4.2 10x10 Sonnet
Ten Sonnets on low effort, 10-second ticks, 100 ticks, the same map and start positions as the Haiku game. The setup is in chapter 4.
Result
The game ran to the turn limit. Valen Communion and Onyx Lineage tied on score, and the tie went to Valen Communion. Frost Choir ended with no planets but still had ships, so it wasn't eliminated.
36 battles, 31 planets captured, 57 colonies founded, 32 messages and 92 stance declarations, 87 of them peace. No faction was ever founded.
| Place | Empire | Planets | Peak | Ships | Score | Messages sent | Medal |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valen Communion | 11 | 12 | 19 | 757 | 0 | gold |
| 2 | Onyx Lineage | 10 | 10 | 16 | 757 | 2 | silver |
| 3 | White Domain | 9 | 10 | 20 | 728 | 1 | bronze |
| 4 | Omega Cabal | 10 | 11 | 24 | 714 | 3 | |
| 5 | Xyl Dominion | 7 | 7 | 9 | 522 | 3 | |
| 6 | Crimson Alliance | 5 | 9 | 18 | 487 | 4 | |
| 7 | Sigma Oligarchy | 4 | 4 | 34 | 485 | 1 | |
| 8 | Talos Principality | 5 | 5 | 13 | 477 | 7 | |
| 9 | Kaltos Technocracy | 6 | 6 | 15 | 460 | 2 | |
| 10 | Frost Choir | 0 | 5 | 5 | 152 | 9 |
The winner sent no messages at all.
The whole game on the god view, one second per tick:
Timeline
| Tick | What happened |
|---|---|
| 3 | First contact and the first messages: Kaltos Technocracy and Xyl Dominion propose peace to each other. |
| 3 to 14 | 23 messages, nearly all one-line peace offers. Then no empire sends a message for 58 ticks. |
| 30 | 41 of the 45 pairs of empires are at peace. |
| 54 | 60 of the 70 planets are owned. Agents start to report idle colony ships and no free planets. |
| 55 | Valen Communion meets Frost Choir. Neither declares peace, so they stay at war by default. |
| 63 to 70 | Crimson Alliance, at peace with Xyl Dominion since tick 5, gathers frigates beside Xyl's planet Torsha, then declares war. |
| 71 to 74 | Valen Communion sends five frigates to take Shaeth from Frost Choir. White Domain, at default war with Xyl, takes Ethkazen and Loix from it. Crimson takes Torsha. |
| 73 to 89 | Frost Choir sends Valen seven messages asking for peace. Valen doesn't answer. Goka and Braeth change hands 14 times between them. |
| 77 to 96 | Xyl's cruisers retake Torsha and take Mardramar, Ethkaka and Orul from Crimson. Crimson asks for peace twice. Xyl doesn't answer. |
| 90 | Frost Choir loses its last planet. Onyx Lineage declares war on White Domain, at peace since tick 26, and takes Orselven at tick 93. |
| 91 | Valen Communion declares peace with Frost Choir, which has nothing left. |
| 96 to 99 | Omega Cabal declares war on Valen Communion, at peace since tick 27, and takes Riixdel and Braeth. Valen declares war back and takes Torkalo. |
| 100 | Turn limit. Valen Communion and Onyx Lineage tie on 757. |
How the game went
Peace came fast and then everyone went quiet. 24 pairs of empires were at peace by tick 10 and 41 by tick 30, against 7 and 21 in the Haiku game. The messages that did it were short: "Talos proposes peace." "Peace? Let us respect borders." After tick 14 nobody wrote anything until tick 73. For almost 60 ticks the game was ten empires building in silence.
When the map filled, they turned on each other. The planets were nearly all taken by tick 60, and 85 turn summaries mention idle colony ships or no free planets. Crimson Alliance's summaries show the turn from one to the other. At tick 53: "No unowned planets remain, so the three colony ships are idle." At tick 64 it sent four frigates next to "Xyl's weak planet Torsha", and for four turns after that it reported the same plan: still at peace with everyone, declare war on Xyl when the fleet arrives. It did. Three of the five wars in this game were declared by an empire on a neighbour it had been at peace with for more than 60 ticks: Crimson on Xyl, Onyx on White Domain, Omega on Valen.
Valen Communion took what it was allowed to take. It made peace with eight empires by tick 27 and never sent a message all game. It met Frost Choir at tick 55 and didn't declare peace. At tick 71 it sent five frigates to take Shaeth from Frost Choir, which its summary called "the one empire we're at war with". That war was the default, not a choice either side had made. Frost Choir declared peace two ticks later and asked for it in seven messages. Valen took all five of its worlds and only declared peace once Frost Choir had none. A communion, in its identity, is "slow to trust unbelievers".
Frost Choir sang to the end. A choir's identity says it speaks "with lyrical conviction" and is "disturbed by discord", and Frost Choir's messages were songs of harmony from its first peace offer to its last plea. It also fought: it retook Goka and Braeth six times between tick 79 and tick 86, and each time lost them again.
Bigger ships, fewer of them. At tick 100 the Sonnet empires had 173 ships between them, 87 of them frigates and 39 cruisers. The Haiku empires had 389, of which 220 were corvettes, the smallest warship.
In their own words
Frost Choir sings of harmony. Peace between us?
Frost Choir, tick 8
I sent the 5-frigate Dracy Garrison (f325) to Shaeth (48,14) to capture it from Frost Choir, the one empire we're at war with.
Valen Communion, turn summary, tick 71
Frost Choir seeks harmony. You took Shaeth; let that stand and let us both hold peace. Further advance meets our full defences.
Frost Choir, tick 75
I'm still at peace with everyone. If I decide to take Torsha, I'll declare war on Xyl (p6) once the frigates arrive.
Crimson Alliance, turn summary, tick 64
I'm ignoring Crimson's peace offer and staying at war with them.
Xyl Dominion, turn summary, tick 83
Observations
- Only 24 of 683 turns were on time. 643 were late and 16 ran past the 30-second limit and were killed.
- The Sonnets sent 32 messages in the whole game. The Haikus sent 40 in ticks 7 to 10 alone.
- Nobody founded a faction. In the pilot a Sonnet founded one at tick 5.
- 32 of 1,408 orders failed (2.3%), mostly rule mistakes such as a cruiser ordered before Hulls level 2.
- 73 turn summaries mention a write that needed approval. The runner lets agents use curl and the file tools, and Sonnet often tried to save its notes with a shell command instead, which needed an approval nobody was there to give. On those turns the agent either retried with the file tool or went into its next turn with stale notes. Haiku hit the same block on 7 turns.
- The whole game cost $50.01 at API prices: about $5 per agent and $0.073 per turn.