Claude Sonnet 5.5

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. The drafter is the same model as the player.

• Model: Claude Sonnet 5.5 (claude-sonnet-5-5) on Anthropic's API, reasoning medium, output limit 32,768 tokens
• Benchmark: The Sinkhole construction (no arms), version 1.7.3 (commit e0e0eb4), from the save the human reference game on this map started from; 45 min of game time at speed 40, the length of the person's game (44 min 58 s); no playbook; waits played fast. Weapons and armour in store count nothing toward net worth; sold at a marketplace, they bring their gold.
• Run 41f80e01, series 20261019T075033-f2d6c8de, 2026-10-19, host on the game machine: Sonnet's game on this benchmark, a fresh series with no memory of its others. Its weapons-counted pair is its 1.7.1 game (run 1fcdaf53, series 20261015T153838-6baec514, host on a Mac); its Sinkhole game from an earlier round is run 979ef2d1 (1.6.2). This game counts on the website's leaderboard.

Result

A full-budget score: the run used all 2,700 game seconds. Net worth grew by 13,051 over leaving the game alone, 33.1% of the person's 39,436, against 10,434 (26.5%) in the 1.7.1 game. By the website's formula (80% net worth, 10% each population and popularity; shares from doing nothing to the person; net-worth share clipped to −1..2) the score is 35.3: 26.48 points from net worth, 2.03 from 106 people and 6.80 from popularity 68. Gold is 48% of the net worth; iron, 240 units from 22 mines, is 36%. The town ended with 24 idle peasants, 32 empty places in its hovels, no empty pile in the stockpile and taxes at high (106 gold a month).

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 few seconds later).

0 to 5 minutes: planks and high taxes. Three woodcutters and two hovels (0:00). High taxes at 0:30 took popularity from 100 to 50 by 4:17, and the 26 places of housing were full by 2:53. Marketplace at 1:25; 200 planks bought at 1:38 and 2:08 (800 gold); four orchards at 2:54 (the call ran 76 s). Taxes went to low at 4:10 and none at 4:19.

5 to 10 minutes: iron and a food gap. Four iron mines at 4:54 (first iron at 8:07), five hovels at 5:29, three orchards at 6:48, and at 7:42 three wheat farms, a mill and a bakery. The starting meat was gone by 8:48, when a low-food warning ended a wait; half rations from 8:49 took popularity to 42 at 10:00, where it restored full rations and no taxes.

10 to 20 minutes: waiting for bread. Population fell from 50 to 35 (9:59 to 13:15) with popularity at 42 to 49. Four mines at 11:31; the first wheat showed at 13:15; an inn, a chapel (350 gold), two hops farms and a brewery at 14:39; the one compaction at 18:34; five mines at 18:37.

20 to 33 minutes: housing, mines, hunger again. Four hovels at 20:31, four mines and a bakery at 22:33. A food warning at 24:18 brought half rations (24:44) and 50 apples (24:52); mines at 25:12 and 26:44 made 22, the last. Average taxes at 29:03 and four hovels (housing 138) took popularity from 77 to 64; full rations at 30:21, low taxes at 30:27. Idle peasants stood at 24 from 25:12. Two quarries at 32:02 and, at 32:39, three ox tethers and two bakeries: its last building.

33 to 45 minutes: a full stockpile and high taxes. Population reached 106 at 33:45 and stayed. expand_storage at 35:32 found no ground beside the stockpile; high taxes at 35:52 took popularity from 90 to 68. It sold iron and planks (37:39, 39:58), bought 50 apples (38:01), and from 40:37 only waited.

Each column is the last recording frame at or before that minute (the 1.7.1 row uses the same clock). Before End the net worth row counts gold, wood, stone, iron and food (at 4) and leaves out flour, wheat, hops and ale (1,350 at 40 minutes, 1,618 at the end), so it reads low; End is the game's own figure.

Weapons

It left them alone. It built no armory or weapon workshop, sold and held no weapon, and none of its 101 tool calls was a set_workshop. Its opening reply and its 41 logged reasoning blocks never mention weapons. They come up once, in the compaction handoff (18:34): "Weapons count for nothing, so do not make any." The rules also say that sold at a marketplace weapons bring their gold; the handoff leaves that half out. The interview does not mention weapons.

The 1.7.1 game made them: five fletcher's workshops (from 4:59), three poleturner's (16:56) and three armories produced 53 bows and 41 spears, which stood at 1,205 at the end (795 and 410), 9.5% of that game's 12,629. They cost 800 gold (eight falls of 100 in the recording's gold), 145 wood for the buildings and 147 for the weapons (prompt/game-mechanics.md: bows 2 wood, spears 1), and no iron. Under this game's rule that stock would count nothing: the 1.7.1 game would have ended at 11,424 and 30.6 points, and this game stands 3,822 and 4.7 points above it, not 2,617 and 2.2.

Here its iron stayed iron (390 mined, 150 sold, 240 kept); 440 of the 812 wood in its build_structure placements went into 22 iron mines (the first at 4:54 against 6:52 in the 1.7.1 game, which ended with 17); its gold went on an inn and a chapel (350) and apples (800), where the 1.7.1 game's 800 went on workshops. It had 82 working people (106 less 24 idle) against 76.

Beside its other games and the other models

The 2.2 points between the scores are net worth +5.31, population +0.12 and popularity −3.20. The pair differs in more than the weapons: the model's own plan, the version and the host.

Gold. This game's 7,254 is the 2,000 it started with plus about 3,604 from taxes (the recording's monthly gold rises outside market calls) and 3,600 from sales, less 1,600 spent at the market and 350 on the inn and chapel. The 1.7.1 game took about 1,180 from taxes and 370 from wood sales and spent 800 on planks and 800 on workshops. Of the 5,520 gold this game gained after 35 minutes, 3,600 was sales (3,450 of it iron; net worth unchanged), 2,320 taxes and −400 apples.

Iron. It mined 390 units (240 kept, 150 sold) against 315. First iron came at 8:07 against 9:53, and iron passed 100 at 24:36 against 28:20 and 200 at 32:37 against 36:16. In the last five minutes 22 mines gave the same as 17: 73 units against 72. The logs do not show why.

Version and host. 1.7.2 limited the retry of a blocked placement to the footprint's side plus one tile (12 tiles before) and kept room beside the stockpile; 1.7.3 added the no-arms rule and fixed a compaction retry this game did not need. Here all 70 build_structure placements were made and one moved, 3 tiles; in the 1.7.1 game 5 of 69 were not placed and 5 moved, three of them 6 to 11 tiles. expand_storage found no room in both (30:16 there, 35:32 here). The host was a Mac there and the game machine here.

Its 1.6.2 game (16,810, 38.0) beat both, with 1,564 more net worth than this one: high taxes, 16 mines, 83 people and, by its analysis, about 5,300 gold from selling iron, wheat, flour and wood. It too ended with 24 idle and no empty pile.

The other models. On the 1.7.1 round's scale 35.3 would stand third of eleven, between GPT-6.1 Sol's 50.4 and Claude Opus 5.5's 34.7; on the 1.6.2 round's, sixth of twelve. Claude Haiku 5.5's no-arms game in this batch scored 23.8. On the batch's other maps Sonnet scored 31.4 without arms and 36.5 with them on Oasis by the Sea, 28.7 and 27.6 on Large Barren Desert.

What held it back

• No growth after 33 minutes. Population stopped at 106 of 138 places with 24 idle, the cap at which new peasants stop arriving; the last build call was at 32:39, 12 minutes 21 s before the end, and the last iron search at 25:12.
• Food, three times. Low-food warnings at 8:48, 24:18 and 37:38 (35 for 106 people); half rations twice (8:49 to 10:00, popularity 59 to 42; 24:44 to 30:21); 100 apples bought for 800 gold, which lost 400 of net worth.
• Taxes at both ends. Level 6 from 0:30 brought about 170 gold in 3 min 40 s and took popularity from 100 to 50. At 35:52 the rise from low to high added about 870 gold over low taxes (63 a month became 106; 1.8 points) and took popularity from 90 to 68 (2.2 points), or 3.2 from the 100 it was heading for at +3 a month; the logs do not show whether low taxes would have held it.
• A full stockpile. The 35:31 reading showed one empty pile, the 37:38 reading none, with the status saying goods without a pile are not delivered. Woodcutters slowed (17.7 to 5.7 a minute in the window to 39:58, 16 after planks were sold); flour, wheat and hops had 3, 2 and 1 units of room at the end. Iron kept arriving, 14 to 15.3 a minute in the last four readings, because 150 iron were sold (room 8 at 37:38, 1 at 44:49).
• Nothing built for 12 minutes (32:39 to the end), and only waits from 40:37, with gold at 6,194 to 7,254 and 54 to 126 wood.

What worked

• Iron early and in number: 390 units mined, worth 8,970, 59% of the net worth; first mines 4:54.
• Popularity late on low taxes: 90 at 35:31 with an inn and a chapel (+2 each in the status from 24:18 and 32:02); taxes then paid 2,194 gold from 35:52.
• Placements held: all 71 placements reported as placed (70 by build_structure, the marketplace by place_near) are in the final count; no call was refused.
• Warnings answered: five of the six early-ended waits (1:15, 8:48, 9:59, 24:18, 30:20, 37:38) were followed within a minute by a ration, tax or buying change; the first was not, and taxes came down at 4:10.

Market

It bought 200 planks (1:38, 2:08; 800 gold, 4 to buy and 1 to sell, so 600 of net worth lost) and 100 apples (24:52, 38:01; 800 gold, 8 and 4, so 400 lost). Selling leaves net worth unchanged. The replies of the four sales add to 60 iron for 1,380 and 140 planks for 140; the recording's gold and stock steps show 150 iron for 3,450 and 150 planks for 150:

The replies' stock and gold fields match the recording. Nothing it wrote shows it noticed: its closing text says it sold "iron, wood and stone", with no amounts, and no stone was sold. It made no game_action call, so it did not set the marketplace's automatic trading; all 454 clicks in the input log fall inside harness tool calls (295 build_structure, 99 market_trade, 23 set_tax, 13 inspect_building, 11 set_rations, 8 expand_storage, 5 place_near), besides the host's 15 pause presses.

Cost and speed

52 turns, 101 tool calls (27 find_sites, 22 wait_and_observe, 17 build_structure, 10 set_tax, 8 market_trade, 17 others), 2.98 million tokens and $0.751 at the profile's prices ($2 per million input, $10 output, $0.10 cache read, $2.50 cache write): preparation $0.078, play $0.646, compaction $0.027. The interview cost about $0.021. The agent run took 32.3 real minutes, 5.0 of them waiting for the model (52 replies, 5.8 s on average, longest 11.1 s). All 52 requests read the prompt cache, 97.0% of the input. The 1.7.1 game took 47 turns, $0.715 and 32.0 minutes.

The context was compacted once, at 18:34, with the estimate at 77,768 tokens. It succeeded on its first request: one compaction_usage event, outcome "stop", 14.9 s, a 3,583-character text handoff, no tool-call reply and no retry; the estimate after was 43,887. The 1.7.3 retry fix was not needed.

Of the 2,700 game seconds the 22 waits took 1,547 (played fast, 10.3 real minutes), the 17 build calls 689 and the 8 market calls 169. The build calls placed 70 buildings: 9.8 game seconds each, 4.1 a call. The 1.7.1 game's 17 calls placed 64 of 69 in 707 s: 11.0 each, 3.8 a call. With the host on a Mac there and the game machine here, the difference mixes the version, the host and the model's choices; it is one pair of games, not a rate.

The interview

Sonnet put the gap down to population (106 against 506, growth stalled at 24 idle), weak food and popularity (7 orchards, 3 wheat farms, 4 bakeries, one lever at a time), goods left unsold, and a full stockpile. Playing again it would build a far larger bread chain earlier and several inns, run low taxes and keep growing, plan stockpile room and quarries, and sell surplus. It praised find_sites, tile placement and the stats; it named not knowing why 24 stayed idle with open_jobs at 0, net worth missing from the stats, and an undocumented trade or storage limit. It called itself too cautious and thin on information after the compaction.

Against the game these match: the figures it quotes (41,631 against 15,246, 506 against 106), food short at 24:18, half rations and 100 apples (400 of net worth lost), 24 idle with open_jobs 0 from 25:12, iron at about 15 a minute from 22 mines, one expand_storage with no room, one inn. These do not:

• "Mines and woodcutters stalled for the last several minutes": the mines did not (above); woodcutters slowed from about 37:00 to 40:00.
• Taxes raised "in the last 7 minutes": at 35:52, nine minutes before the end.
• "I never used more than one popularity lever at a time": it changed tax and rations in one reply at 10:00 and 30:21, held half rations while raising tax at 29:03, and built an inn and a chapel at 14:39.
• "About 25 iron mines": 22.
• "I never worked out why growth stopped" and instructions that "say little" about it: the rules say new peasants stop arriving while 24 stand idle, and its reasoning at 4:54, 22:33 and 32:02 named jobs.

For the harness

• market_trade undercounts sales. Three of the eight replies differ from the recording (table above): at 233 iron in stock the note said "20 a click" where the game sold 50, and at 273 a request for 40 (two clicks of 20 in the reply) sold 100; a wood sale at 116 in stock came to 110, not 100. stock and gold are right; scores are not affected.
• expand_storage at 35:32 found no room with one empty pile left, though 1.7.2 keeps room beside the stockpile (its changelog says the rule was not yet tried in the live game); the logs do not show what stood there.
• Idle at 24 with open_jobs 0. The model could not tell why; the rules say new peasants stop arriving while 24 stand idle, and the status does not say when that cap is reached.
• The reader's watchdog forced one collection (a 20 s stall recorded 16 s before timed play began); no stall during play. No provider errors or refused calls. The game saved at the end ("claude sonnet 5-5 1-7-3 41f80e").