Ruling — Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition

You asked

What does each player take, and what goes in the middle, before we begin?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Clash of Cultures: Monumental Editionbg-299659-en-1e

Each player takes the following: * A Player board and Player aid [1] * Cubes in their color to form a supply [1] * City pieces in their color: 7 Settlements, 5 Temples, 5 Academies, 5 Fortresses, 5 Ports, 5 Obelisks, 5 Markets, and 5 Observatories [1] * Units pieces in their color: 16 Infantry, 4 Ships, 4 Settlers, 4 Elephants, 4 Cavalry, and 1 Leader [1] * 5 Resource markers (Food, Wood, Ore, Ideas, Gold) [1] * 1 Action card and 1 Objective card [2][3] The following go in the middle: * Barbarian Settlements (Grey), Barbarian Units (Grey), Culture tokens, Mood tokens, and dice [3] * Black ships (if playing with the expansion) [3] * The Objective deck (shuffled Objective cards placed facedown) [3] * The Event deck (shuffled Event cards placed facedown) [3] * The Action deck (shuffled Action cards placed facedown) [3] * The Wonder deck (shuffled Wonder cards placed facedown) [3]

[1] RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook · p.4 · Game Setup · -P B S

[2] RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook · p.19 · Action Cards · Objective Cards

[3] RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook · p.6 · PLAYER AID

🔧 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 346 ms · ask 16566 ms · total 16922 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 16922 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": " The Game is divided into 6 Ages, with each Age divided into 3 Rounds followed by a Status Phase. During each Round, each player will take a turn in which they must perform 3 Main Actions. The first player takes the first turn, followed by the other players in clockwise order, until each player has", "headingPath": "PLAYER AID · Game Structure · Winning the Game · Gaining / Spending Resources", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each player starts their first city on the board by placing a Settlement on the Plains space of their starting Region. Place a Mood token next to the city, Happy-side up to show that the city is Happy, and place a Settler in the space near the city. Shuffle the Objective cards and place them facedow", "headingPath": "PLAYER AID", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Set up the game board in accordance with the images shown below. Each player's starting Region is placed faceup (pay attention to which side the Mountain space is on). Note: The starting Regions are two-sided. The difference between the two sides is the placement of the Mountain and the Forest space", "headingPath": "Game Setup · -P B S", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "You start the game with 1 Action card and get more during the game-most commonly during the Status Phase. They are kept secret from other players and can give you extra options or Actions when played. If you are ever told to draw an Action Card and there are no cards left to draw, shuffle the discar", "headingPath": "Action Cards · Objective Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "2 The Player Aid contains important reference information. Once you are familiar with the game, you can play without it. The Player Aid is two sided, where the red side includes things from the Civilizations  expansion.", "headingPath": "E P A · PLAYER AID", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "If one side has no Units remaining in the battle, they lose, and the side with remaining Units wins. If both sides lose all their Units in the same Combat Round, combat ends with no winner or loser. If one side only has a Fortress defending, they win if the attacker is eliminated in the first round.", "headingPath": "5. End of Battle check · Rule Summary", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After three Rounds, the current Age ends with a Status Phase, consisting of 6 steps carried out in order. In turn order, all players complete the first step before moving on to the second step, and so on. If you meet the requirements shown on any of your Objective cards (showing the text ' Status Ph", "headingPath": "Status Phase · 1. Complete Objectives · 2. Free Advance · 3. Draw new cards · 4. Raze Size 1 city · 5. Change Government type · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 31, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "During a battle in a city with a Temple, whether you are the attacker or defender, you add +2 /CV.liga to your first combat roll. If you lose the battle, you get 1 free Infantry Unit after the battle and place it in one of your cities. (If you have no cities, or no Infantry in your supply, you do no", "headingPath": "Fanaticism", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup · -P B S", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Action Cards · Objective Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER AID", "sharpsignalDocId": 352}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 352 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 352 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 6, 2026 18:22

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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	PLAYER AID · Game Structure · Winning the Game · Gaining / Spending Resources	p.8	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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	PLAYER AID	p.6	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))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Game Setup · -P B S	p.4	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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Action Cards · Objective Cards	p.19	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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	E P A · PLAYER AID	p.5	0.030769 (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))	220
#6	RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	5. End of Battle check · Rule Summary	p.23	0.030303 (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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Status Phase · 1. Complete Objectives · 2. Free Advance · 3. Draw new cards · 4. Raze Size 1 city · 5. Change Government type · …	p.18	0.029851 (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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Fanaticism	p.31	0.029412 (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 Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Game Setup · -P B S	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	Action Cards · Objective Cards	p.19	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 352)	PLAYER AID	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 346 ms · first delta 14831 ms · total 16922 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 346 ms · ask 16566 ms · gateway work 16922 ms · total 16922 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4242
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 281
tok/sec: 139.0 tok/sec — 281 output tokens in 2.021 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 0s 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: BEGIN — "begin" / "beginning"
matched words (in the normalized question): begin

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 280), 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.