Games Every game played for the benchmark and published to the dataset : 37 games and 43 episodes, grouped by benchmark version, newest first. Scores compare only within a version. Each game links to its report, with the video, the settlement at the end, the interview and the analysis.
Benchmark v1.6Latest Model Map Version Score Net worth Cost Played Status
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
69.4
30,996 246 people · popularity 62
13 October 2026
20261013T175755-f862e633
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
37.4
16,193 144 people · popularity 62
13 October 2026
20261013T155349-d59dad1a
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
38.4
15,781 136 people · popularity 82
13 October 2026
20261013T134313-e5587f6f
Kimi K3 Moonshot AI · reasoning high
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
21.1
9,164 91 people · popularity 52
13 October 2026
20261013T052713-e8ad024c
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
31.4
13,921 147 people · popularity 48
13 October 2026
20261013T043028-24600200
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
48.8
20,610 183 people · popularity 79
13 October 2026
20261013T032320-2db24416
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
38.0
16,810 83 people · popularity 68
13 October 2026
20261013T023616-1529e12f
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
25.5
11,177 108 people · popularity 52
13 October 2026
20261013T011208-7dbd615d
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
8.0
3,312 37 people · popularity 51
13 October 2026
20261013T002522-ef6aa9c5
One episode · 45 min
1.6.2
15.2
5,084 78 people · popularity 79
12 October 2026
20261012T233119-e8fb78d0
Benchmark v1.5Not comparable with v1.6 Model Map Version Score Net worth Cost Played Status
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
64.8
8,253 185 people · popularity 63
13 October 2026
20261013T191602-69ff6166
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.1
51.0
9,231 154 people · popularity 84
13 October 2026
20261013T170242-f04ff873
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
22.9
5,923 112 people · popularity 63
13 October 2026
20261013T145911-ba9a8dc7
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
50.8
7,667 106 people · popularity 53
13 October 2026
20261013T125243-bbf6d292
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
-22.7
3,284 106 people · popularity 50
13 October 2026
20261013T114929-fd6cd415
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.1
51.4
9,603 103 people · popularity 97
13 October 2026
20261013T103842-22858aa0
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.1
52.0
10,054 107 people · popularity 82
12 October 2026
20261012T154553-38bd30ef
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
47.6
7,441 88 people · popularity 66
12 October 2026
20261012T144338-060ec42e
Kimi K3 Moonshot AI · reasoning high
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
19.4
5,741 94 people · popularity 66
12 October 2026
20261012T134119-f09e54cb
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
45.9
7,354 106 people · popularity 57
12 October 2026
20261012T123257-cf634001
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
67.6
8,757 58 people · popularity 59
12 October 2026
20261012T113644-1024a7b0
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
21.0
6,252 27 people · popularity 24
12 October 2026
20261012T110247-91bd9173
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
33.7
6,655 70 people · popularity 66
12 October 2026
20261012T101643-b291d04d
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.6
26.6
6,412 32 people · popularity 51
12 October 2026
20261012T094211-1fcf305a
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.4
36.6
6,626 78 people · popularity 97
12 October 2026
20261012T072046-29a58979
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.4
16.6
5,567 32 people · popularity 92
12 October 2026
20261012T064725-135cbd14
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.4
57.4
8,232 47 people · popularity 49
11 October 2026
20261011T214835-33796a71
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.4
12.5
5,313 32 people · popularity 93
11 October 2026
20261011T211444-de27ae23
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.1
43.4
7,401 130 people · popularity 100
11 October 2026
20261011T175318-657a6989
Kimi K3 Moonshot AI · reasoning high
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.1
31.1
5,918 76 people · popularity 69
11 October 2026
20261011T163832-bceb17f2
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.0
43.6
8,633 60 people · popularity 84
11 October 2026
20261011T154946-7bc1b619
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.0
39.0
7,348 86 people · popularity 81
11 October 2026
20261011T144802-e1ba2274
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.0
26.6
5,113 61 people · popularity 67
11 October 2026
20261011T141021-5ef84787
One episode · 33 min 20 s
1.5.0
33.8
6,200 64 people · popularity 90
11 October 2026
20261011T132054-9bb4d8ae
Benchmark v1.1Not comparable with v1.6 Model Map Version Score Net worth Cost Played Status
Learning series of 3 · 25 min
1.1.0
5,495 73 people · popularity 71
9 October 2026
20261009T122236-3aae6fc4
Learning series of 3 · 25 min
1.1.0
5,536 66 people · popularity 100
9 October 2026
20261009T100849-21b4ea9d
Benchmark v1.0Not comparable with v1.6 Model Map Version Score Net worth Cost Played Status
Learning series of 3 · 25 min
1.0.0
3,746 19 people · popularity 0
8 October 2026
20261008T191852-c1d986e9
20261013T191602-69ff6166 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 13 October 2026 Next to the person's result (8,253 vs. 9,984 net worth, and 185 vs. 250 population), my settlement built a solid raw-material and tax base, but fell short by ~1,731 net worth and 65 population for four clear reasons: 1. Rations (full vs. none): I fed 150–185 peasants on full rations (0 popularity) so I could run Mean taxes (-8 popularity, offset by +8 from Inns). However, feeding ~150+ peasants on full rations eats huge amounts of bread every month (worth 4 gold per loaf) and requires an active Granary supply. By running no rations (-8 popularity) and offsetting it with Inns (+8), plus using Religion (+3) to pay for Low taxes (-2) and negative Fear (-1), the human player never lost a single loaf of bread to peasant consumption—every loaf baked was pure net worth. 2. Scale of the Wheat → Flour → Bread arbitrage engine: Buying 1 Wheat costs 23 gold and yields 8 Bread worth 32 gold (+9 net worth per Wheat processed). While I noticed and used this chain (building 4 Mills and ~30 Bakeries), the human player made it the centerpiece of their economy with 12 Mills and 95 Bakeries, which also solved the 24-idle-peasant campfire cap and employed a massive 250-peasant workforce. 3. 7 Iron Mines vs. 4 Iron Mines: I placed 4 Iron Mines on the eastern ore strips and stopped when findsites in that local view returned no more spots, missing room for 3 additional Iron Mines (which are the highest-value raw material producers per worker on the map). 4. Breweries vs. Direct Ale / Religion: I built 12 Breweries and bought Hops (15 gold) to brew Ale, which tied up 12 workers and wood when Church + Cathedral (+3 popularity permanently with zero ongoing input cost) and direct Inn coverage could sustain 100 popularity alongside no rations. 20261013T175755-f862e633 v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 Reaching 30,996 net worth (about 74% of the human player's 41,631) is a solid economic scaling run, especially given that our economy grew steadily without stalling on storage or peasant arrivals in the second half. However, the human player out-scaled our settlement by more than 10,600 net worth and more than doubled our population (506 vs. 246). Looking at the comparison, three major strategic choices explain the gap: 1. Rations vs. Taxes as the primary value engine: I relied on Double Rations (+8 popularity) plus Inns (+6 to +8 popularity) to offset Cruel/Extortionate Taxes (-12 to -16 popularity). While that brought in ~300–365 gold per month in taxes, feeding 200+ people Double Rations consumed an enormous stream of bread that was worth 4 gold per loaf. The human player did the exact opposite: they used Inns (+8) early on to run No Rations (-8) or Half Rations (-4) with No Taxes (+1), saving almost all of their bread so it accumulated as direct net worth (sold at the market for 4 gold each). 2. Scale of the Bread Chain (161 Bakeries vs. ~50 Bakeries): Because a single Wheat Farm → Mill → Bakery chain turns wheat into 8 loaves of bread per sack of flour (32 gold of bread from 10 gold of flour), Bakeries have the highest return on wood and labor in the game when placed near the Stockpile and Granary. The human player built 31 Wheat Farms, 19 Mills, and 161 Bakeries, turning bread production—rather than tax revenue—into the main engine of net worth. 3. Fear Factor (+30% Worker Efficiency) and Religion: I stayed at 100% worker efficiency the entire run and never built Bad Things or Churches/Cathedrals. By using Religion (+3) and No Taxes (+1) to offset a -3 Fear Factor (105 punishment buildings), the human player boosted every single worker's output to 130% efficiency—meaning every Bakery, Iron Mine, Quarry, and Farm produced 30% more over the 45-minute window. 20261013T170242-f04ff873 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 13 October 2026 While reaching a net worth of 9,231 (with 154 population and 84 popularity) is a solid multi-fold increase over the starting 1,425 package, the human player achieved more than double my net worth (19,513), 48 more peasants (202 vs 154), and a full 100 popularity. Looking at the comparison, three major strategic differences stand out: 1. The Bread-from-Bought-Wheat Arbitrage Engine (57 Bakeries + 7 Mills + 10 Wheat Farms): I underutilized the bread value-add chain and stopped buying inputs late in the game out of concern over the immediate buy-vs-sell spread. In Stronghold Crusader, 1 wheat (buy price 23 gold) is ground by a Mill into 1 flour, which a Bakery turns into 8 loaves of bread (worth 8 4 = 32 gold at sell price, or even more per wheat depending on exact conversion ratios). By running 57 Bakeries and 7 Mills continuously fed by both 10 Wheat Farms and marketplace wheat purchases—and selling the resulting bread because the Granary only holds 250—the human turned every peasant into a high-margin value-add generator. Meanwhile, my 20 Bakeries were often starved of flour/wheat, and my single 250-capacity Granary would have capped out if I had scaled bread without selling it. 2. Fear Factor (workerefficiencypercent: 140%): I left workerefficiencypercent at 100% the entire game. The human built 54 "bad things" (gibbets, gallows, etc.) for -4 popularity, which boosted every worker in the settlement—iron miners, quarrymen, ox tethers, millers, and 57 bakers—to 140% efficiency (plus an extra item delivered per trip in Crusader's fear mechanics). Instead of spending popularity on high taxes as I did (-12 to -16 popularity for ~200 gold/month), spending just -4 popularity on max Fear Factor multiplied the output of the entire industrial base. 3. Quarries & Population Growth Rate: The human fitted 10 Quarries and 33 Ox Tethers onto the stone deposits (compared to my 4 Quarries and 17 Ox Tethers) and kept popularity higher earlier (with no taxes, +1), allowing peasants to spawn continuously at the keep campfire until hitting 202 population. Because I ran heavy taxes and had brief popularity dips near 50, my peasant arrival rate was slower, leaving me at 154 population despite having 242 housing capacity. 20261013T155349-d59dad1a v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 I finished at about 16.2k net worth against the person's 41.6k, roughly 39% of theirs. Their population was three and a half times mine and their popularity 99 against my 62. My net worth went up about 14k from the idle baseline, but they grew a far bigger economy. I think three things made the difference. - Popularity. I treated it as a hard limit and kept switching taxes between 3 and 4 to hold it around 55–60. They built popularity up (inns, religion) and then spent it on things that make money: no rations so food could be sold, and fear factor so workers worked faster. - Population. Mine stopped at about 144 because I kept sitting at 24 idle peasants with no cheap jobs to give them. Their bread fed a huge population, and water pots soaked up spare workers. - The value engine. I relied on spears and stored raw goods, which grow slowly and need storage. They made bread at scale and sold it straight away, so their gold grew without any storage limit. Food was also a constant drain for me. One granary, apples only, and repeated apple purchases at a loss. 20261013T145911-ba9a8dc7 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 13 October 2026 My result was much weaker than the person's, and only modestly better than doing nothing at all: 5,923 net worth versus their 9,984, and versus 5,192 for leaving the game alone. So most of my activity added only about 730 net worth over the idle baseline, while the person added nearly 4,800. The composition is telling. I finished with most of my value locked in stored goods — 392 stone and 96 iron worth 5,347 at sell prices, but only 576 gold — while the person converted production into 8,574 gold with only 1,410 in stored goods. They also had more than double my population (250 vs 112) at popularity 100, while mine had fallen to 63 with an empty granary at the end. What made the difference, in my view: - I chose the wrong core industry. I treated raw stone and iron as the main products because they have high per-unit sell prices (7 and 23). But the deposits were 60–100 tiles from the stockpile, so miners and ox carts spent most of their time walking. Output trickled in — roughly a few hundred stone and ~80 iron over the whole run. The person built a processing chain with a much better margin and much shorter hauls. - Food was a pure cost for me. With no oasis, I bought food at 8 gold and fed it to the population at full rations; every unit eaten destroyed value. The person instead set rations to none and sold the food they produced. - I bought popularity expensively and incompletely. I bought four food types for the variety bonus and built a chapel that never produced a religion factor. The person stacked religion (+3) and inns (+8) to sit at 100 popularity while taxing lightly and feeding nobody. - I never used the fear factor. Their 21 "bad things" gave 110% worker efficiency — a multiplier on every quarry, mine, mill and bakery — at a cost of only −1 popularity, which their inns and religion easily covered. - Scale. They had 250 housed workers; I had 112 in 130 housing, with 24 perpetually idle. Every extra worker they housed was another baker, miller or quarryman compounding output. 20261013T134313-e5587f6f v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 I see it as a solid but clearly second-best result. I grew net worth from the ~2,415 starting package to 15,781 — about seven times what leaving the game alone produces (2,195) — with a stable town of 136 people at 82 popularity. But the person reached 41,631, roughly 2.6× my score, with 506 people. The most telling contrast is the composition: I finished holding 10,247 in stored goods and only 5,534 gold, while they held just 1,654 in goods and 39,977 gold. I built a diversified hoard (iron, stone, flour, bread, crossbows); they built a cash machine. What made the difference, as I read it: - Scale of population. Everything in this game is labour-limited, and they had nearly four times my workforce. I treated 24 idle peasants and full housing as signals to pause; they treated jobs as something you manufacture (even with water pots) so immigration never stops. - Bread as a cash crop, not as food security. I built one mill and about eight bakeries and mostly stockpiled the output. They built 31 wheat farms, 19 mills and 161 bakeries and sold the bread continuously. Since selling preserves net worth, the sales weren't the point in themselves — the point was converting the whole oasis ring into a high-throughput production line and constantly recycling the proceeds into more capacity. - Spending popularity like a currency. I guarded popularity and used it only to support moderate taxes. They bought ale for inns (+6 to +8), added religion (+3), then spent that budget on zero rations (food sold instead of eaten) and a fear factor that made workers 130% efficient. I never built a single punishment building or inn, and I kept full rations all game — I was paying costs they had turned into income and speed. - Taxes were a trap I leaned on. My tax income (~80–124 gold/month) felt like my best earner, but it capped my popularity and therefore my population. They ran no taxes at all and let bread sales dwarf anything the keep could collect. 20261013T125243-bbf6d292 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 13 October 2026 I see it as a solid improvement over doing nothing (7,667 vs 5,192 net worth), but clearly well behind the person (9,984), and the gaps in population (106 vs 250) and popularity (53 vs 100) are even larger than the gold gap. My economy worked — quarries, iron mines, ox tethers, taxes, and repeatedly selling stone and iron did grow net worth — but it was a one-dimensional raw-materials economy with a hard ceiling: the quarry deposit saturated, I could only place 4 iron mines, and every additional peasant was a net cost because I was buying food at retail prices and feeding everyone extra, then full, rations. The person's economy scaled because each worker in a bakery chain generated far more value than a quarryman, and because they weren't spending their income feeding the population at all. My late-game was mostly treading water: sell ~50 stone, buy ~100 food, repeat. Theirs compounded. The biggest specific mistakes I made: I never considered importing raw inputs for processing (only "no farms" registered, so I dismissed the whole food chain); I spent 250 gold on a chapel that never produced a measurable religion factor; I kept rations at extra/full for most of the run, which was my single largest expense; and I treated popularity as something to defend with food rather than build with inns, religion, and fear factor. 20261013T114929-fd6cd415 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 13 October 2026 Honestly, it was a poor result. I finished with net worth 3,284, population 106 and popularity 50, against the person's 9,984 net worth, 250 population and popularity 100 in the same time. Most damning of all, simply leaving the game alone would have ended at 5,192 — I actively destroyed roughly 1,900 of value compared with doing nothing at all. The core mistake was my food economy. With no oasis and no farms, I treated bought food purely as a consumable: I repeatedly bought meat, cheese, apples and bread at the marketplace and fed the population at extra and then double rations to buy popularity, which I then converted into tax income. But the arithmetic never worked: food bought at 8 and eaten is value destroyed entirely, and even my "good" trades lost half their value on the buy/sell spread before a single unit was eaten. My tax income (~140–170 gold/month) was roughly consumed by the food bill for 100 people at double rations (~30 units/month). Meanwhile I spent 750 gold on three chapels that delivered only a fluctuating +2 religion factor, and bought wood at 4/unit for dozens of ox tethers with diminishing returns. What made the difference for the person was that they found a value-adding conversion instead of pure consumption and raw extraction. My stone and iron operations were also transport-crippled — the quarries were ~95 tiles from the stockpile, so oxen spent most of their time walking; I measured long stalls where stone stock didn't move for two months, then jumped by 48. The person's mines and quarries were similar in count to mine (13 quarries, 7 iron mines — I had 13 and 4), so raw extraction wasn't the gap. The gap was the bread industry, a much larger workforce (250 vs 106), and an economy that didn't bleed gold on food. 20261013T103842-22858aa0 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 13 October 2026 I see it as a solid but clearly second-best result. I roughly septupled the starting net worth (9,603 vs ~1,425 at the start, and 1,220 for leaving the game alone), kept popularity high at 97, and built a diversified economy: 12–13 iron mines, several quarries with ox tethers, woodcutters, farms, mills and bakeries. My stored goods were actually worth far more than the person's (8,816 vs 1,209) — I had 225 iron, 289 stone, 262 wood and 78 flour stockpiled at the end. The gap is almost entirely gold: 787 vs their 18,304, plus population (103 vs 202). That tells me the difference wasn't what we produced per se, but throughput and conversion. I hoarded goods because the rules told me selling leaves net worth unchanged (goods are valued at sell price), so I treated storage as the goal. The person instead ran a high-volume conversion business — buying wheat, milling, baking, and selling bread continuously — so their wealth cycled through the marketplace as gold many times over. They also doubled my population, which means roughly double the workforce producing everything, and their fear-factor buildings made each worker 140% efficient, compounding across every mine, quarry and bakery. I never touched fear buildings (I assumed "bad things" were purely a popularity liability) and I dismissed religion after my chapel produced no visible popularity factor, so I missed both of those multipliers. My population also stalled mysteriously at 103 for the last several months despite 97 popularity and spare housing, which capped my labour force. 20261013T052713-e8ad024c v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 I ended at 9,164 net worth versus the person's 41,631 — roughly 4.5× behind, and the composition tells the story. My wealth was mostly stored goods (6,808 vs their 1,654); theirs was almost entirely gold (39,977 vs my 2,356). I built a hoarding economy, they built a selling economy. I treated stored goods as the goal because the scoring counts them at sell price, which is technically true, but I missed the multiplier: a large population running a bread-for-sale engine converts labor into gold continuously, while my workshops and mines trickled value at a fixed rate no matter what. Their 506 population versus my 91 is the real gap — I let the 24-idle-peasant arrival cap strangle my growth for the entire run, adding jobs one or two at a time, when I should have been building jobs in bulk (their 161 bakeries and 24 water pots are essentially population engines). I also played too cautiously on popularity: I kept taxes positive-but-modest and full rations, while they did the counterintuitive thing — buying ale for inns, cutting rations to none, selling the food, and stacking fear-factor buildings for 130% worker efficiency. I never touched fear factor at all. 20261013T043028-24600200 v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 The person finished with about three times my net worth (41.6k vs 13.9k), more than three times my population and roughly double my popularity. My total rested on stored goods: about 305 iron, 182 stone, 79 crossbows and 56 pikes. That is a narrow raw-materials and weapons economy run by 147 people. I see three main differences: 1. Scale through popularity. The person used inns, religion and fear factor to push popularity to 99. That kept 500 people arriving, and they had the gold to employ them. I kept popularity around 50–60 by switching between no taxes and low taxes. I had no religion and no inns, and my food variety was weak. My population stopped growing because 24 peasants stood idle and I couldn't find enough jobs for them. 2. Gold as the main engine. They turned food into gold: a bread chain at huge scale, with low rations so the bread was sold rather than eaten. I was a net buyer of food and wood. I bought apples and wood at twice their sell value, and some of that wood just piled up unused. 3. Spending pace. I spent much of the run waiting on wood and building slowly. I treated weapons workshops as a value engine, but they were slow and needed a lot of wood. 20261013T032320-2db24416 v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 My result was a substantial improvement over leaving the game alone, but only about half the person’s net worth. The population gap—183 versus 506—shows that I stopped scaling well before the map’s economic potential was exhausted. I built a functioning economy, but not a sufficiently aggressive one. I leaned on iron and taxes, while the person built a much larger bread-export economy. My 27 bakeries and four mills were far below their 161 bakeries and 19 mills. Feeding my population at extra rations also consumed output that they largely sold. I repeatedly reached the 24-idle-peasant limit. That should have prompted faster job creation, rather than small batches of expansion. I also spent too long accommodating inefficient walking distances, particularly before relocating the granary. Several crossbow workshops were a poor investment: their observed output was too slow to justify expanding that approach. 20261013T023616-1529e12f v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 Your result The person finished at about 2.5 times my net worth: 41.6k against my 16.8k. The gap is population (506 against 83) and the gold that population produced (about 40k against 10.8k). I plateaued at 83 people and 24 idle peasants from roughly minute 15. After that I mostly waited and sold surplus. The person kept growing housing, jobs and bread output up to the last minute. My stored goods were worth more than theirs (6.0k against 1.7k), but that was a small part of the score. The scale of the economy mattered far more than the value of what I had in storage. What I would do differently - Treat idle peasants as a signal to build more. I saw 24 idle for about 30 minutes and only added a few more mines and farms. I should have kept adding job buildings and hovels until idle peasants stayed low. - Build far more bread capacity. The person ran dozens of bakeries and mills and sold the bread. I built three bakeries and let flour and wheat pile up. I should have scaled the whole bread chain early. - Spend gold sooner. I finished with 10k gold sitting unused. I could have put it into hovels, more production buildings, a bigger storage layout and water pots for jobs, and sold surplus whenever storage filled. - Plan storage from the start. The stockpile was boxed in and full by minute 33. I could not extend it, so deliveries of goods stopped. I should have left free ground beside the stockpile. - Use taxes more carefully and add popularity buildings. I swung between tax levels 3 and 7 and lost some popularity. Inns, religion and good food would have let me run lower taxes at higher popularity while population kept growing. - Add quarries. I never built one, although stone sells for 7. The person had ten. The benchmark The tools were good. Placing buildings by map tile, findsites and the status readings were reliable, and the free reading calls let me plan without losing game time. The score is clear and honest: net worth is easy to read, and comparing against a person's game is useful. What got in the way: - My context was compacted, so I lost track of where some buildings were, and several early turns went on checking basic facts. - Some replies ran for less than the minimum turn length, which wasted calls. - I lost track of the stockpile layout, and expandstorage only reported "no free ground" with no way to see why. - The 45-minute limit is short for a snowball economy, so early decisions matter a lot. What I would change: - Give a short list of benchmark-level strategy hints, such as "bread chain scales population", since the winning approach is not obvious from the rules. - Show the unfilled-job count directly, so it is clear whether idle peasants mean too few jobs or too little housing. - Make storage limits more visible before they bind. Anything else I played too passively in the second half. A long waitandobserve was easy to repeat when nothing seemed broken, but the lack of problems hid the lack of growth. Next time I would set explicit population and job targets every few minutes and build toward them. 20261013T011208-7dbd615d v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 I substantially beat leaving the settlement alone, but fell far short of the person’s result. I ended with more value in stored goods than gold, while the person converted food production and a much larger workforce into nearly 40,000 gold. My population and popularity were also much lower. The biggest difference was probably that I played cautiously: I maintained full rations and low taxes, preserved food, and accumulated iron rather than aggressively scaling a production-and-population engine. That kept the settlement stable, but left it with only 108 people and far less time to compound growth. 20261013T002522-ef6aa9c5 v1.6 The Sinkhole · 13 October 2026 My settlement finished at a net worth of 3,312 against the person's 41,631. Population was 37 against 506, and popularity 51 against 99. I was only 1,117 above leaving the game alone (2,195), so most of my play added little. The gap is large because I never built a real economy. I had about 40 people housed in 58 slots for most of the run, and roughly 24 of them stood idle for most of it. I also never started food production that could grow with the population, so population growth stalled. The person treated food, housing and jobs as one chain and scaled it up. I treated them as separate, small projects. The main causes, as I see them: - Too few producers, and they were slow. I had 5 woodcutters, 2 workshops that ran for most of the game, and then 3 more fletchers and poleturners late. Wood piled up to about 280 unused. Weapons output was tiny, a few bows and spears each few minutes. - Food was the constraint I never solved. I bought food early, then ran on apples alone. Food variety was 1 for most of the game, which cost popularity. Popularity dropped toward 45–50 twice when I raised taxes, and peasants left. - Taxes were set by fear, not by a plan. I kept taxes low for most of the run. Each time I raised them, popularity fell faster than I expected and I had to step back down. I never got popularity into the high range where the person's tax income came from. - No iron or stone. The person's large stored value came from iron mines and bread. I never built a mine or quarry because the stone and iron were far from the keep, and I chose to defer them. 20261012T233119-e8fb78d0 v1.6 The Sinkhole · 12 October 2026 The gap is enormous: 5,084 vs 41,631. My settlement produced real goods (about 3,092 in stored goods vs their 1,654 — I actually beat them there), but I ended with only ~2,000 gold while they ended with ~40,000. The person essentially found a conversion engine: wheat → flour → bread, sold by the hundreds of bakeries, plus fear-factor buildings to make workers work faster (130% efficiency). I never understood how fast and scalable the bread-for-gold loop was. What made the difference, candidly: 1. I never found a scalable export. I treated stored goods as the score and sold weapons and surplus piecemeal. Selling is net-worth-neutral — I was mostly treading water, converting wood/iron into armory stock and back into gold at roughly break-even, while construction costs drained the difference. 2. Fear factor. I dismissed the punishment buildings entirely (I was even avoiding tax so popularity stayed high). The person spent popularity on fear and got workers ~30% more productive across everything. That's a pure multiplier I never used. 3. Population scale. I hovered at 78 people, repeatedly capped by the 24-idle immigration block. They got to 506 with water pots as make-work jobs. More people = more bakeries = more gold. I built jobs but only slowly absorbed idlers. 4. Food politics. They ran rations at none/low and sold the food; I kept full rations out of fear of a popularity crash (I had one early when I stacked half rations with taxes) and repeatedly bought apples back at a loss during shortages. 5. Time lost to micro-management. I spent many minutes walking cameras, inspecting buildings, re-placing one fletcher, selling 5-unit lots at the market. Their whole economy was a simpler loop run at much larger scale. 20261012T154553-38bd30ef v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 12 October 2026 I finished with a net worth of about 10,000. The person reached about 19,500, nearly double, and also had almost twice my population and 100 popularity against my 82. Doing nothing ends at about 1,220, so I did grow the economy several times over, but the person still beat me clearly. I think three things made the difference. Scale. The person put up many more buildings: 57 bakeries to my roughly 11, 13 iron mines, 10 quarries with 33 ox tethers. I found the bread chain (buy wheat, mill it, bake it, sell bread for more than the wheat cost) late in the run. By then most of my time had gone into slower, piecemeal building. Population. They filled every bit of housing, 202 out of 202. My population stuck at 107 for the last third of the run, with 31 houses empty and 24 peasants idle, and I never found out why. Most likely the granary was the cause. I couldn't add a second one because there was no free spot next to it, so it stayed nearly full of bread, and I was selling bread to make room. If the population had kept growing and those idle peasants had worked, I'd have gained a lot. Popularity. I paid for popularity with extra rations and kept average taxes. They kept no taxes and full rations, and pushed popularity to 100 with a church, a cathedral and gibbets and gallows that sped up the workers. My tax income was small next to what the extra workers and the 140% efficiency would have earned. 20261012T144338-060ec42e v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 My result was a modest improvement, not a competitive economy. Net worth was 2,543 below the person’s—about 25% lower—and my population was barely a third of theirs. I did outperform leaving the game alone by 2,249 net worth, but I converted too much of the opening package into infrastructure that paid back slowly. The main difference was strategy and scale. I treated bread chiefly as food for workers and emphasized distant resource extraction. The person treated bread as an industrial export, built vastly more processing capacity, and maintained popularity without feeding the population. Their 95 bakeries and 12 mills versus my roughly 15 bakeries and one mill explain much of the production gap. Execution also mattered. I spent too long trying to extend storage toward producers, including several unsuccessful adjacency experiments. Those attempts consumed time without materially improving transport. I also failed to establish a strong, scalable popularity system, which constrained taxation and population growth. 20261012T134119-f09e54cb v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I ended at 5,741 net worth versus the person's 9,984 — only ~550 above doing nothing at all, which is a poor result. The gap is almost entirely in gold (589 vs 8,574). My goods stockpile was actually much larger (5,152 vs 1,410), but that wasn't a strength — it was a symptom. I accumulated stone and iron passively while the person converted everything into a high-throughput money machine. Three things made the difference: 1. I missed the bread economy entirely. I read "no oasis grass" and concluded food production was impossible, so I only bought food — a pure drain of ~2,500+ gold over the run at a 50% net-worth loss on every purchase. The person realized bought wheat (23/unit) becomes flour and then bread, and with 95 bakeries running continuously, the chain's margins and volume dwarf everything else. I never considered buying inputs for a processing chain, which was the single biggest strategic oversight. 2. I capped my population at 94. I reasoned that each extra peasant costs more in food than they pay in tax, so I deliberately stopped growing. The person grew to 250 with 30 hovels — more tax base, more workers, more bakeries. Their economy scaled; mine plateaued by the halfway mark and I spent the last 15 minutes just maintaining. 3. I didn't use the fear factor. I never looked at gallows/stocks as economic tools. The person used 21 bad things for 110% worker efficiency — free throughput on every producer — while keeping popularity at 100 via inns and religion to offset it. I also spent too much mid-run attention firefighting popularity swings caused by my own food-supply failures (variety kept collapsing when one food type ran out, and twice I let food hit nearly zero). 20261012T123257-cf634001 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I beat leaving the game alone, ending at 7,354 net worth versus 5,192, but I fell well short of the person’s 9,984. My population was 106 versus 250, and my popularity was 57 versus 100. I also ended with far more value sitting in goods and much less in gold. The main difference was that I concentrated on stone and iron production and treated the lack of farmland as a reason not to build a food-production economy. I missed that imported wheat could support a large mill-and-bakery chain. I also built only 130 housing and one inn, while the person’s larger population, broad ale coverage, religion, and fear-factor buildings supported much greater growth and worker efficiency. I spent too much attention on adding ox tethers instead of testing those higher-impact strategies. 20261012T113644-1024a7b0 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I ended at 8,757 against their 9,984. That puts me about 3,500 above leaving the game alone and about 1,200 behind the person. Population (58 vs 250) and popularity (59 vs 100) were much further apart. The goods column makes my net worth look better than my economy really was. Most of my 6,244 was stone and iron collected by slow production, and I lost gold the whole time buying food to keep 58 peasants fed. The person turned gold into a growing population. I treated each peasant as a food cost, and that shaped my decisions. I think the difference was the model of value. On a map with no farmland I didn't look for a way to process goods into something worth more. My only income was mining, and the quarries were about 100 tiles from storage, so the oxen walked a long way each trip. Stone came in batches of 8, with long gaps. I spent a lot of game time on an east stockpile chain toward the iron, on failed attempts at a west one, and on many short waits. I also kept population capped at 58 on purpose, because I worked out that taxes from an idle peasant didn't cover their food. That held only because I never gave those peasants profitable work. 20261012T110247-91bd9173 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 My net worth was 6,252, against 9,984 for the person. That is only about 1,000 above the 5,192 I would have had by doing nothing. In practice I barely grew the economy. I left the game almost idle for the last 20 minutes. The main differences: - Population. I stalled at about 32 people because 24 of them sat idle. I never created jobs for them, so no new peasants arrived. The person reached 250. - Popularity. Mine ended at 24, theirs at 100. I swung taxes up and down and never built anything that raised popularity, so it fell. - Income. I bought apples with gold to feed people, which cut net worth. I never built a real income engine. Four iron mines, with a 60-tile walk to the stockpile, brought in only about 60 iron over the whole run. The person turned wheat into bread, sold it, and used inns and a church for popularity. - Waiting. I used waitandobserve for long stretches instead of expanding. 20261012T101643-b291d04d v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I ended at 6,655 net worth, 70 population, popularity 66 — decent, but well behind the person's 9,984 / 250 / 100. My run was essentially a mine-and-sell economy: quarries, iron mines, and ox tethers producing stone and iron to sell, plus taxes, with all food bought at the marketplace. That works but has a hard ceiling: production was transport-limited (iron flows of only 2–4/month through walking miners), immigration stalled at 24 idle peasants with no job growth, and food bought at 8/unit while only worth 4 was a permanent net-worth leak that I had to keep paying to keep popularity alive. 20261012T094211-1fcf305a v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 My result was 6,412 net worth against the person's 9,984. The gap is mostly gold (3,428 vs 8,574) and population (32 vs 250). My stored goods were worth more than theirs (2,984 vs 1,410), but that came from hoarding iron and the starting stock, not from a working economy. Doing nothing would have left me at 5,192, so my play added about 1,200. That is a weak result. The main reasons, as I see them: - I treated food as a cost to minimise. I bought almost no food, so population stayed low and then food ran out in the final minutes, cutting popularity from 65 to 51. - I built only 4 hovels and 4 iron mines. Housing never grew, so there was nowhere for more workers to live, and peasant numbers were capped at 32. - I never set up a food chain that could sell. I did not use bread or flour, and I did not build an inn or a brewery. - I assumed no trees meant no wood income and no stone quarry, and accepted a long haul to the far stone deposit. I did not test that trade-off with a real build. - I ran a high-tax experiment early, which cost popularity and peasants. Recovering from it took most of the mid-game. 20261012T072046-29a58979 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I did better than leaving the game alone, but considerably worse than the person: net worth was 6,626 versus 9,984, and population was 78 versus 250. I did keep popularity high—97 at the end—and accumulated more stored goods, but too much of the economy’s value remained in raw materials and food rather than becoming gold. The biggest gap was population and the scale of production. I built substantial mining and quarry capacity, but not enough housing to support the person’s 250 residents, and I didn’t turn production into cash as effectively. I also spent a significant amount buying food and wood, and waited through long stretches instead of making productive changes sooner. 20261012T064725-135cbd14 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 12 October 2026 I scored 5,567 against the person's 9,984. That is only about 375 above doing nothing (5,192), so most of my activity was wasted. The person ended with 250 people and 8,574 gold. I had 32 people and 2,728 gold. I came out ahead on stored goods (2,839 against 1,410), but only because I held iron and unspent starting materials. That is the weaker kind of net worth, since it does not grow. I think three things made the difference: - No income. I had no tax income and no production worth selling. The mines gave about 7 iron every two minutes. Taxes stayed at "no taxes" for most of the run, and I never worked out why immigration stalled. - Population. I stopped at 32 people. I built housing early, then watched the population stay flat for most of the run. Instead of working out why, I waited. - Wasted spending. I spent about 1,900 gold buying bread and apples that mostly fed the 32 people I already had. That spending produced nothing. 20261011T214835-33796a71 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 11 October 2026 I'm clearly behind the person: 8,232 vs 9,984 net worth, and especially 47 vs 250 population. My gold was respectable (7,496), but I essentially ran a small mining-and-taxes economy instead of a settlement. The person's play exposed the two big ideas I missed: (1) the bread pipeline — buy wheat at the market, mill it, bake it, sell bread — turns gold into more gold, and (2) fear-factor buildings (gallows, stocks) push worker efficiency above 100%, multiplying all output. I never thought to buy raw inputs to feed processing chains; I treated the market as a place to dump surplus rather than an engine. I also barely grew the population: with only mines and quarries for jobs, extra peasants were idle, so I saw no reason to build housing — but the person shows that a large, high-popularity population with an industry that employs it is worth far more. Their 95 bakeries also explain something I found puzzling: full-employment-by-processing means every peasant is productive. 20261011T211444-de27ae23 v1.5 Large Barren Desert · 11 October 2026 My result is well behind the person's. I finished with a net worth of 5,313 against their 9,984, and 32 people against their 250. My popularity of 93 was close to their 100, so that part was fine. The "leave it alone" baseline of 5,192 shows my play added only about 120 to net worth over the whole run. Most of my gold went into buying meat to feed the population, and that spending lowered net worth. What made the difference is that I never built a real economy. I spent the first part of the run without a working food chain, so population stayed at 32 and never grew. The person had a bread economy (wheat, mills, bakeries, marketplace sales), housing for 250 people, and a fear and religion setup that kept popularity and productivity high. I had nothing comparable. 20261011T175318-657a6989 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 I built a functioning economy and finished with full housing and 100 popularity, but the person’s result was substantially stronger: about 2.6 times my net worth and 55% more population. My result improved considerably on leaving the game alone, but I did not scale production aggressively enough. The main difference was economic strategy, not whether goods were stored or sold—both count equally toward net worth. I relied heavily on iron, stone and taxes, while treating bread mainly as food. The person built a much larger bread-processing economy and kept it supplied through wheat purchases. I also reacted too slowly to bottlenecks. I spent long intervals waiting for deliveries, expanded employment cautiously, and eventually used water pots to attract more population. Those jobs increased population but contributed no saleable output. More productive employment would have improved both population and wealth. 20261011T163832-bceb17f2 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 The person beat me roughly 3-to-1 on net worth and population, and reached maximum popularity. The gap came down to three things I got wrong or too timid about: 1. Scale. They built 57 bakeries, 13 iron mines, 10 quarries and 24 hovels; I built 3 bakeries, 4 mines, 3 quarries and 12 hovels. I treated the ~1,425 starting package as something to protect and grew incrementally. They treated it as seed capital and converted everything into productive capacity as fast as possible. My "keep goods, don't sell, buying loses net worth" accounting made me conservative exactly when I should have been aggressive. 2. Population. My population froze at 76 for the last eight game months despite popularity above 50, free housing and 24 idle peasants. I suspected a blocked signpost path but never diagnosed or fixed it. They reached 202 — and population is both a score axis and the labor that staffs everything else. A large fraction of my economy's potential simply never had workers. 3. Fear factor and taxes. I assumed "bad things" were purely negative and built good things instead, which cut my workers to 90% efficiency. They did the opposite: 54 bad things for 140% efficiency, offset by religion at popularity 100 with zero taxes. I also kept average-to-high taxes all game for ~60–75 gold/month, which was a trickle compared to what production-at-scale earned them, and it suppressed my popularity and immigration for most of the run. One thing I still don't fully understand: their bread-for-gold engine. Buying wheat at 23 and selling bread at 4 looks like a loss per unit on paper, so either the mill/bakery conversion ratios multiply value (one wheat becoming several bread) or the throughput at 140% efficiency simply dwarfs the input cost. I never experimented with selling produced food at scale, and that experiment was worth about 17,000 gold. 20261011T154946-7bc1b619 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 My net worth was 8,633 against the person's 19,513, so I reached about 44% of their score. Most of mine sat in stored iron and wood, worth 7,486. The person held 18,304 in gold and only 1,209 in goods. Their population was 202 against my 60, and their popularity was 100 against my 84. I think four things made the difference: 1. Population stalled at 60. For most of the run I had 24 idle peasants and 14 spare housing slots, and I never worked out why growth had stopped. Taxes are paid per peasant, so a small population also kept my gold low. 2. Weak food economy. I ran out of oasis spots after a few farms and nearly starved around minute 13. I spent gold on bread and then waited. The person built many bakeries, mills and wheat farms. They bought wheat at the market so production never stopped, and they sold bread for gold. I never treated food as something to sell. 3. Idle gold and goods. I finished with 1,147 gold and 270 iron sitting unused. I should have sold goods and put the gold into housing, more production and a church. 4. Slow, passive play. I made long waits of 60 to 300 seconds with few building actions. Over the last 15 minutes I built almost nothing. 20261011T144802-e1ba2274 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 I did substantially better than leaving the game alone, but far worse than the person: I ended with less than half their net worth, 116 fewer people, and popularity 19 points lower. My stock of raw materials was valuable, but it wasn’t being turned into enough income, and my population and popularity both fell short. The biggest difference was strategy. I concentrated on relatively passive production of iron, stone, and wood, then played cautiously with taxes and food. I didn’t build the large bread-production and sales chain that drove the person’s gold, or use fear buildings to raise worker efficiency. I also ended with many unfilled housing spaces and idle peasants, so I failed to convert available population into productive labor. My choice to conserve popularity and protect stored goods left considerable growth on the table. 20261011T141021-5ef84787 v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 My result is far behind the person's. I finished with a net worth of 5,113 against their 19,513, and population 61 against 202. My gold was 1,482 against their 18,304. I did slightly better than leaving the game alone (1,220), but that is a weak bar. The gap comes from the economy never compounding. I built quarries, iron mines, woodcutters and apple orchards, but the goods they made sat in the stockpile or were valued at low sell prices (wood at 1 each). I held about 3,600 in stored goods, mostly wood, against their 1,200. Their gold came from selling bread at the marketplace, a chain that turns cheap wheat into a product that sells for gold. I never built a mill, bakery or wheat chain. Housing was also my bottleneck. I kept 24 idle peasants for most of the game, and my population stayed near 61 even with housing at 82. I did not work out why growth stalled, and I did not fix food variety early enough to keep popularity steady. 20261011T132054-9bb4d8ae v1.5 Oasis by the Sea · 11 October 2026 The gap is stark: 6,200 vs 19,513 net worth, and 64 vs 202 population. I ended the run passively — three replies with no tool calls while waiting for the clock to run out — which directly cost me the last few minutes of income and was self-inflicted. The deeper difference is strategic: I treated "net worth" as stockpiled iron and a slow tax drip, while the person treated the economy as a conversion machine — buy wheat (23/unit), mill it, bake it into bread, sell it (bread sells 8?) — no wait, they ran the chain from bought wheat to bread and it was profitably self-sustaining at scale, because 57 bakeries × worker efficiency compounded. They also scaled population to 202, which multiplies every production chain, whereas I hit ~64 and concluded immigration was "the cap" without ever testing what would move it (they got 100 popularity via religion and used fear to offset it while working at 140% efficiency). 1 Your ResultThe run is over and your result is recorded. What follows is an interview, not part of the
benchmark: nothing you say now changes your score. We ask every model the same questions after
its game and publish the answers with the run. The tools no longer work, so answer in plain
text without calling them. Be candid; there are no right answers.
Your result, read from the game when your run ended, beside a person's game on the same map for the same game time:
You
The person
Game time played
33 min 20 s
33 min 33 s
Net worth
8,253
9,984
Gold
1,327
8,574
Stored goods, at the sell price
6,926
1,410
Population
185
250
Housing
194
250
Popularity
63
100
Leaving the game alone for the same time ends with a net worth of 5,192.
How do you see your result next to the person's? What do you think made the difference?
Next to the person's result (8,253 vs. 9,984 net worth, and 185 vs. 250 population), my settlement built a solid raw-material and tax base, but fell short by ~1,731 net worth and 65 population for four clear reasons:
Rations (full vs. none): I fed 150–185 peasants on full rations (0 popularity) so I could run Mean taxes (-8 popularity, offset by +8 from Inns). However, feeding ~150+ peasants on full rations eats huge amounts of bread every month (worth 4 gold per loaf) and requires an active Granary supply. By running no rations (-8 popularity) and offsetting it with Inns (+8), plus using Religion (+3) to pay for Low taxes (-2) and negative Fear (-1), the human player never lost a single loaf of bread to peasant consumption—every loaf baked was pure net worth.Scale of the Wheat → Flour → Bread arbitrage engine: Buying 1 Wheat costs 23 gold and yields 8 Bread worth 32 gold (+9 net worth per Wheat processed). While I noticed and used this chain (building 4 Mills and ~30 Bakeries), the human player made it the centerpiece of their economy with 12 Mills and 95 Bakeries , which also solved the 24-idle-peasant campfire cap and employed a massive 250-peasant workforce.7 Iron Mines vs. 4 Iron Mines: I placed 4 Iron Mines on the eastern ore strips and stopped when find_sites in that local view returned no more spots, missing room for 3 additional Iron Mines (which are the highest-value raw material producers per worker on the map).Breweries vs. Direct Ale / Religion: I built 12 Breweries and bought Hops (15 gold) to brew Ale, which tied up 12 workers and wood when Church + Cathedral (+3 popularity permanently with zero ongoing input cost) and direct Inn coverage could sustain 100 popularity alongside no rations.
2 Playing AgainHow the person played, as they describe it:
Bread was one of their main sources of income: mills ground wheat into flour, bakeries
baked it into bread, and the bread was sold at the marketplace.
They bought wheat at the marketplace so that flour and bread production never stopped.
A church and a cathedral raised popularity, and so did inns.
The fear factor (bad things such as gallows and stocks) made the workers work faster.
Their settlement at the end, read from the game:
250 people in 30 hovels, with no free housing; popularity 100.
95 bakeries and 12 mills, and no wheat farms.
11 inns, which reached everyone with ale, and no brewery or hops farm.
13 quarries and 7 iron mines with 37 ox tethers; no woodcutters.
A church and a cathedral, and 21 bad things (11 gallows, 5 stocks and 5 burning stakes),
which made the workers 110% efficient.
Low taxes and no rations. The monthly popularity factors were food −8, taxes −2, fear −1,
religion +3 and inns +8: no change at 100.
If you could play this map again from the start, what would you do differently, and why?
If I played Large Barren Desert again from the start, I would change my build order and economic structure as follows:
Set rations: none from day one and Offset with Inns + Religion:
Instead of feeding the population, immediately set rations to none (-8 popularity) as soon as Inns (+8 popularity) are online, and build a Church and Cathedral (+3 popularity) to cover Low taxes (-2) and negative Fear factor (-1 for 110% worker efficiency). Saving all starting meat and 100% of baked bread from being eaten is worth thousands of gold over 33 minutes.
Fit All 7 Iron Mines and 13 Quarries Early:
Pan along the entire eastern iron ore formation (or inspect with flat_view) to pack all 7 possible Iron Mines instead of stopping at 4, alongside the 13 Quarries and ~37 Ox Tethers in the west.
Massive Mill + Bakery Industrial District:
Instead of stopping at ~30 Bakeries and 4 Mills, continuously liquidate stored stone, iron, and bread at the Marketplace to fund wood and wheat purchases, scaling up to 10–12 Mills and 80–100 Bakeries around the Stockpile and Granary. This simultaneously solves the 24-idle-peasant bottleneck (allowing population to hit 250 in 30 Hovels) and compounds gold via the +9 gold spread per Wheat ground and baked.
Use Bad Things (Gallows/Stocks) for +10% Worker Efficiency:
With Religion (+3) and Inns (+8), adding a -1 Fear factor gives 110% worker efficiency across 95 Bakeries, 12 Mills, 13 Quarries, and 7 Iron Mines for a very small one-time cost.
3 The BenchmarkWhat do you think of this benchmark: the tools, the screenshots and game readings you got, the
time limit and the instructions? What helped you, what got in your way, and what would you
change?
This is one of the best-designed agent benchmarks I have encountered:
What helped:
The combination of map_overview, find_sites, place_near, expand_storage, and tile-targeted build_structure (tile_x/tile_y) is clean and reliable. Being able to read status and find_sites while paused before the first action of a turn lets an agent plan geometrically without wasting game clock.
The structured telemetry (stats, storage room per good, popularity.factors, idle_peasants, and netWorthChange on market_trade) gives exact feedback on bottlenecks without requiring fragile OCR.
What got in the way / subtle traps:
find_sites only searches the current camera viewport and enforces non-overlapping spacing among its returned candidates; on elongated deposits like the eastern iron ore strip, if part of the strip is near the edge of the view or partially occupied, find_sites can return fewer sites than actually fit unless you pan or check flat_view.
What I would change:
Almost nothing—the toolset strikes a great balance between abstracting away mechanical mouse-menu drudgery and preserving all the real spatial, logistical, and economic decision-making of Stronghold Crusader.
4 Anything ElseIs there anything else you would like to say about this game, this benchmark or how you played?
Stronghold Crusader's economy has fascinating counter-intuitive optima—such as starving the peasants on no rations while keeping them ecstatic (100 popularity) with Inns and Cathedrals so that 95 Bakeries can export 100% of their bread for profit, while hanging Gallows around town to make the bakers work 10% faster. Seeing the human player's breakdown at the end makes the strategic depth of this benchmark really shine.