You asked
how do i upgrade a city?
Answered counted as answeredTo upgrade a settlement to a city, you must perform the following actions: * **Process:** You cannot build a city directly; you must upgrade an existing settlement [1]. When upgrading, you pay the required resources and return the settlement piece to your supply [2][3][1]. You then replace the settlement with a city piece on that same intersection [2][1]. * **Requirements:** To build or upgrade, you must turn in specific combinations of resource cards as shown on the Building Costs Cards [3][4]. * **Benefits:** Cities produce twice as many resources (2 resource cards) for each adjacent terrain hex that produces resources [2][1]. Each city is worth 2 victory points [2][1]. * **Availability:** Once a settlement is upgraded to a city, the settlement piece becomes available in your supply again and can be used to build another settlement later [2][5]. If you have already built all 5 of your settlements, you must upgrade one to a city before you are able to build another settlement [6].
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)
- gemma4:12b think:false 4eb23ef187e2
- timings
- search 300 ms · ask 13098 ms · total 13421 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 13421 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 5, "score": 0.032522, "snippet": "You may only establish a city by upgrading one of your settlements. When you upgrade a settlement to a city, put the settlement (house) piece back in your supply and replace it with a city piece (church). Cities produce twice as many resources as settlements. You acquire 2 resource cards for an adja", "headingPath": "c) City Y Requires: 3 Ore & 2 Grain", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032002, "snippet": "You cannot build a city directly. You can only upgrade an existing settlement to a city. You pay the required resources, return the settlement to your supply, and replace the settlement with a city on the same intersection Y . Each city is worth 2 victory points. You receive double resource producti", "headingPath": "Cities", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031778, "snippet": "This 'Catan Almanac' contains detailed, alphabetical entries and examples for Catan . These are not the 'Game Rules.' You do not have to read this material prior to your first game. Instead, use the Game Rules. Then read this to enjoy the complete experience. This almanac includes advanced rules and", "headingPath": "almanac", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030777, "snippet": "Example: See Illustration M. Olivia, the blue player, wants to build a new settlement. She may only do so at one of the intersections marked 'B'. She cannot build on 'A' because of the Distance Rule, nor on 'C' because no blue road leads to this intersection. Note: If you have built all 5 of your se", "headingPath": "settlements", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "The building costs cards show what can be built and which resources are required. When you pay building costs, you must return the necessary resources to their supply stacks. You can build settlements Y and roads Y , upgrade settlements to cities Y , and buy development cards Y . C", "headingPath": "BuildinG Costs Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.026748, "snippet": "When a terrain hex borders on the sea (i.e., a frame piece), it is called a 'coast.' You can build a road along a coast. You can build settlements and upgrade settlements to cities on intersections that border on the sea. However, since a site on the coast borders only 1 or 2 terrain hexes, coastal ", "headingPath": "Coast", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "Now you can build. Through building, you can increase your victory points Y , expand your road network, improve your resource production, and/or buy useful development cards. To build, you must pay specific combinations of resource cards (see the Building Costs Card Y ). Take the appropriate number ", "headingPath": "3. Build Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "You may build on your turn after you have rolled for resource production and finished trading. To build, you must turn in the specified combinations of resource cards (see the Building Costs Cards Y ). Return the resource cards to the supply stacks. You can build as many items and buy as many cards ", "headingPath": "Build (BuildinG)", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Cities", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "c) City Y Requires: 3 Ore & 2 Grain", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Build (BuildinG)", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BuildinG Costs Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "almanac", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "settlements", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
- 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
- Oct 15, 2026 03:34
retrieval — what the search arm returned
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | c) City Y Requires: 3 Ore & 2 Grain | p.5 | 0.032522 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | Cities | p.6 | 0.032002 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | almanac | p.6 | 0.031778 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | settlements | p.12 | 0.030777 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | BuildinG Costs Cards | p.6 | 0.03055 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 282 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | Coast | p.6 | 0.026748 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | 3. Build Y | p.4 | 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | Build (BuildinG) | p.6 | 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | Cities | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | c) City Y Requires: 3 Ore & 2 Grain | p.5 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | Build (BuildinG) | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [4] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | BuildinG Costs Cards | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [5] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | almanac | p.6 | no quote on the wire |
| [6] | RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) | settlements | p.12 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 300 ms · first delta n/a · total 13421 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 300 ms · ask 13098 ms · gateway work 13421 ms · total 13421 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s ago)
- stream path
- not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
- 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 1), 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.