Ruling — Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders

← Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shouldersbg-214880-en-1e

To setup the game, follow these steps:

1. Place the game board in the middle of the table and place the Decade marker on the Decade marked "1875".[1]

2. Place the Phase marker on the Stock Phase space on the game board.[1]

3. For the number of players playing, adjust the Demand tiles:

- 2-Player Game: Remove all the Demand tiles labeled for 3 and 4 players as indicated on the bottom of the tiles.[1]

- 3-Player Game: Remove all the Demand tiles labeled for 4 players as indicated on the bottom of the tiles.[1]

- 4-Player Game: Play with all the provided Demand tiles.[1]

4. Separate the Demand tiles into 4 separate stacks based on the pips on the back of the tiles (,,, and ).[1]

5. Shuffle each stack separately and place the stack face down next to the game board.[1]

6. Place the stack face down on top of the stack, repeating for the other stacks to form a single face-down stack of Demand tiles, and place this stack near the left side of the board.[1]

7. Fill the Demand Tracks by placing a Demand tile face up on each space, starting with the top-left space in the Demand grid and filling each column from top to bottom, left to right.[1]

8. Separate the 5 starting Capital Asset tiles (marked with ) from the rest.[1]

9. Place the 'Brilliant Marketing' Capital Asset onto the $80 space.[1]

10. Shuffle the remaining 4 starting Capital Asset tiles and randomly place them face up on the spaces priced at $40 through $70.[1]

11. Shuffle the remaining Capital Asset tiles into a single stack and place them on the Capital Asset draw stack space on the game board (you may choose to include the 4 Chief Capital Assets in this stack).[1][2]

12. For the number of players playing, adjust the Buildings:

- 2-Player Game: Remove all Buildings labeled for 3 and 4 players as indicated on the bottom of the tiles.[1]

- 3-Player Game: Remove all Buildings labeled for 4 players as indicated on the bottom of the tiles.[1]

- 4-Player Game: Play with all the provided Buildings.[1]

13. Separate the Buildings according to their Era (as listed by the pips on the back of the tiles:,, and ) into 3 separate Building stacks.[1]

14. Shuffle each stack and place each on the appropriate draw stack space on the game board.[1]

15. Optionally, shuffle the 10 Public Goal tiles, randomly draw 5, and place them face up near the game board, returning the remaining tiles to the box.[1]

16. Place 2 resource cubes of each type on the Haymarket Square space on the game board.[1]

- If using the Advanced Supply Chain variant: Place 2 of each resource on Haymarket Square, additionally place 9 Livestock, 8 Steel, 7 Wood, and 6 Coal on the darker-colored spaces of the Advanced Supply Chain Track, and place the Advanced Supply Chain Overlay over the existing Supply Chain on the game board.[3]

17. Place all remaining resources in the bag and give the bag a good shake.[1]

18. During setup, shuffle the Buildings into the stacks indicated by the pips on the back of each Building.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook · p.10 · puBliC goalS

[2] RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook · p.7 · Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS

[3] RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook · p.34 · 1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 132 ms · ask 9637 ms · total 9774 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9774 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.047073, "snippet": "Before each player starts their first Company, they should be given the chance to examine each Company Charter. Players should also familiarize themselves with the Demand grid on the board, their starting Buildings, and the resources available. Each player must Establish a Starting Company of their ", "headingPath": "eStaBliShing your Starting Company · proCedure for eStaBliShing a Company", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "Five Public Goals are laid out near the game board during the game setup. Each of them has a condition that must be met for it to score. Each player that meets its condition adds an additional $200 to their score at the end of the game. This is an optional module included to help newer players focus", "headingPath": "puBliC goalS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.045235, "snippet": "In the Building Phase, before choosing which Building to play and which to discard, pass 2 to the player on your left. Then, of the 2 new Buildings you are handed, pass 1 to your left. Now, choose which Building to play, which to discard, and which to hold for potential future use. In the second and", "headingPath": "1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044468, "snippet": "10 Place 4 Workers on the 4 shaded $40 Worker spaces in the Job Market. 11 Place the Workers, Managers, Salespeople, Goods, Bonus Good tokens, and Automation tokens near the board within reach of all players. This is called the general supply. 12 Place the supply of money near the board within reach", "headingPath": "puBliC goalS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "1 Place the game board in the middle of the table and place the Decade marker on the Decade marked \"1875.\" 2 Place the Phase marker on the Stock Phase space on the game board. 3 2-Player Game: tiles labeled for and players as indicated on the bottom of the tiles. 3-Player Game: Remove all the Demand", "headingPath": "puBliC goalS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "7 Optional: Shuffle the 10 Public Goal tiles, and randomly draw 5, placing them face up near the game board. Return the remaining Public Goal tiles to the box. 8 Place 2 resource cubes of each type on the Haymarket Square space on the game board. Then place all remaining resources in the bag. 9 Give", "headingPath": "puBliC goalS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "The following pages will explain the 5 different game phases in more detail. Please also refer to your Player Aid for guidance during play. There are different types of turn orders throughout the game. Each phase has the turn order indicated with the blue symbols next to the phase (see image to the ", "headingPath": "playing the game · 1. StoCk phaSe · 2. Building phaSe · 3. aCtion phaSe · 4. operating phaSe · 5. Cleanup phaSe", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "This section provides more information about some of the game's components. This will help you better understand their function, and help you during setup. During the Building Phase of each Decade, players will select one Building out of three available to them, and place it on the game board in the", "headingPath": "Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "puBliC goalS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}, {"page": 34, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 778}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 778 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 778 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90172 of 2442 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 22, 2026 19:37 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

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 Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	eStaBliShing your Starting Company · proCedure for eStaBliShing a Company	p.12	0.047073 (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 Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.9	0.045541 (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 Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup	p.34	0.045235 (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 Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.11	0.044468 (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 Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	playing the game · 1. StoCk phaSe · 2. Building phaSe · 3. aCtion phaSe · 4. operating phaSe · 5. Cleanup phaSe	p.15	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
#8	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS	p.7	0.030886 (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

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 80 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup	p.34	#3	0.045235 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS	p.7	#8	0.030886 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)		p.3	#14	0.027253 (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))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	playing the game · 1. StoCk phaSe · 2. Building phaSe · 3. aCtion phaSe · 4. operating phaSe · 5. Cleanup phaSe	p.15	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	eStaBliShing your Starting Company · proCedure for eStaBliShing a Company	p.12	#1	0.047073 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.10	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.10	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.9	#2	0.045541 (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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	puBliC goalS	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	Component overview · BuildingS · Capital aSSetS	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Chicago 1875: City of the Big Shoulders — Rulebook (corpus doc 778)	1. draft your BuildingS · 2. friendly rule for CloSed CompanieS · 3. advanCed Supply Chain · Setup	p.34	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 132 ms · first delta 5805 ms · total 9774 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 132 ms · ask 9637 ms · gateway work 9774 ms · total 9774 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2949
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 763
tok/sec: 197.2 tok/sec — 763 output tokens in 3.869 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 2s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 714), 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.