Ruling — Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

← Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

You asked

Before anyone takes a turn, how is everything laid out on the table?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Gamebg-77130-en-1e

Before anyone takes a turn, the following items are laid out on the table: 1. Each player stacks their government cards with the Despotism/Republic card on top and the Despotism side faceup (except for Rome, which begins as a Republic, and Russia, which begins governed by Communism) [1]. 2. The stack of government cards is placed on the indicated space on the player's civilization sheet [1]. 3. Each player sets their trade dial (the large outer dial) on their civilization sheet to the total number of trade symbols (@) found in the eight squares of their capital's city outskirts [1]. 4. Each player sets their economy dial (the small inner dial) on their civilization sheet to '0', unless they received a coin from a map square or great person during setup, in which case it is set to the number of coins they have [1]. 5. Each player places one city marker, five army figures, and one scout figure by their civilization sheet [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.12 · 5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview

🔧 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 425 ms · ask 14267 ms · total 14714 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 14714 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 13, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "This section explains each phase of the turn in detail. During this phase, players can expand their civilizations and change their civilizations' form of government. The first player has the first opportunity to perform those actions during the Start of Turn Phase. After the first player has perform", "headingPath": "Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each player stacks their government cards so that the Despotism/ Republic card is on top of the cards, with the Despotism side faceup. They then place the stack of cards on the indicated space on their civilization sheet. Exceptions: Rome begins as a Republic , while Russia begins governed by Commun", "headingPath": "5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "During this phase, the first player marker is passed one player to the left (except on the first turn). Then, the new first player performs any start of turn actions (usually found on wonders or culture event cards), builds any new cities (see page 13), and changes governments if desired (see page 1", "headingPath": "1. sTarT Of Turn · 2. TraDe · 3. ciTy manaGemenT · 4. mOvemenT · 5. research", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "'The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.' -H. G. Wells Before playing Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game for the first time, carefully punch out the cardboard components, making sure to keep them away from small children and an", "headingPath": "preparinG fOr The firsT Game · The GOlDen rule · General seTup · 1. chOOse civilizaTiOns anD cOlOrs · 2. DisTribuTe player cOmpOnenTs · Players also receive: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "'We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time.' -T. S. Eliot Warriors and explorers have surveyed their surroundings for as long as mankind has existed, from the earliest tribesman to today's modern trav", "headingPath": "4. mOvemenT · mOvinG GrOups anD sTackinG limiT · crOssinG waTer · unexplOreD map Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "seTu p Di aGr a m (Numbers refer to General Setup steps.) ma p seTu p b y nu m b e r Of pl a y e r s (Arrows indicate tile orientation.) 9 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 3A 3B 3C 3D 3E 3F 3F 3G 7 6 4 5 9 8 Fo u r pl a y e r sth r e e pl a y e r stWo pl a y e r s", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "(Numbers refer to General Setup steps.) (Arrows indicate tile orientation.) tWo players three players", "headingPath": "seTup DiaGram · map seTup by number Of players", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "A player may discover a facedown map tile by spending one square of movement when one of their figures is orthogonally adjacent to the facedown tile. Instead of the figure moving for that square of movement, the map tile is turned faceup. It is then oriented so that the arrow at the bottom of the ti", "headingPath": "DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 479 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 479 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 7, 2026 05:53

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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn	p.13	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview	p.12	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	1. sTarT Of Turn · 2. TraDe · 3. ciTy manaGemenT · 4. mOvemenT · 5. research	p.12	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	preparinG fOr The firsT Game · The GOlDen rule · General seTup · 1. chOOse civilizaTiOns anD cOlOrs · 2. DisTribuTe player cOmpOnenTs · Players also receive: · …	p.8	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	4. mOvemenT · mOvinG GrOups anD sTackinG limiT · crOssinG waTer · unexplOreD map Tiles	p.19	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))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)		p.9	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))	247
#7	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	seTup DiaGram · map seTup by number Of players	p.9	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))	101
#8	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles	p.19	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 425 ms · first delta 13168 ms · total 14714 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 425 ms · ask 14267 ms · gateway work 14714 ms · total 14714 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3887
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 213
tok/sec: 142.5 tok/sec — 213 output tokens in 1.495 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 4s 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 410), 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.