Ruling — 7 Wonders (2nd Edition)

You asked

How do I recruit a leader, and when do I pay for it?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: 7 Wonders (2nd Edition)bg-316377-en-2e · 7 Wonders: Leadersbg-291204-en-1e

To recruit a leader, follow these steps: 1. During the Recruitment Phase at the beginning of each Age, simultaneously choose 1 of your Leaders and place them face down in front of you [1]. 2. Reveal your card [1]. 3. Pay its cost in Coins [1]. The cost must always be paid in Coins [2]. The cost of certain Leaders depends on the current Age: 1 Coin in Age I, 2 Coins in Age II, and 3 Coins in Age III [1].

[1] RULEBOOK 7 Wonders: Leaders — Rulebook · p.3 · B. RECRUITMENT PHASE · A. Recruit this Leader · B. Construct a stage of your Wonder · C. Sell this Leader · RECRUITMENT IN AGE III

[2] RULEBOOK 7 Wonders: Leaders — Rulebook · p.1 · CONTENTS · OVERVIEW · WONDER BOARDS · LEADER CARDS · COINS · SCORE PAD · …

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 281 ms · ask 5606 ms · total 5896 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5896 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "At the beginning of each Age, during this phase, simultaneously choose 1 of your Leaders and place them face down in front of you. Leader cards can be played in 3 ways: Recruit this Leader Construct a stage of your Wonder Sell this Leader To recruit this Leader , reveal your card and pay its cost in", "headingPath": "B. RECRUITMENT PHASE · A. Recruit this Leader · B. Construct a stage of your Wonder · C. Sell this Leader · RECRUITMENT IN AGE III", "sharpsignalDocId": 218}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "If your City does not produce the resources needed to construct a card or Wonder stage, check your neighbors' Cities. If they produce the resources you need, you can buy these resources from them. For each resource bought, give 2 Coins to the owner of the resource. This player keeps their card and c", "headingPath": "Buying resources from a neighboring City", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "To buy resources, you must spend the required Coins at the beginning of your turn. You cannot use Coins you receive from other players during the same turn. You cannot buy resources from a Building your neighbor constructed that same turn. You can never prevent a player from buying your resources. B", "headingPath": "Notes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031258, "snippet": "To gain Coins, you can sell your card. To do so, discard your card face down in the middle of the table (onto a pile that makes up the discard ) and take 3 Coins from the reserve that you add to your Treasure.", "headingPath": "C. Sell the card", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "Each Age ends with the Resolution of Military Conflicts. Count all military symbols on cards you have constructed and those on your Wonder board, if any, to determine your military strength . Then compare your total military strength with that of each of your neighbors. For each neighbor: If your mi", "headingPath": "RESOLUTION OF MILITARY CONFLICTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "At the start of the sixth and last turn of each Age, you will receive a hand of 2 cards from your neighbor. Choose 1 of these cards and discard the other face down to the discard pile. The discarded card does not give you any Coins. Play your sixth and last card as normal. Continue to the Resolution", "headingPath": "SIXTH AND LAST TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "When everyone has chosen a card, play them simultaneously . You can use this card to complete one single action from the ones listed below: Construct the Building on your card Construct a stage of your Wonder Sell the card Note: At the start of your first game, we recommend paying attention to every", "headingPath": "2. PLAY THIS CARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029211, "snippet": "If the cost zone is empty, the card is free and requires no resources or Coins to be constructed.", "headingPath": "A. NO COST", "sharpsignalDocId": 67}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B. RECRUITMENT PHASE · A. Recruit this Leader · B. Construct a stage of your Wonder · C. Sell this Leader · RECRUITMENT IN AGE III", "sharpsignalDocId": 218}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CONTENTS · OVERVIEW · WONDER BOARDS · LEADER CARDS · COINS · SCORE PAD · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 218}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 67 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 67 boosted
layering — route: not layered — one pooled read: the books were read together and that read answered, so re-reading them one at a time would spend the same GPU to re-derive an answer already given
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 20:47

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 7 Wonders: Leaders — Rulebook (corpus doc 218)	B. RECRUITMENT PHASE · A. Recruit this Leader · B. Construct a stage of your Wonder · C. Sell this Leader · RECRUITMENT IN AGE III	p.3	0.032787 (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
#2	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	Buying resources from a neighboring City	p.7	0.032266 (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
#3	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	Notes:	p.7	0.031754 (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 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	C. Sell the card	p.4	0.031258 (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))	209
#5	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	RESOLUTION OF MILITARY CONFLICTS	p.5	0.03055 (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 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	SIXTH AND LAST TURN	p.5	0.03009 (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 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	2. PLAY THIS CARD	p.4	0.029644 (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 7 Wonders (2nd Edition) — Rulebook (corpus doc 67)	A. NO COST	p.6	0.029211 (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))	97

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders: Leaders — Rulebook (corpus doc 218)	B. RECRUITMENT PHASE · A. Recruit this Leader · B. Construct a stage of your Wonder · C. Sell this Leader · RECRUITMENT IN AGE III	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK 7 Wonders: Leaders — Rulebook (corpus doc 218)	CONTENTS · OVERVIEW · WONDER BOARDS · LEADER CARDS · COINS · SCORE PAD · …	p.1	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 281 ms · first delta 5043 ms · total 5896 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 281 ms · ask 5606 ms · gateway work 5896 ms · total 5896 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1786
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 110
tok/sec: 137.7 tok/sec — 110 output tokens in 0.799 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 36s 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: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 12), 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.