Ruling — Carcassonne

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Carcassonnebg-822-en-1e · Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedralsbg-4956-en-1e · Carcassonne: Traders & Buildersbg-5405-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps: 1. Return river tiles to the box for your first game [1]. 2. Place the starting tile (which has a dark back) in the middle of the table [1]. 3. Shuffle the remaining tiles and place them face down in several stacks in easy reach of all players [1]. (If using the expansion, shuffle the new land tiles with those from the base game and place them in multiple stacks [2]). 4. Place the scoreboard near the play area [1]. 5. Each player chooses a color and takes 7 meeples of that color to form their supply [1]. 6. Place your 8th meeple on the '0' space on the scoreboard [1]. 7. Return all unused colored meeples to the box [1]. 8. For the first game, return the 5 abbots to the box [1]. 9. If playing with the expansion, place the Goods tokens as a general supply within easy reach of all players [2]. 10. During setup, each player adds the large meeple in her color to her supply of meeples [3].

[1] RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook · p.2 · CONTENTS & SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Traders & Builders — Rulebook · p.1 · Traders & Builders · COMPONENTS · SETUP · THE NEW LAND TILES

[3] RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedrals — Rulebook · p.3 · Scoring a city with a cathedral in it · THE LARGE MEEPLES · 1. Placing a tile · 2. Placing a meeple · 3. Scoring a feature

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 251 ms · ask 5912 ms · total 6173 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6173 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Welcome to Carcassonne ! This rulebook will quickly guide you through the simple rules of this modern classic. After this brief introduction, you will be able to explain the rules to your fellow players and immediately start playing. We'll start with how to set up the game, and will explain a bit ab", "headingPath": "CONTENTS & SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Find a fun, interactive tutorial for Carcassonne at Dized! The tutorial will guide you step by step through your first game. Just visit the website below or download the Dized app to get started. Have fun playing Carcassonne! iOS · ANDROID · DIZED.COM", "headingPath": "No need to read the rules!", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "That's all you need to know to start playing Carcassonne ! We've summarized the main points below, and explained a couple more details: You must place the tile you drew, making sure the landscape matches up. In the rare event that you cannot place the tile you drew in a way that continues the landsc", "headingPath": "3. Score points · Summary · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In Carcassonne , you place down land tiles to create long roads, build large cities, visit monasteries and cultivate the fertile land. While building, you place your meeple as travelers, knights, and monks, or later as farmers. This will earn you points. At the end of the game, players will resolve ", "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a traveler · Roads", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030579, "snippet": "A copy of CARCASSONNE is required to play this expansion. You may integrate it fully or partially. It may also be combined with other CARCASSONNE expansions. 24 Land tiles , and 5 with Cloth (marked with ) including 9 with Wine , 6 with Grain 20 Goods tokens (9x Wine , 6x Grain , and 5x Cloth ) 6 Bu", "headingPath": "Traders & Builders · COMPONENTS · SETUP · THE NEW LAND TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 215}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03031, "snippet": "These are the most important concepts of Carcassonne . Now that you understand them, you can apply them to other features in the game. Place a meeple as a knight First, check whether there are any meeple anywhere in the city . If there aren't, you may place one of your meeple as a knight on one city", "headingPath": "3. Score points · Cities · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a monk", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030214, "snippet": "A copy of CARCASSONNE is required to play this expansion. You may integrate it fully or partially. It may also be combined with other CARCASSONNE expansions. 8 Meeples and 1 abbot (pink) This new set of pawns allow you to play with 6 players. 18 Land tiles (marked with to help you separate and sort ", "headingPath": "Inns & Cathedrals · COMPONENTS · THE NEW LAND TILES · 1. Placing a tile · 2. Placing a meeple · Scoring a road with an inn on it", "sharpsignalDocId": 214}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029437, "snippet": "The tile you have just drawn could complete the road on the bottom-left tile, but because there is already a meeple on that road, you would not be able to place a meeple on it. Instead, you place the tile so that it matches up with the landscape, but does not connect to that road. You would like to ", "headingPath": "Multiple Meeple on the Same Feature", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CONTENTS & SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Traders & Builders · COMPONENTS · SETUP · THE NEW LAND TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 215}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scoring a city with a cathedral in it · THE LARGE MEEPLES · 1. Placing a tile · 2. Placing a meeple · 3. Scoring a feature", "sharpsignalDocId": 214}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 123 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 123 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row retained until: Nov 3, 2026 20:21

retrieval — what the search arm returned

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	CONTENTS & SETUP	p.2	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	No need to read the rules!	p.1	0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	251
#3	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	3. Score points · Summary · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple	p.5	0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	OBJECT OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a traveler · Roads	p.3	0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Traders & Builders — Rulebook (corpus doc 215)	Traders & Builders · COMPONENTS · SETUP · THE NEW LAND TILES	p.1	0.030579 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	3. Score points · Cities · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a monk	p.4	0.03031 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedrals — Rulebook (corpus doc 214)	Inns & Cathedrals · COMPONENTS · THE NEW LAND TILES · 1. Placing a tile · 2. Placing a meeple · Scoring a road with an inn on it	p.1	0.030214 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	Multiple Meeple on the Same Feature	p.5	0.029437 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123)	CONTENTS & SETUP	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Traders & Builders — Rulebook (corpus doc 215)	Traders & Builders · COMPONENTS · SETUP · THE NEW LAND TILES	p.1	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Carcassonne: Inns & Cathedrals — Rulebook (corpus doc 214)	Scoring a city with a cathedral in it · THE LARGE MEEPLES · 1. Placing a tile · 2. Placing a meeple · 3. Scoring a feature	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 251 ms · first delta 4459 ms · total 6173 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 0 ms · retrieval 251 ms · ask 5912 ms · gateway work 6173 ms · total 6173 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3175
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 245
tok/sec: 148.2 tok/sec — 245 output tokens in 1.653 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 45), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.