Ruling — Ginkgopolis

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ginkgopolisbg-128271-en-1e

A turn comprises 3 steps:[1]

1. Choose a card: Everyone simultaneously looks at their hand of 4 cards, chooses one, and places it face-down in front of their screen.[1] This card can be played by itself, or with a Building tile, depending on the action.[1] If playing a tile, select the tile behind your screen and place it face-down on the played card.[1] You may also choose to discard a New Hand token (up to two times per game) to discard all 4 cards and draw 4 new cards, provided you announce "I'm getting a new hand".[1]

2. Resolve actions: Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player reveals their chosen card (and tile, if included) and resolves the corresponding action.[1]

* Exploiting (Playing a card by itself): You can gain items (SP, resources, tiles).[2] An Urbanization card lets you gain one resource OR one tile.[2] A Building card lets you gain items granted by the building's height.[2] If you have any cards with an Exploiting bonus in your area, you receive the items specified by those cards.[1] After resolving, discard the card.[3]

* Urbanizing (Playing an Urbanization card with a tile): You expand the city by replacing the corresponding Urbanization token with the tile.[4] Place a resource and a Construction Site pawn on the tile to mark ownership.[4] Move the Urbanization token to an empty orthogonally adjacent space.[4] You utilize orthogonally adjacent buildings to earn items as if you had played those buildings' cards by themselves.[4] If you have any cards with an Urbanizing bonus, you receive the items specified by those cards.[4] Discard the played card.[2]

* Constructing a floor (Playing a Building card with a tile): Place the new tile atop the building designated by the card.[5] Return resources on that building to their owner; if the owner is another player, she receives 1 SP per resource.[5] If the new tile's number is lower than the covered tile, pay the difference in SP.[5] If the color is different, discard 1 resource to the general supply.[5] Place 1 resource on the new building for each level.[5] Place a Construction Site pawn on it.[5] If you have any cards with a Constructing a floor bonus, you receive the items specified by those cards.[5] Keep the played card face-up as a bonus card.[2][5]

3. Prepare for the next round: Take the 3 unused cards from your right-hand neighbor and draw one card.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.3 · Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself

[2] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.8

[3] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.3 · EXAMPLE

[4] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.4 · B. Urbanizing: Playing an Urbanization card with a tile · EXAMPLE

[5] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.4 · C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile

[6] RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook · p.8 · Thanks · Setup · Game Turn

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 164 ms · ask 6744 ms · total 6912 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6912 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game is divided into a variable number of turns. A turn comprises 3 steps: Choose a card Resolve actions Prepare for the next round Everyone does this step simultaneously. Look at your hand of 4 cards, choose one, and place it face-down in front of your screen. This card can be played by itself,", "headingPath": "Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Draw 3 cards for yourself, and then a 4th that you give to Hal, face down. Choose your action (card + possible tile), and apply its effects according to the normal rules. Discard the 2 unplayed cards. Reveal Hal's card, and draw a random tile, since Hal constructs every turn. When Hal urbanizes (he ", "headingPath": "Playing a round of the game : · Specifics: · End of the Game · Expert level", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "When you play a Building card with a tile, you add a floor by placing the new tile on the building in the city indicated by the card. This is how it works: 1 2 3 4 6 Return the resources present on the building designated by the card to their owner, who places them behind her screen. If the owner of", "headingPath": "C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "Final scoring: See page 7.8 The player who last planted a tree is the first player, and deals 4 card to each player. Playing only a card allows you to gain items (SP, resources, tiles) An Urbanization card lets you gain one resource OR one tile. A Building card lets you gain the items granted by the", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "Nell played the blue number 5 Building card, and the red number 4 Building tile. The blue 5 building belongs to Faye, so she retrieves the two resources placed there and gets 2 success points. Nell places the number 4 tile on the blue 5 building. She must pay 1 success point because 4 is less than 5", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE · 3. Prepare for the next round", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The setup for a 4-player game has been completed up through Step 7 (see illustration below). Because this is an introductory game, each player takes a set of 3 Character cards. Nell receives the #2 set of cards. The three cards she got enable her to start the game with 4 resources, 2 tiles, and 2 su", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Randomly place the 9 Building tiles numbered 1, 2, and 3 (one such for each color) to form a 3×3 square. Place the 12 Urbanization tokens in alphabetical order, according to the illustration below. Shuffle the remaining Building tiles, and place them in face-down piles. With 2 or 3 players, remove 6", "headingPath": "Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "1 Place the 9 starting buildings (1-3 of each color) and the 12 Urbanization tokens (A-L). 2 Shuffle the remaining Building tiles, and make several piles. With 2-3 players, remove 6 tiles from the game. Place the success points and Construction Site pawns near the Building tiles. 3 Each player choos", "headingPath": "Thanks · Setup · Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B. Urbanizing: Playing an Urbanization card with a tile · EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Thanks · Setup · Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 510}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 510 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 510 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 0.90900 of 2000 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 24, 2026 21:25 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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself	p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Playing a round of the game : · Specifics: · End of the Game · Expert level	p.6	0.047131 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile	p.4	0.046898 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)		p.8	0.045724 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	EXAMPLE · 3. Prepare for the next round	p.5	0.045455 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	EXAMPLE	p.2	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
#7	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Setup	p.2	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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Thanks · Setup · Game Turn	p.8	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

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 16 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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself	p.3	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)		p.8	#4	0.045724 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	EXAMPLE	p.3	#10	0.029199 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)		p.8	#13	0.02837 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Thanks · Setup · Game Turn	p.8	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Playing a round of the game : · Specifics: · End of the Game · Expert level	p.6	#2	0.047131 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	B. Urbanizing: Playing an Urbanization card with a tile · EXAMPLE	p.4	#9	0.029324 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile	p.4	#3	0.046898 (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 Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Playing the game · 1. Choose a card · NEW HAND · 2. Resolve actions · A. Exploiting: Playing a card by itself	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)		p.8	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	EXAMPLE	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	B. Urbanizing: Playing an Urbanization card with a tile · EXAMPLE	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	C. Constructing a floor: Playing a Building card with a tile	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Ginkgopolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 510)	Thanks · Setup · Game Turn	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 164 ms · first delta 2477 ms · total 6912 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 164 ms · ask 6744 ms · gateway work 6912 ms · total 6912 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3701
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 576
tok/sec: 132.9 tok/sec — 576 output tokens in 4.333 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 11s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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: 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 442), 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.