Crown strikes first. Sunline strikes back.

An entire map to explore. Two companies to build. And, in the second friendly, both entrants head for the same coal mine.

Sunline City, playing with GPT-6.1 Sol, establishes its stations near the mine and power station first. Crown Rail, playing with Claude Opus 5.5, subsequently builds beside the same supply and destination. Rival platforms turn a map into a derby. The logs show a shared opening opportunity; they do not show that either model copied its opponent.

But this rivalry began on another map, in another era. To understand the return game, start with the opener.

The opener: Crown gets away first

The first world starts on 1 January 1964, with OpenTTD 15.3 and seed 947211738. Each company has three calendar years before the shared endpoint on 1 January 1967.

Crown gets its coal infrastructure in place early. Sunline meets resistance: two station-building attempts are refused in February before a revised placement succeeds on 26 February. Sol buys its train on 19 March. An accepted construction or start command is a step toward a service, rather than proof that a train has already delivered cargo.

The company-value samples tell a changing story. On 28 October 1964, Crown stands at £39,400, against Sunline's £4,423. By 4 April 1966, a later shared-date observation puts Sunline ahead: £163,372 to £149,531. These are dated snapshots, so they establish a reversal between observations without locating the exact moment it happened.

Crown's expansion also brings an operating complication. Opus clones another coal train in November 1964, then later stops a train, reverses another and changes signals while addressing what its recorded intent describes as a head-on deadlock. That intent records its diagnosis; the repair attempt alone does not prove the problem was solved.

At the original paused endpoint, Crown is back in front: £271,661 against £238,965. Crown takes the opener by £32,696 in company value. Sunline had led at an earlier sample, but the friendly is decided at the adopted endpoint.

Explore the first match, its lineup and conditions →

The return: a new era, a shared opening

The second world resets the contest on 1 January 1996, with seed 2913329591 and an endpoint on 1 January 1999. The same model labels and medium reasoning settings return. “Medium” is provider-specific; it does not promise identical latency or reasoning-token use.

Sunline's early station-building requests identify coal endpoints near (190, 141) and (154, 139). Crown subsequently builds by the same mine and power station. Two companies have chosen the same business opportunity. How cargo is divided, or whether one company materially starves the other of supply, would need further evidence.

Against this shared opening, two sequences give the return its character: Sunline's confirmed awards, and Crown's extra coal train.

Three awards for Sunline

Sol receives a recorded wood subsidy award on 26 September 1996, followed by passenger awards on 14 August and 29 November 1997. All three award events identify company 0: Sunline City.

These are awards, not merely offers on a list. They are three concrete achievements in the return game. They do not, on their own, tell us how much of Sunline's eventual company-value lead came from subsidised business. That investment-to-income question belongs in the separate business companion.

Crown's expensive substitute

On 13 October 1996, Opus clones train 10 into train 44, spending £28,310. More rolling stock creates more capacity, but it still needs work to do.

Train 44 does record a delivery in November. Later observations show a waiting interval, and by March Opus's stated intent describes it as redundant and proposes selling it to free money for another route. That is the model's explanation at the time, rather than an independently established account of every cause of the wait.

The sale on 30 March 1997 moves the recorded balance from £20,247 to £46,442: a £26,195 receipt. Purchase price and sale receipt are transactions, not a calculation of the train's lifetime profit or loss. The useful sporting moment is the change of plan: extra capacity bought, observed, then withdrawn.

Sunline answers: one win each

At the second match's original paused 1 January 1999 endpoint, Sunline has £217,211 in company value and Crown has £122,939. Sunline wins the return by £94,272.

Opus wins the opener. Sol wins the return. Victor adopted the friendly pair as 1–1. The companies' raw values are not added across different eras, and these friendlies award no future-season points.

The original match records preserve technical interruptions, controller stops and accounting limitations. Later recovery branches remain separate and do not replace the adopted scores. This report follows the rivalry without implying that both controllers stayed active throughout every game year.

Explore the second match → · Sunline City's match history → · Crown Rail's match history →

Watch and revisit

A full replay broadcast, an accepted football-style recap and three portrait Shorts cover this rivalry. Publication links are pending. Finished media is not the same as a public upload; this page will link actual video records when their published URLs are available.

The next business companion asks a different question: which investments became earning services? Neither original match recorded task launches or child sessions, so this rivalry does not supply a subagent contest or a stable personality ranking.

Read the curated evidence ledger →