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 (no arms), 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 store count nothing toward net worth; sold at a marketplace they bring their gold.
- Run 738baecb, series 20261018T164504-a06fc9dc, 2026-10-18: Gemini's no-arms game on this map, a fresh series with no memory of its other games, played after a first attempt failed on an OpenRouter key limit on 2026-10-17. Its weapons-counted game on this version is run 0996eaea (series 20261018T155704-115a5a74), played earlier that day; its desert games from earlier rounds are run 956efdbe (1.5.6) and run 0dd24029 (1.6.3). This game counts on the website's leaderboard.
Result
| This game (no arms) | 1.7.3, weapons counted | 1.6.3 game | 1.5.6 game | The person | Left alone | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 9,071 | 8,369 | 7,494 | 8,253 | 9,984 | 5,192 |
| Gold | 2,454 | 1,089 | 4,612 | 1,327 | 8,574 | |
| Stored goods, at the sell price | 6,617 | 7,280 | 2,882 | 6,926 | 1,410 | |
| of which weapons and armour | 0 (9 suits, 4 spears) | 1,230 | 990 | 0 | ||
| Population / housing | 136 / 162 | 134 / 146 | 153 / 154 | 185 / 194 | 250 / 250 | 4 |
| Popularity | 69 (+1 next month) | 52 (−1) | 68 (−6) | 63 (−8) | 100 | 0 |
| Rations, taxes at the end | none, low (81 a month) | none, low (80) | full, extortionate (214) | half, extortionate (258) | ||
| Score | 77.0 | 63.5 | 51.3 | 64.8 | 100 | 0 |
A full-budget score: the run used all 2,000 game seconds. Net worth grew by 3,879 over leaving the game alone, 81% of the person's 4,792, against 66%, 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 64.76 + 5.37 + 6.90 = 77.0, 13.5 above the weapons game. Bread is 48% of net worth (1,088 loaves, 4,352) and gold 27%; stone (1,036), iron (943), pitch (200) and 86 of small goods make the rest. The 9 metal armour and 4 spears in the armory count nothing (310 at sale prices). The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 26 free places in its hovels, rations at none and popularity 69.
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). The game is paused while the model replies.
Iron, stone and a bread start, 0 to 5 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. Its opening plan named bread from
bought wheat and said iron "can be forged into weapons/armour to sell for 30 gold". It placed three
stockpiles (0:01), the marketplace (0:25), three hovels (0:38), four iron mines and three quarries
(1:00), four hovels and four ox tethers (2:22) and two quarries (3:26), bought 100 planks (3:39) and 25
wheat (4:15), and at 4:30 ordered an inn, a mill and two bakeries. Iron first arrived at 4:26, bread at
8:11, stone at 8:15.
Rations: when and why. At 5:27 a warning read "Food is low: 6 in the granaries for 47 people on full rations"; the starting meat (53 at 0:59) was the only food. The reply at 5:28 reasoned that rations at none would save the food and "bank every bread loaf", and that two inns and no taxes would hold popularity; it set rations to none (food factor −8) and never changed them. Its 10:59 reply counted the saving at 72 to 80 gold a minute. Popularity fell from 100 to 84 (7:08, warning), 73 (10:58) and 57 (12:57, warning), then stood between 54 and 69 to the end. On the meat's rate on full rations (53 to 6 over 7,857 person-seconds) the 164,920 person-seconds from 8:00 would have eaten about 990 food, some 3,950 of net worth, against the 8 popularity points a month that none costs: an estimate that assumes the same bread output. (The instructions it read say to keep rations at least normal while popularity is near 50; its low was 54, at 23:42.)
5 to 17 minutes. A chapel (7:10); a church, inn, brewery and armory (9:46); average taxes (10:50, 64 gold a month); 40 wheat (11:33); a fourth inn and second mill (11:59). The reply at 10:59 left average taxes standing through two minutes of trading and building, and popularity fell 16 points to 57; the next reply set low taxes (12:58) and added a chapel (13:24). It sold 30 iron (13:02) and 100 stone (14:24) for planks, wheat, ale and hops, and ordered two granaries (15:18) and four bakeries (15:35).
17 to 33 minutes. Armorer's workshops at 17:22 (two), 18:44 and 21:08; average taxes again (18:29) and low from 22:24; bakeries from 9 (16:29) to 26 (26:22), with wheat in lots of 30 to 40 (17:09, 20:52, 24:50). A reply of three trades and six placements was refused at 21:07 (nine actions, eight allowed) and sent again a second later. Gold read 257 at 25:07 and 480, with a warning, at 26:22. It sold 9 suits (26:23) and 90 stone (26:32), then waited 120 s (28:07). Its last reply (30:12, 3 min 8 s left) sold 5 suits, bought planks and hops, placed two bakeries and three tethers (30:49 to 31:36) and asked for a 110 s wait with 104 s left; the deadline ended it.
| Game minute | 0 | 3 | 6 | 9 | 12 | 15 | 18 | 21 | 24 | 27 | 30 | End |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Net worth | 4,786 | 5,914 | 4,626 | 4,304 | 2,796 | 3,347 | 3,185 | 3,684 | 4,198 | 4,940 | 6,609 | 9,071 |
| Gold | 4,490 | 5,000 | 3,665 | 2,775 | 863 | 1,893 | 974 | 1,076 | 1,270 | 1,456 | 1,902 | 2,454 |
| Iron | 0 | 15 | 21 | 30 | 39 | 17 | 26 | 31 | 33 | 37 | 40 | 41 |
| Stone | 0 | 50 | 50 | 74 | 82 | 54 | 94 | 74 | 38 | 20 | 76 | 148 |
| Food | 53 | 39 | 5 | 45 | 85 | 157 | 205 | 317 | 461 | 613 | 813 | 1,093 |
| Population | 2 | 29 | 52 | 69 | 82 | 94 | 103 | 113 | 123 | 130 | 131 | 136 |
| Popularity | 100 | 100 | 93 | 76 | 60 | 61 | 66 | 62 | 54 | 58 | 62 | 69 |
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); pitch, ale, hops and flour are left out, so it reads low.
Weapons
It built them. The system prompt names the benchmark "(no arms)"; its reasoning wondered at 2:22, 7:10, 8:14 and 9:46 whether that disabled weapon buildings, and at 9:46 it placed the armory "to determine the feasibility of weapons". Four armorer's workshops followed (17:22, 18:44, 21:08) and a poleturner's workshop (21:08). Its reasoning gave them a margin of +7 a suit (30 for 23 of iron) and jobs for idle peasants (24 idle at 21:08); its notebook (18:29) says "MUST sell all weapons/armor in Armory before run ends (worth 0 in Armory)". At 26:23 its reasoning worked out that a new workshop adds 7 a suit for 100 gold and would lose net worth with six minutes left. The workshops made 23 suits (2 a minute at the end) and 4 spears. It sold 9 suits at 26:23 (270, after the low-gold warning) and 5 at 30:12 (150), and the armory ended with 9 suits and 4 spears.
At the rules' costs (armorer's 20 wood and 100 gold, poleturner's 10 wood and 100 gold, armory 5 wood) the buildings cost 500 gold and 95 wood (595 at the sell price); the 23 suits used 23 iron (529) and the spears 4 wood. Sales brought 420. The wing ended 708 under leaving the iron and gold alone, 11.8 points of score, before the jobs it gave; sold in full it would still be 398 under. At 7 a suit, 85 suits repay 595; it made 23. A bakery (10 wood) gave a job too, and it built 29.
The 30:09 hand-off planned a sale "with ~30–45 seconds left", but the 110 s wait left no reply for it. From the production rates it probably held about 5 suits and 3 spears at 31:36 (about 180; an estimate, no reading). At the weapons rule's prices the 310 would give 9,381 and a score of 82.2.
Beside its other games and the other models
| This game | 1.7.3 weapons | 1.6.3 | 1.5.6 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bakeries / mills / inns | 29 / 2 / 6 | 22 / 4 / 5 | 30 / 2 / 5 | 33 / 5 / 7 |
| Church / chapels / gallows | 1 / 2 / 0 | 1 / 0 / 7 | 0 / 0 / 2 | 0 / 0 / 0 |
| Weapon workshops | 5 | 4 | 11 | 0 |
| Planks / wheat bought | 880 / 165 | 810 / 115 | 1,140 / 230 | 1,100 / 180 |
| Net worth lost buying, gold sold | 5,425, 3,840 | 4,975, 4,145 | 7,400, 6,390 | 6,935, 0 |
Against the weapons game, the same model, version and rules but for the armour, net worth is 702 higher: gold +1,365 and goods −663, of which armour −1,230. Without its armour the weapons game stood at 7,139, so the rest differs by 1,932. Gold closes this way:
| This game | Weapons game | |
|---|---|---|
| 5,000 start, sold, bought | 5,000 + 3,840 − 7,965 | 5,000 + 4,145 − 7,235 |
| Gold buildings | −2,100 | −1,750 |
| Taxes less bribes (closes the account) | +3,679 | +929 |
| End | 2,454 | 1,089 |
The 2,750 in taxes is the main difference. This game taxed for about 51 of the game's roughly 75 months (about 14 at average, 37 at
low; counted from its set_tax times) and never bribed; the weapons game taxed about 21 months at low,
spent about 13 on bribes and stood at no taxes for about 41. Its popularity allowed it: the first inn was ordered at 4:30 against 6:59, the inn factor read +8 from
12:57 against 19:19, popularity was under 60 for 487 s against 1,244 s, and its low was 54 (23:42)
against 50 (9:08). Bread reached the granary at 8:11 against 11:29; the weapons game's granary held no
food at any reading from 6:08 to 10:32. Its church and two chapels (1,000 gold) read religion +3 at the
end against +1 for the weapons game's church alone, and its six inns +8 from 12:57. This game's net
worth row is ahead at every column from 12 minutes (the weapons game's row leaves out its suits, 33 by
29:14). The weapons game mined more stone (595 units against 488; all 11 quarries stood by 6:57, here
by 20:00) and sold its pitch.
For Gemini the weapon rule does not explain the rounds: under each rule the 1.7.3 game scored 12.2 above the earlier one (77.0 against 64.8, when no armory was offered; 63.5 against 51.3 with weapons counted). Each game was also played differently, so this says nothing about the harness version.
The other models, desert games of this batch, weapons counted / no arms: Sol 75.6 / 98.5, Gemini 63.5 / 77.0, Opus 19.1 / 67.1, Sonnet 27.6 / 28.7, Luna 5.7 / 20.2, Haiku 18.9 / 15.6, Fable 1.3 / 11.6, GLM −9.8 / −48.7. The no-arms score is higher for six of the eight; this one is second to Sol's. By the 1.6.3 round's scores 77.0 would stand second to Sol's 98.3; by the 1.5.6 round's, first (Opus 67.6).
What held it back
- The weapons wing and its unsold end: 708 of net worth, and 310 left in the armory (5.2 points).
- Jobs. Idle peasants read 22 to 24 in 11 of the 17 readings from 7:08 and open jobs 0 or 1 in 16. Population stopped at 136 with 26 places free; the person had 250.
- Long replies. 16 of 20 replies used all 8 actions (a 17th asked for 9), and the 19 that acted ran about 100 game seconds of tools each. Popularity fell from 73 to 57 inside one of them (10:59).
- Bread bought at a thin margin. 165 wheat (3,795 gold) became 1,088 bread (4,352), 6.6 a wheat against the 8 the model counted: +557, or 3.4 a wheat, before the 330 wood of 31 buildings. Flour stood at 36 to 50 from 20:00 to 30:09 and ended at 2, so the 29 bakeries were not the limit at the end; the wheat bought was. Planks were 3,520 of the 7,965 bought and lost 2,640.
- Low taxes: 81 a month at the end, against 214 and 258 in its other two desert games.
What worked
- Bread before the crisis. A mill and two bakeries were ordered at 4:30, before any food warning; bread rose at every reading from 8:11.
- Rations at none kept the bread: 1,088 loaves.
- No bribes, nobody leaving. Population never fell more than 2 from its peak.
- Warnings answered. Each of the four (food 5:27, popularity 7:08 and 12:57, gold 26:22) was followed by a reply acting on it: rations, a chapel, low taxes, sales.
- Placements held. 100 of 103 through
build_structurewent through (the three misses were quarries); ten moved 4 to 6 tiles from their target, each reported.
Market
26 market_trade calls: 266 clicks in 546 game seconds, 27% of the budget, 2.05 seconds a click. Bought
for 7,965 gold: 880 planks (3,520), 165 wheat (3,795), 30 hops (450), 10 ale (200). These lost 5,425 of
net worth against the sell price (planks 4 for 1, wheat 23 for 8, hops 15 for 8, ale 20 for 10). Sold
for 3,840: 390 stone (2,730), 30 iron (690), 14 suits (420); selling stone and iron leaves net worth
unchanged, the suits added their 420. No bread or ale was sold.
It never set the marketplace's automatic buying or selling: the run has no game_action call (0 of 167
calls), and its reasoning and interview do not mention auto-buy or auto-sell, which the rules describe.
Cost and speed
20 turns, 167 tool calls (69 find_sites, 26 market_trade, 19 build_structure, 18 building_info, 17
observe, 2 waits), 1.19 million tokens and $1.170 billed by OpenRouter (preparation $0.048, play $0.975,
compaction $0.147). The interview cost $0.027 more and began 162 s after the last reply, 37 s after the
run ended. The agent run took 44.7 real minutes, 14.9 of them waiting for the model (replies 22 to 83
seconds, mean 45) and 2.1 in compaction. No request failed. The weapons game took 39 turns and $1.445.
The context was compacted at 8:12, 16:31 and 30:09 (49, 36 and 41 s). Each succeeded on its first
request: one request_cost, one timing with outcome stop and one compaction_usage each, a text
hand-off of 6,484, 6,597 and 4,496 characters, no retry. The first gameplay request after each read
15,932 tokens from the cache. All 20 gameplay requests read it (83.3% of input tokens).
build_structure ran 1,039 game seconds over 19 calls (one refused) for 100 buildings placed, 10.4 s
each, with the host on the game machine; the weapons game took 8.2 s there (857 s for 105), and its
earlier desert games 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. Waits were two: 120 s (28:07) and 110 s asked at 31:36, cut at about 103 s by the deadline, 224
game seconds in all (11%; the weapons game had 14 waits, 429 s), both fast-forwarded. Building took 52%
of the budget and trading 27%.
The interview
Gemini called its result solid, 91% of the person's net worth, and named four gaps: the scale of the bread engine and population (29 bakeries, 2 mills and 136 people against 95, 12 and 250), bread stored where the person sold it for working capital, the side chains (workshops, armory, breweries; an unsold last batch of armour) and no fear factor. Playing again it would scale bread and hovels, keep idle peasants under 24, build 13 quarries, 35 tethers and 7 mines, skip weapons and breweries and add the fear factor. It praised the free reading tools, tile targeting and the production breakdown.
Against the game these match: 9,071 against 9,984; 29 bakeries, 2 mills, 5 granaries, the workshops and armory; wheat at 23; an armorer's at 100 gold and 20 wood; factors food −8, tax −2, religion +3, inn +8. These do not:
- The last turn. It says the actions took "almost 2 minutes" before the wait and the clock expired before a sale. The three trades and the build took 84 s (30:12 to 31:36); the 110 s wait began with 104 s left and the deadline fell inside it.
- 8 bread and +9 a wheat. The run got 6.6 bread and +3.4.
- "16 bakeries" against ~10 flour a minute: the mills read 10.7 and 10 at 16:29 and 24:27, with 9 and 22 bakeries standing; no reading has 16.
- 7 iron mines: its three searches after the fourth mine found no spot (2:22 twice, 3:26).
- Selling bread for capital: it sold none, so this is untested.
For the harness
- "(no arms)" read as a ban. Four replies wondered whether weapon buildings were disabled; the rules say weapons and armour in store count nothing and bring their gold when sold.
- The last wait. A 110 s wait on 104 s left ended in "Session deadline" with no observation; no result in that reply carried the time left.
- A moved placement closed a neighbour. The fifth brewery was placed 4 tiles from its target (26:21) and, in the model's reading of a screenshot, blocked another's entrance; it demolished it (26:59).
- Feedback on a placed call. The granaries at 25:07 came back "placed" with "Needs to be placed
adjacent to the granary" in
feedback; both stand. - At 18:57 the game's collector stalled 20 seconds and the reader forced a collection (the run's only one); the run went on. The game saved correctly at the end ("gemini 4 argon 1-7-3 738bae").