||
| Score | 63.5 | 51.3 | 64.8 | 100 | 0 |
A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 3,177 over leaving the game alone, 66% of the person's 4,792, against 48% and 64% in the earlier games. By the website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity, the net-worth share clipped to −1..2) the score is 53.04 + 5.28 + 5.20 = 63.5, 12.2 above the 1.6.3 game and 1.2 below the 1.5.6 game; this game counts on the website's leaderboard. The stored goods are 1,016 bread (4,064), 180 stone (1,260), 41 metal armour (1,230), 28 iron (644), 8 ale (80) and 2 wood; bread is 49% of net worth. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 12 free places in its hovels, rations at none and popularity 52.
How the game went
Times are the game clock when a call began, read from the recording (the run clock quoted in observations reads a second or two later). A build call keeps the game running for 20 to 97 seconds.
Iron and stone, 0 to 7 minutes. map_overview (0:01) listed iron 57 to 69 tiles east of the keep,
stone 83 to 106 tiles west, no farmland and no trees. The first build call (0:01) placed two stockpile
piles, the marketplace, two hovels and three iron mines; a fourth mine and four quarries followed at 1:41,
more quarries and ox tethers at 3:15, 5:07 and 6:09, and 100 planks bought at 3:49 and 4:27. By 6:57 it had 11
quarries and 9 tethers; its last find_sites for iron (3:15) and quarries (6:59) found nothing more
within 25 tiles. Iron arrived at 4:30, stone at 8:05.
Rations: when and why. An observation at 5:06 warned "Food is low: 12 in the granaries for 42 people on full rations"; the meat was all the food and the map has no farmland. The replies at 5:07 reasoned that rations at none would save the meat, that peasants arrive while popularity is above 50, and that inns and a church could hold it there. It set rations to none at 6:02 (food factor −8); the meat was gone by 6:08 and it never bought meat, cheese or apples. Popularity fell from 98 (6:00) to 50 (9:08, its low), with warnings at 6:58 and 8:48. It answered with three inns (6:59, 8:54, 9:49), a large and then a generous bribe (8:49, 9:45), eight bakeries, and 25 flour and 25 wheat. Bread first reached a granary at 11:29. It reconsidered rations at 12:11, 15:09 and 16:59, and its 19:20 hand-off put the bread kept at about 120 gold a minute; the food factor read −8 in every reading to the end. (The controls it read say to keep rations at least normal while popularity is near 50.)
Armorers and gold, 8 to 19 minutes. The armory went up at 8:54, armorer's workshops at 9:49 and
11:11. Gold read 671 at 12:11, 382 at 13:27 ("Gold is low") and 0 at 18:34. It sold stone (50 at 13:28,
100 at 15:09) and iron (30 at 17:21) to pay for planks, wheat, seven gallows (13:37, 350 gold), a church
(500) and two inns (15:50). A granary was rejected for not touching the old one; three came by
expand_storage at 17:04. Taxes were a small bribe from 16:59 to 19:23.
Bread and taxes, 19 to 33 minutes. It sold stone every two to four minutes, and pitch, to buy 30 to 60 planks and 10 to 20 wheat at a time (the last wheat at 27:27), built 13 more bakeries, a mill, three breweries and four hovels, and swung taxes between none and low (21:05, 25:20, 27:02, 30:27, 31:33). Idle peasants stood at 24 from 23:05; population rose from 118 to 134 by 30:06. From 29:34 its replies were waits of 50, 60, 65 and 35 s. Flour read 0 with 35 seconds left, as it had worked out.
| Game minute | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 4,771 | 5,952 | 5,157 | 4,676 | 2,294 | 2,581 | 2,445 | 2,274 | 2,578 | 3,733 | 4,926 | 8,369 |
| Gold | 4,480 | 5,000 | 4,200 | 3,300 | 671 | 382 | 547 | 120 | 197 | 69 | 650 | 1,089 |
| Iron | 0 | 15 | 21 | 31 | 37 | 42 | 14 | 18 | 19 | 22 | 26 | 28 |
| Stone | 0 | 50 | 50 | 66 | 96 | 112 | 84 | 64 | 8 | 112 | 68 | 180 |
| Food | 52 | 39 | 0 | 0 | 24 | 105 | 230 | 319 | 448 | 585 | 800 | 1,016 |
| Population | 2 | 28 | 44 | 59 | 70 | 85 | 99 | 113 | 118 | 127 | 133 | 134 |
| Popularity | 100 | 100 | 98 | 52 | 66 | 58 | 52 | 60 | 54 | 58 | 52 | 52 |
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); armour, ale, pitch and flour are left out, so it reads low.
Weapons
The opening plan (0:01) already named an armory, blacksmiths, armorers, crossbows and pikes. It built one armory (8:54) and four armorer's workshops (9:49, 11:11), and no fletcher's, poleturner's or blacksmith's. They made 41 metal armour, about 2 a minute from the first at 13:27 (12 at 19:19, 24 at 25:19), and it sold none; the armory held 41 of 50.
At the rules' prices the suits are worth 1,230 and used 41 iron worth 943: a gain of 287, or 7 a suit, as its own hand-off at 10:33 reckoned. The workshops cost 400 gold and 80 wood and the armory 5 wood, about 485 at the sell price, so the town ended about 200 below where leaving the iron and the gold alone would have put it (3.3 points). At 7 a suit, 400 gold needed 57 suits to pay back; it made 41. The 400 gold was 17% of the 2,306 held at 9:45; it would have bought 100 planks, the wood of ten bakeries. The 1,230 is 14.7% of net worth and 20.5 points of the score (43.0 without it).
Do weapons explain Gemini's moves between rounds? Its desert scores are 64.8 with no weapons (1.5.6), 51.3 with 990 (1.6.3) and 63.5 with 1,230 (1.7.3). The last two hold similar weapons and differ by 12 points: +875 of net worth (14.6 points) outweighs 19 fewer people and 16 points less popularity (2.4), so weapons do not account for that change.
Beside its other games and the other models
| This game (1.7.3) | 1.6.3 | 1.5.6 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bakeries / mills / breweries / inns | 22 / 4 / 4 / 5 | 30 / 2 / 7 / 5 | 33 / 5 / 13 / 7 |
| Quarries / ox tethers / iron mines | 11 / 19 / 4 | 13 / 24 / 4 | 12 / 34 / 4 |
| Weapon workshops / gallows | 4 / 7 | 11 / 2 | 0 / 0 |
| Planks / wheat bought | 810 / 115 | 1,140 / 230 | 1,100 / 180 |
| Net worth lost buying | 4,975 | 7,400 | 6,935 |
| Turns, cost | 39, $1.445 | 94, $1.164 | 58, $0.841 |
What differs is rations and taxes. In both earlier games Gemini also set rations to none early (1:49 and 4:02) but went back to full within about 1½ and 6½ minutes (3:21; half at 6:49, full at 10:40), and taxed at mean or high from 11:33 and 12:16, with extortionate taxes only in the last seconds. This game kept none from 6:02 and never went above low taxes. It ended with the smallest town (134 people against 153 and 185), 1,089 gold against 4,612 and 1,327, and the most food in store: 1,016 bread against 139 and 241.
Among this batch's weapons-counted desert games so far only GPT-6.1 Sol's 9,169 (75.6) is higher; the other six range from 4,116 to 6,448. Its 134 people are the most (Sol 104, Luna 80, the rest 66 or fewer) and its 1,230 in weapons is second to Fable's 1,540. Sol held 2,058 more in stone, 713 more in iron and 1,416 more in gold, and 3,236 less in bread, on full rations and high taxes at popularity 51. By the 1.6.3 round's scores 63.5 would stand second, after Sol's 98.3; by the 1.5.6 round's, third. On Oasis by the Sea in this batch it scored 67.4 (weapons counted) and 86.2 (no arms).
What held it back
- Gold, from 12 minutes on. After 12:11 it never held more than 1,089 and read under 100 twice (18:10 to 19:33, 25:49 to 27:12). It sold stone to pay for planks and wheat, 10 to 20 wheat at a time (115 in all), each purchase leaving 28 to 385 gold, while the 41 suits (1,230) and 1,016 bread (4,064) stayed in store.
- Popularity near 50. With food at −8 it stood between 50 and 69 from 9:08 to the end, and low taxes (tax −2, 80 gold a month) left the month at −1. It changed taxes 10 times and paid for two stretches of bribes (8:49 to 12:11, 16:59 to 19:23), at most about 730 gold by the monthly figures the game gave (−47, −60, −56). Taxes less bribes brought 929 over the game; the 1.6.3 game, taxing high from 12:16 to 29:11, ended with 4,612 gold.
- Seven gallows. They cost 350 gold and gave fear −1 and 110% efficiency in readings from 15:07 to 19:23 only; at 21:04 and after the factor was gone and efficiency read 100%. Bakery output per building read 3.3 to 3.6 a minute under it and 2.8 to 3.4 after, so no clear gain shows.
- No jobs. No reading from 15:07 had an open job; 24 idle peasants from 23:05 stopped arrivals at 134 people while 12 places stood free. The person had 250.
What worked
- Raw materials by tile, early. Four mines by 3:12 and 11 quarries by 6:57, placed from
find_siteswith no screenshot, cost 395 wood with their 19 tethers. They delivered about 595 stone (4,165) and 84 iron (1,932). - Rations at none kept the bread. The 140 wheat and flour it bought (3,445 gold) became 1,016 bread (4,064), about 7 a unit against 8 a flour in its hand-off. From the meat's fall at full rations (about 0.006 food per person-second, 2:00 to 5:00), the 144,000 person-seconds from 11:29 would have eaten about 870 of it, some 3,500 of net worth or 58 points, against at most 4.8 points of popularity (100 against 52). This is an estimate and assumes the same bread output.
- Popularity never went under 50 (low 50 at 9:08) and no more than one peasant left at a time. It was held by five inns (+8 from 19:19), a church (+1) and tax steps.
- Inputs came out even. It bought no wheat or planks after 27:40 and ended with 0 wheat, 0 flour and 2 wood; the flour ran out as the time did. Two bakeries and two woodcutters at 29:15 (the woodcutters have no trees to cut) were followed by 4 arrivals, 130 to 134, by 30:06.
- Warnings answered. Each of the five warnings (5:06, 6:58, 8:48, 13:27, 15:07) was followed by a reply acting on it. No request failed.
Market
31 market_trade calls: 261 clicks, 584 game seconds (29% of the budget), 2.2 seconds a click. Bought for
7,235 gold: 810 planks (3,240), 115 wheat (2,645), 25 flour (800), 20 ale (400), 10 hops (150). These
lost 4,975 net worth against the sell price (planks 4 for 1, wheat 23 for 8, flour 32 for 10, ale 20 for
10, hops 15 for 8). Sold for 4,145: 465 stone (3,255), 30 iron (690), 20 pitch (200); selling leaves net
worth unchanged. No bread, armour or ale was sold. A hops purchase at 18:11 stopped on "not enough gold"
(28 left) after 28 game seconds and no clicks. The gold account closes: 5,000 + 4,145 − 7,235 − 1,750
(five inns 500, four armorers 400, gallows 350, church 500) + 929 from taxes less bribes = 1,089.
It never set the marketplace's automatic buying or selling: the run has no game_action call (0 of 204
calls), and its reasoning and interview do not mention auto-buy or auto-sell, which the rules describe.
Cost and speed
39 turns, 204 tool calls (89 find_sites, 31 market_trade, 24 building_info, 19 build_structure, 14
waits), 2.05 million tokens and $1.445 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.013, play $1.246, compaction $0.185). The interview cost $0.030
more (58,482 of its 63,923 tokens read from the cache) and began 1 min 10 s after the last reply. The
agent run took 45.6 real minutes, 17.7 of them waiting for the model (replies 13 to 83 seconds, mean 27).
No request failed; the 1.6.3 and 1.5.6 games had 37 and 17 refused with 429.
The context was compacted at 10:33 and 19:20 (30 s each). Each compaction succeeded on its first request: one request, a text hand-off of about 4,200 and 4,300 characters, no retry; the first gameplay request after each read 15,941 tokens from the cache. Of the 39 gameplay requests 37 read the cache (85.6% of input tokens). The two that did not were request 5 (1:41, 38,495 input tokens, $0.085) and request 23 (13:28, 41,077, $0.113), 25 and 8 seconds after the previous reply; the second compaction read none either ($0.155, against $0.031 for the first). Those three are $0.353, 24% of the cost.
build_structure ran 857 game seconds over 19 calls for 105 buildings placed, 8.2 s each, with the host
on the game machine; its earlier desert games took 6.4 s (1.6.3, 758 s for 118) and 5.3 s (1.5.6, 704 s
for 134) with the host on the Mac. Acting tools took 1,544 game seconds (77%), waits 429. 13 waits ran
fast-forwarded (419 game seconds in 197).
The interview
Gemini called its engine sound (wheat to bread, quarries with tethers, iron to armour, no rations) and
named three gaps to the person: 22 bakeries and 4 mills against 95 and 12, a population held at the 24-idle
cap against 250, and popularity that needed tax toggling against a church, cathedral and 11 inns. Playing
again it would put its wood into hovels, mills and bakeries rather than armorer's workshops and breweries,
sell bread, add a cathedral, buy ale, and fit 13 quarries, 7 iron mines and more tethers. It praised the
zero-time reading tools and tile targets, and asked that market_trade take a list of trades, because of
the 8-action cap.
Against the game these match: costs (bakery 10 wood, hovel 6, mill 20, armorer 100 gold and 20 wood); hops 15 against ale 20; 24 idle at every reading from 23:05 bar one; housing 146; bread worth 4; the 8-action cap and 8-second turn minimum; bread from 140 bought units at about 8 a flour; a bakery making about 3 loaves a minute (readings 2.8 to 3.6) against 0.2 to 0.4 ale from a brewery. These do not match or cannot be checked:
- It counts gallows among what held popularity; they gave fear −1 for a few minutes and none at the end.
- Its sums of −11, +9 and −2 include fear −1; at the end the factors were food −8, tax −2, religion +1 and inn +8, which make −1.
- It ties the +8 to the person's 11 inns; its own five gave +8 from 19:19.
- The 90, 75 and 50% coverage tiers are in neither the rules nor any reading.
- More quarries and iron mines: its searches found no further site (iron three times, quarries twice), so the run does not show where they would go.
For the harness
- The map probe was right:
map_overviewlisted no tree groves andfind_sitesagreed. - Cache misses without a gap. Two mid-game requests read nothing from the cache although the previous reply was seconds earlier, and the second compaction read none; a guard on cache share can stop a valid run, as it did twice before this one.
- The auto-trade has no tool. The rules mention automatic buying and selling; the only route is
game_actionclicks at the marketplace, which this run never tried. - Feedback on the wrong building. The church (15:50) came back "placed" with the granary's rejection
twice in its
feedback("Needs to be placed adjacent to the granary"); the granary's own result had the status and remedy. - Five placements moved from their target (a quarry 6 tiles, an ox tether 2, an armorer's workshop 2, hovels 5 and 4), each reported.
- The game saved correctly at the end ("gemini 4 argon 1-7-3 0996ea").