Ruling — John Company: Second Edition

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Answered counted as answered

Asked with: John Company: Second Editionbg-332686-en-1e

John Company is a procedural game played over a set number of game turns.[1] Each game turn consists of the following phases in order:

1. The London Season: Officeholders retire and compete for prestige cards.[1]

2. Family: Players invest in the Company and increase their holdings.[1] During this phase, all players take their family action.[2] Starting with the player with the Chairman title and proceeding clockwise, each player selects one family action and places their opportunity marker on the chosen action.[2]

3. New Company shares may be created.[1]

4. Hiring: The Company fills all vacant positions.[1]

5. Company Operation: Each Company office operates following the red ribbon from left to right on the game board.[1]

6. Bonuses: Players take bonus income.[1]

7. Revenue: The Company pays its expenses, the Chairman may pay dividends, and the Company adjusts its Standing.[1]

8. Events in India: Storms and events in India are resolved.[1]

9. Parliament Meets: Parliament meets to vote on a law.[1]

10. Upkeep and Refresh: Players pay upkeep on their prizes and prepare for the next game turn.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.10 · Sequence of Play

[2] RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook · p.13 · II. Family · Family Action · Enlist Writer · Enlist Officer · Purchase Luxury

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 100 ms · ask 6805 ms · total 10959 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 4053 ms · generation 6906 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 43, "score": 0.04728, "snippet": "In the solo and two player game, you will be playing against the Crown. /The Crown is sometimes keen to see the Company succeed, with them becoming the dominant power within the Company. At other times, the Crown seeks for the Company to fail. You must negotiate with the Crown and influence their de", "headingPath": "Playing with One or Two · Setup · Finishing Setup as a Solo Player", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044583, "snippet": "Next, take the player setup cards matching the date of the chosen scenario. If playing with 5 players, add 3 of that scenario's extra cards. If playing with 6 players, add 6. Shuffle these cards together. Next, deal out the setup cards evenly among the players. Each player should take everything lis", "headingPath": "Setup · Draft Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.044136, "snippet": "Rules of Play In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. /The game begins in the early eighteenth century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might", "headingPath": "John Company Second Edition", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 35, "score": 0.043886, "snippet": "Starting with the Prime Minister, players take turns voting. A/fter a player has voted, the next player in clockwise order votes. A/fter all players have had a chance to vote, the Prime Minister can decide to initiate an additional round of voting or to stop and resolve the vote. If no votes were ca", "headingPath": "Voting · /The Opposition", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 44, "score": 0.043461, "snippet": "/The Crown Handbook will be used to determine the behavior and interactions of the Crown during each game. /The Crown's behavior for any current phase is dictated by the Crown Handbook and o/ften affected by the current climate. However, players are encouraged to not look beyond the phase they are c", "headingPath": "Gameplay", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "John Company is a procedural game played over a set number of game turns. Each game turn consists of phases performed in the following order: /The London Season. Officeholders retire and compete for prestige cards. Family. Players invest in the Company and increase their holdings. /Then new Company ", "headingPath": "Sequence of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 44, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "Set up as a 3-player game with the Crown set up as one family. Shuffle the 12 setup cards, each player draws 3 cards, selects 2 to keep, and gives the remaining card to the Crown. Repeat this 2 times. Each player and the Crown will have 4 setup cards. Designate one component or object as the Player ", "headingPath": "Finishing Setup with Two Players · /The Player Button · Difficulty · Before you Begin Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 36, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Everyone must pay for their family members on prizes. Each is paid for individually, using the indicated amount on that prize (printed to the right of the prize's cost) . If a player cannot pay for a prize's expense, instead return the family member to its supply and lower their owner's victory poin", "headingPath": "IX. Upkeep and Refresh", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "II. Family · Family Action · Enlist Writer · Enlist Officer · Purchase Luxury", "sharpsignalDocId": 386}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 386 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 386 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 0.90685 of 934 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 16:59 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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Playing with One or Two · Setup · Finishing Setup as a Solo Player	p.43	0.04728 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Setup · Draft Variant	p.5	0.044583 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	John Company Second Edition	p.1	0.044136 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Voting · /The Opposition	p.35	0.043886 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Gameplay	p.44	0.043461 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Sequence of Play	p.10	0.04311 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Finishing Setup with Two Players · /The Player Button · Difficulty · Before you Begin Play	p.44	0.04311 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	IX. Upkeep and Refresh	p.36	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

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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Setup · Draft Variant	p.5	#2	0.044583 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Finishing Setup with Two Players · /The Player Button · Difficulty · Before you Begin Play	p.44	#7	0.04311 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Playing with One or Two · Setup · Finishing Setup as a Solo Player	p.43	#1	0.04728 (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
#4	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Sequence of Play	p.10	#6	0.04311 (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
#5	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Voting · /The Opposition	p.35	#4	0.043886 (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 John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Setup	p.4	#10	0.02886 (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
#7	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	II. Family · Family Action · Enlist Writer · Enlist Officer · Purchase Luxury	p.13	#35	0.012658 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)		p.5	#9	0.030214 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	Sequence of Play	p.10	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK John Company: Second Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 386)	II. Family · Family Action · Enlist Writer · Enlist Officer · Purchase Luxury	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 100 ms · first delta 4885 ms · total 10959 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 4053 ms · retrieval 100 ms · ask 6805 ms · gateway work 6906 ms · total 10959 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3869
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 255
tok/sec: 131.2 tok/sec — 255 output tokens in 1.944 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s 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 315), 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.