Ruling — Citadels

You asked

What needs to be placed on the table before the first round begins?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Citadelsbg-478-en-1e

Before the first round begins, the following items are placed on or in the table/bank: 1. Gold counters are placed on the table in a central 'bank' [1]. 2. A random character card is drawn from the Character Deck and set facedown in the center of the table without being looked at [2]. 3. A second set of cards is drawn from the Character Deck and set faceup in the middle of the table (the number of cards depends on the number of players) [2].

[1] RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook · p.2 · IntroductIon · components · District Cards · Character Cards · Reference Cards · Gold Counters · …

[2] RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook · p.3 · settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters

🔧 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 263 ms · ask 4733 ms · total 166146 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 161140 ms · generation 5006 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "On your turn, you must first take an action, after which you may build a district card. Take an Action: At the beginning of your turn, you must do one of the following: Take two gold from the bank, or Draw two district cards from the District Deck, choose one card to put in your hand, and place the ", "headingPath": "On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "To prepare Citadels for play, follow these steps: Remove the bonus character and district cards (marked by a white star). Shuffle the eight remaining character cards together into one deck. This is called the Character Deck . Shuffle the remaining district cards together into one deck. This is calle", "headingPath": "settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Once all players have chosen a character card, the player who has the Crown now calls out the name of each character one-at-a-time in the order of numerical rank. In this way, he first calls out the 'Assassin' (#1), then the 'Thief' (#2), etc. If no player reveals that character when called, simply ", "headingPath": "Step Three: Player Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The bonus character cards are used as follows: Before the game begins, players may agree to remove one or two of the original eight character cards and replace them with the bonus characters of the same rank numbers. For example, you may agree to remove the Merchant (#6) and replace him with the Alc", "headingPath": "Bonus Characters · Bonus Districts · dIstrIct cards · Bell Tower · Observatory & Library", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "If players agree, the game can be made shorter by playing to seven districts instead of eight. This edition of Citadels includes 10 bonus character cards and 14 bonus purple district cards, all marked with a white star. You can add these bonus cards to your Citadels game for more fun and variety.", "headingPath": "Shorter Game · Bonus cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "After you take an action, announce the title of another character who you wish to bewitch, and then immediately end your turn. When the bewitched character is called upon, its player must show his character card, take an action, and then immediately end his turn. The bewitched character cannot use h", "headingPath": "Bonus characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.030282, "snippet": "In Citadels , each player leads a city and seeks to increase its prosperity by building new city districts. The game ends after one player has built his eighth district, after which a winner is determined by how many points his completed city is worth. Building the most impressive city, however, is ", "headingPath": "IntroductIon · components · District Cards · Character Cards · Reference Cards · Gold Counters · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "A few more rules are explained below, including special modifications for games with two, three, seven, and eight players. In a two- or three-player game, all players play with two characters each. The game is played normally, except that each player has two turns each round (one turn for each chara", "headingPath": "other rules · Two- or Three-player Games · Two-player Game · The Three-player Game · The Seven-player Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "IntroductIon · components · District Cards · Character Cards · Reference Cards · Gold Counters · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 557 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 557 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 08:05

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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end	p.4	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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters	p.3	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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Step Three: Player Turns	p.3	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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus Characters · Bonus Districts · dIstrIct cards · Bell Tower · Observatory & Library	p.6	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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Shorter Game · Bonus cards	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))	297
#6	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus characters	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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	IntroductIon · components · District Cards · Character Cards · Reference Cards · Gold Counters · …	p.2	0.030282 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	other rules · Two- or Three-player Games · Two-player Game · The Three-player Game · The Seven-player Game	p.5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	IntroductIon · components · District Cards · Character Cards · Reference Cards · Gold Counters · …	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 263 ms · first delta 4155 ms · total 166146 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 161140 ms · retrieval 263 ms · ask 4733 ms · gateway work 5006 ms · total 166146 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4167
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 108
tok/sec: 136.5 tok/sec — 108 output tokens in 0.791 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s 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 489), 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.