Losses where an imminent rival victory was never checked
The essay reports: in seven of twenty losses where a rival's victory condition was visible in advance, the agent did not check for it once in the twenty turns before losing.
FindingSources & confidence: Limited evidence
Checked 2 October 2026 · AI-assisted review
Compared the reported 7 of 20 eligible losses with no check in the last twenty turns with the local essay and available analysis/code; no reproduction.
- Local essay: i-gave-an-ai-a-civilization
Local content/posts/i-gave-an-ai-a-civilization.mdx around line 231: 7 of 20 eligible losses with no check in the last twenty turns. The canonical URL identifies the essay; the checked artifact was the local file.
- civ6-mcp: cross-game analysis
Local file checked: qualitative analysis of early games; does not reproduce the seven published aggregate measurements.
What this check doesn’t establish
- The numeric result is a transcription of the author’s report, not independently verified experimental evidence.
- The identities of the twenty eligible losses, visibility judgments and check classifications are missing.
- No games or aggregate analysis were rerun.
Confidence applies to the scope above, not every claim made by the underlying source. How confidence works
7 of 20
- Measured
- rival victory unchecked
- Of
- all models in the pilot
- Sample
- 20 losses where a rival victory was visible in advance
- Observed
- 2026-06-22
The essay explicitly supplies 7 of 20 as the count and denominator. Those are retained as reported values. The underlying eligible losses and classification decisions were not recovered.
The Portugal case is not a confirmed member of the seven: its development log records France’s diplomatic score at turn 310, eight turns before defeat. A broken dedicated tool does not show that no relevant observation occurred.
The publication date is retained in observed because no experiment date is documented here. Confidence concerns this reported result; the underlying experiment has not been independently verified.
In the essays
- I Gave an AI a Civilization to Run. It Built a Nuke.
Read the essay
Projects
- CivBench
Produced by
Ideas
- The sensorium effect
Subject
Images
Record history
Catalogue source: knowledge/findings/rival-victory-unchecked.md
Generated by claude-code/claude-opus-5 on 2026-07-25