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: Large Barren Desert 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; the version was 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 carried-over playbook. Weapons and armour in store count nothing toward net worth; sold at a marketplace they bring their gold. The rules print no weapon prices.
• Run 09266dae, series 20261018T180748-c32cdd8e, 2026-10-18: Muse Wonder's no-arms game of the 1.7.3 batch on this map, 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 on this version is run c2abaf1c (series 20261018T173206-aadf0ce7), played earlier that day; its desert games from earlier rounds are three on 1.5.6 (e196d77b, 14b9e89b, dde38b0b). 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 165 over leaving the game alone, 3.4% of the person's 4,792. By the project website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity, net-worth share clipped to −1..2) the score is 10.3: 2.8 from net worth, 2.5 from population and 5.0 from popularity. This game counts on the website's leaderboard. Gold is 4,929 of the 5,357 (92%); the other 428 is 20 ale (200), 48 wood, 64 of food, 10 stone (70) and 2 iron (46). The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 8 free places in its hovels, no taxes, half rations (food −2 a month: half rations −4, variety +2; tax +1) and 16 food for 66 people. Against the whole starting package, 6,560 by the rules' prices, it ended 1,203 lower; against its weapons game, 1,550 and 27.2 points lower. Its three 1.5.6 games (no Armory offered) averaged 17.0, so this one is 6.7 below their mean and 40.5 below the best of them.

How the game went

Times are the recording's game clock when a call began; the run clock in the observations reads 2 to 3 seconds later. The game is paused while the model replies; a build call keeps it running for 20 to 76 seconds (median 50).

Opening, 0 to 4 minutes. Four replies at 0:01 only read (map_overview: stone 83 to 106 tiles west of the keep, iron ore 57 to 69 tiles east, no farmland, oil or trees; status; all 12 building_info lookups, among them the fletcher, blacksmith, armorer, poleturner and armory; five find_sites; a plan whose second step is "armory + crossbow fletchers (buy wood, sell crossbows)"). The fifth placed the marketplace, two hovels and two iron mines (68 s). Two stockpiles at 1:16, then at 1:41 an armory, two fletcher's workshops, a hovel and two iron mines (76 s). The workshops were set to crossbows at 3:02 and 3:17; two quarries, a tether and three hovels went up at 3:27. First iron arrived at 3:59.

Food, planks and the first sale, 4 to 13 minutes. With 19 food left it bought 50 each of apples, cheese and bread (4:39 to 5:26) and sold its 20 pitch (5:48). At 7:05, with 24 peasants idle and no open job, it bought 100 planks and at 7:43 placed four more workshops and two tethers. Crossbows sold at 9:21 and the bow at 9:29 (135 gold) gave the first weapon prices it was shown; its last hovels went up at 9:36. At 10:06 it bought 150 planks and at 11:01 placed six more workshops, its last. set_workshop moved all twelve to crossbows by 13:08. First stone arrived at 9:13.

Taxes and rations, 13 to 20 minutes. At 13:54 it sold 45 iron, 80 stone and 9 crossbows and bought 200 planks (to 15:19). Popularity had stood at 100 since the start, with taxes at none. It set low taxes at 15:54 (31 gold a month) and half rations at 17:31; a warning ended a wait at 19:04 (popularity 96 to 83), and at 19:05 it went back to no taxes and kept half rations to the end. A quarry and two tethers followed at 19:24 (a quarry and a tether were not placed) and a quarry and a tether at 20:32.

Selling and waiting, 20 to 33 minutes. Sale cycles of crossbows, iron and stone at 22:54, 27:02 and 32:18, with apples, bread and 100 planks bought at 23:24 to 23:58. Its last building, a quarry and a tether, began at 24:37. The context was compacted at 26:59, with 6 min 20 s left. Waits ran 70 to 120 seconds, and the last crossbow was sold in a call that began at 33:08, with 12 seconds left.

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; ale and pitch are left out (200 to 400), so it reads low.

Weapons

It did not leave them alone. It built one armory and 12 fletcher's workshops, no blacksmith's, armorer's or poleturner's workshop, and sold 70 crossbows and 1 bow for 2,115 gold.

When. Two workshops and the armory at 1:41 (the call ended at 2:56), four workshops at 7:43 (8:32), six at 11:01 (11:53). set_workshop takes one workshop a call (12 calls, 137 game seconds, 7% of the budget); a new workshop starts on bows, and one bow was made. Sales ran in eight cycles (9:21, 14:36, 17:57, 20:04, 22:54, 27:02, 32:18, 33:08) at 30 and 15 gold; the armory held at most 17 of its 50 places at any sale or reading.

Why. The rules say sold weapons bring gold. Its reasoning summary at 0:01, after the five weapon entries, reads "Comparing production profit margins and worker costs across weapons and armor to identify the most efficient transformation", and the plan followed. No weapon price was in the rules or in a tool result until the reply to the first sale (9:21). At 7:05 (two workshops had delivered 1 bow and 2 crossbows in 3 minutes, 0.5 a workshop a minute, and an iron search came back empty) the summaries read "Comparing iron mine and fletcher workshop profitability" and "comparing fletcher vs poleturner job profitability and production rates". At 10:06, 37 seconds after the sale showed 30, with 24 idle and no open job: "identify idle population and optimize fletcher building for revenue". At 17:31, with 12 standing: "Analyzing low crossbow production rate" and "net worth decline from sunk building costs". The handoff (26:59) calls them "a slow-payback investment" and says to build no more; the interview says the margin "looked attractive on paper" (3 planks at 4 against 30).

Cost against what they brought.

The 550 planks cost 2,200 gold. The other buildings (hovels, mines, quarries, tethers) took 263 wood, which the 245 from the start nearly covered, so the wing's 457 came almost wholly from bought planks. Counting wood at the 4 it paid, the wing cost 3,028 and returned 2,115, 913 short; at the sell price of 1 it cost 1,657 and returned 458 more. The workshop gold alone came back at the 27:02 sale. Labour was not the limit: idle peasants read 23 or 24 at every observation from 7:04 and open jobs 0, so the 12 jobs brought 12 more people (0.5 point) rather than taking them from mines or quarries.

What else it might have done. By the 29:13 readout a quarry delivered 2.1 stone a minute (14.7 gold) for 20 wood plus a tether, an iron mine 0.7 iron (16.1) for 20 wood, and a workshop 0.2 crossbows (6 gold a minute, 0.6 wood used) for 100 gold and 20 wood. Per-workshop readouts were 0 to 0.5 a minute up to 13:53 (new buildings are counted over the time they stood) and 0.2 to 0.3 from 17:29. At 0.25 to 0.3 a workshop nets 4.5 to 5.4 a minute over planks at 4, so its 180 (100 gold and 20 planks) takes 33 to 40 minutes to repay (15 to 18 with wood at 1). The weapons game ran 11 quarries on 17 tethers; this one, whose quarry search at 19:05 still listed five sites, ran 5 on 7. This is arithmetic on this game's readouts, not a result.

Beside its other games and the other models

(Mined is stone and iron held plus sold, less the start's 50 and 15.)

Against its weapons game: what made the 1,550. Each line is net worth against the starting package (6,560), from both games' gold flows and end stores:

The weapons game ran high taxes from 9:19; this one ran none for its first 15 min 54 s and low taxes (31 a month, about 3 min 12 s) once, which is most of its 294. In points (1,000 of net worth is 16.7), the weapons game's taxes are worth 68 more and its mining 26 more; this game's smaller food bill is worth 57 and its skipped church and inn 10. Weapons are not the cause: without its 20 crossbows the weapons game reads 6,307 (27.5 points), still 17.2 above this game, and this game's 12 workshops returned 2,115 for 1,200 of gold where the weapons game's 3 returned 600 for 300. The difference is a bigger wing with no tax income, a town a quarter smaller (66 people against 87) with under half the quarries (5 against 11), and a smaller food bill (fewer people, half rations from 17:31).

Beside the other models. Of the nine no-arms desert games it is eighth by score and seventh by net worth: Sol 98.5 (10,337), Gemini 77.0, Opus 67.1, Sonnet 28.7, Luna 20.2, Haiku 15.6, Fable 11.6 (5,337), Muse Wonder 10.3 (5,357), GLM −48.7. Only Haiku (−3.3), Wonder (−27.2) and GLM (−38.9) scored lower with no arms than with them; the other six scored higher. Weapon workshops in the no-arms games: GLM 20, Fable 14, Wonder 12, Opus 5, Gemini 5, Luna 1, Haiku, Sonnet and Sol none; weapon sales brought Fable 2,925, Wonder 2,115, GLM 1,615, Opus 930, Luna 420, Gemini 420. The three biggest wings scored 11.6 or less; the three highest scorers (98.5, 77.0, 67.1) had none, 5 and 5 workshops. Wonder went from 3 workshops to 12, the largest rise between any model's two games (next: GLM, +2). Its 10.3 sits inside the 73.5-point spread of its three 1.5.6 games and below their mean, so one game cannot say whether the no-arms rule or the version moved it.

What held it back

• No tax income. About 294 in gold against 4,395 in the weapons game; its 1.5.6 games ended on taxes of 106 to 169 a month. Popularity was 100 until 16:01 with a surplus of +3 or +4 a month (7:04 to 13:53) and taxes at none. Half rations from 17:31 cost 4 points a month and popularity went from 96 to 50 by the end; the handoff says taxes were dropped "to slow popularity decline under half rations".
• A small town. 8 hovels (74 places) against 13; 66 people against 87. Population was the jobs (12 workshops, 8 at the mines, 15 at the quarries, 7 at the tethers: 42) plus 24 idle. Stone mined was 166 against 410.
• A wing that did not pay (see Weapons): 1,200 gold and 457 wood, with planks at 4, against 2,115 back.
• Nothing built in the last 8 min 23 s (24:57 on), with 2,746 to 4,929 gold, 8 free places and 24 idle. The handoff called 6 minutes too short for new quarries (walking time) or workshops (gold cost) to pay.
• No bread chain. None of its 12 lookups was a mill, bakery or wheat farm, and it traded no wheat.

What worked

• Selling every weapon in time. Eight cycles kept the armory at 17 or fewer and the last crossbow went in a call at 33:08, so weapons counting nothing cost it nothing at the end. The final reading does not list weapons, so one made in the last seconds is not ruled out.
• Iron and stone converted. 106 iron and 206 stone sold for 3,880; 4 mines (its first search listed four sites, two later ones none) delivered 93 iron.
• Placement. 38 of 40 build_structure placements went through, none refused; the two not placed (19:24) named a nearest fit, which it asked for at 20:32 (the quarry landed 6 tiles away).
• The warning. The only one (popularity 96 to 83, 19:04) was answered in the next call (taxes to none).
• Food held. Never below 16 from 5 minutes on; three kinds eaten at the end.

Market

36 market_trade calls (25 filled, 11 stopped because it asked for more than it held). Bought 150 apples, 110 cheese, 135 bread (395 food, 3,160 gold) and 550 planks (2,200): 5,360 gold, a loss of 3,230 of net worth against the sell price (food at 8, worth 4: 1,580; planks at 4, worth 1: 1,650). Sold 20 pitch, 106 iron, 206 stone, 70 crossbows and a bow for 6,195; selling leaves net worth unchanged except the weapons, which add their 2,115. The calls took 627 game seconds (271 lot clicks; 17 s a call, 7 to 38; 20 planks took 34 to 38 s). These are units at the market's fixed prices.

Cost and speed

28 turns, 101 tool calls (36 market_trade, 17 find_sites, 12 building_info, 12 set_workshop, 9 build_structure, 8 waits, 2 set_tax, 5 others), 1.31 million tokens and $1.311 billed by OpenRouter, every request to Meta (preparation $0.106, play $1.141, compaction $0.064). The interview cost $0.060 more, with 35,444 of its 38,941 tokens read from the cache. The run took 28.8 real minutes, 5.8 of them waiting for the model (12.4 s a reply, longest 34.8 s) and 26 s on the compaction; eight fast waits saved 254 s. 27 of 28 requests read the prompt cache (89.5% of input tokens); the one that did not is the first after the compaction, with 68,011 uncached tokens.

Of the 2,000 game seconds, build_structure took 415 (9 calls, 38 buildings placed of 40 asked, 10.9 s a building, 46 s a call; expand_storage 24 s for 2 stockpiles), market_trade 627, the waits 696, set_workshop 137, set_tax and set_rations 14, find_sites 8, and the host's holds about 79 (11 acts without a screenshot request, 5 s each, and top-ups to the 8-second minimum turn). By the same count its weapons game took 10.5 s a building (544 s, 52 placed) and its 1.5.6 games 3.6, 4.0 and 4.7 (host on the Mac, 3 to 4 buildings a call); this game and its weapons game ran with the host on the game machine, so the difference mixes version and host.

The interview

Wonder called its result poor beside the person's, with 165 added over leaving the town alone, and blamed slow, costly crossbows (12 fletchers at about 0.3 a minute), too little scale (66 people, the idle cap taken as a soft ceiling), defensive popularity (half rations, no taxes, bought food) and never weighing bought wheat for a mill and bakery chain. Playing again it would start the bread chain with bought wheat, run no rations behind inns, a church and a cathedral, use gallows, grow housing and jobs together, build far more quarries, mines and tethers, and minimise crossbows. It praised the readouts, find_sites, build_structure and market_trade, and asked for the clock to pause during tool execution or for bulk and automatic trading, less map-specific playbook advice, and better continuity after compaction.

Against the game these match: 165 over 5,192; 66 people, 74 housing, 24 idle; 12 fletchers at 0.2 to 0.3 a minute; 3 planks at 4 against a crossbow at 30; half rations and no taxes; no inn, church or gallows; 5 quarries, 4 mines and 7 tethers (it said 5 to 6, 4 and about 8); weapons sold in staged cycles before the end; a trade call costing 7 to 38 game seconds (it said 10 to 15) and a reply of trades and a wait using more than two game minutes (13:54 to 15:58 before the wait began). These do not match, or cannot be checked:

• "Close to them on gold conversion": gold was 57% of the person's (4,929 of 8,574), though 92% of its own net worth (the person's 86%).
• "The status/get_inventory tools were excellent": it called status once and get_inventory never; the readouts came with the observations.
• "The opening playbook steered me ... farms on oasis grass, woodcutters, and caution about buying inputs": the fixed "Opening playbook for a free build" in its instructions does name woodcutters and oasis-grass food, and its own opening plan named woodcutters, but map_overview showed no trees or farmland and it placed neither. The caution about buying is in the benchmark rules, which say it pays off only if the buildings go on to produce more than it cost. No placement was misled.
• "Treated [the idle cap] as a soft ceiling rather than immediately creating more jobs": part. Idle was 24 from 7:04 and population rose with the workshops of 8:32 and 11:53 and the quarries, from 41 to 66; it built nothing after 24:57.
• "The wheat → flour → bread chain multiplies value": the rules list wheat 8, flour 10 and bread 4 at the sell price, so bread sells for less than the flour; the run never traded wheat, so the buy price and the rates are untested here.
• "An extra quarry placement appeared to land on an existing quarry's tile": cannot be checked. Two quarry targets were reported blocked and moved 6 tiles (20:32, 24:37); the logs do not say by what.

For the harness

• Compaction. One, at 26:59: the first and only summary request succeeded (outcome stop, 26.0 s, $0.064, 67,956 of 70,537 prompt tokens from the cache), and the estimate fell from 71,528 at the last reading before it (24:36) to 50,876 (27:02) of the 120,000 budget. The text-only retry that e0e0eb4 resizes was not exercised. The handoff's counts match the game: 8 hovels, 12 workshops, 4 mines, 5 quarries, 7 tethers, 12 piles.
• Automatic trade. The model made no game_action call, so it did not set the marketplace's automatic trade by clicks. All 655 logged inputs (613 clicks, 42 key presses) fall inside tool calls: market_trade 415, build_structure 176, set_workshop 44, expand_storage 11, set_tax 6, set_rations 3. building_info says the Marketplace "sets automatic trade"; no tool does, and the interview asks for an auto-sell.
• market_trade. 11 of 36 calls stopped with "no more of this good to sell", each from asking for more than it held, with a remedy naming get_inventory, which this model never called. No net worth was lost.
• set_workshop. One workshop per call; the 12 calls took 137 game seconds, and the four built at 8:32 waited 22 to 49 seconds after the build call for their setting.
• Weapon prices. The no-arms rules print none (by design), so the first price any tool showed was in the reply to the first sale, after six workshops stood.
• The game saved correctly at the end ("muse wonder 1-7-3 09266d").