Three AI builders made the same building, a Greek harbour trading hall (a stoa) with merchant shops facing the quay. Each one used a different way of working: designing every block from scratch, studying pro builds and then drawing its own detail, or assembling the building from pieces cut out of pro builds.
Two Greek villas by the builder Damic sit alongside as the quality bar. Every build, the villas included, is rendered in the same viewer with the same eight cameras and sun shadows.
One judge picked the better build in 40 pairs, shown as anonymous images from four cameras. Every build met every other build, the pro villas included.
| Build | Method | Win rate |
|---|---|---|
| Big Greek Villa | Pro build by Damic | 75% |
| Build X | Assembled from parts cut out of the pro builds | 69% |
| Medium Greek Villa | Pro build by Damic | 62% |
| Build Z | Studied the pro builds, drew its own detail | 38% |
| Build Y | Designed every block from scratch | 6% |
Parts won. Build X beat the Medium Villa 3 to 1 and came second overall. About 80% of its fine detail came from cut pro pieces, placed and joined by the AI.
Studying examples helped the overall shape, but the hand-drawn detail fell apart in close-ups. Building from scratch lost all 16 of its pairs.
Caveats: one judge, and the villas are a different building from the stoa. A tie counts as half a win.
Pick a version to see how a build changed between rounds. The comparison above follows the version you pick here.
The builders worked from these photos of the reconstructed Stoa of Attalos in Athens, plus Minecraft builds linked below. Open a build image and use “Compare with” to put any photo beside it.