Ruling — Tigris & Euphrates

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Tigris & Euphratesbg-42-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Assemble the six monuments by placing a small top over a large base, ensuring no two are alike: blue top/red base, green top/black base, blue top/black base, green top/blue base, red top/green base, and red top/black base.[1]

2. Each player draws six tiles from the bag and places them behind their screen.[1]

3. Each player leaves their leaders, catastrophe tiles, and unification tile in front of them in full view of others.[1]

4. Choose a starting player at random by mixing all players' unification tiles with the dynastic symbols facedown and picking one.[1]

5. Play proceeds in clockwise order.[1]

Turn Structure

1. The active player may resolve up to two actions in any order, choosing either two different actions or the same action twice.[2]

2. Possible actions include:

* Positioning a leader (placing, moving, or withdrawing).[2]

* Placing a tile.[2]

* Playing a catastrophe tile (allowed twice per game).[2]

* Replacing up to six tiles from the hand.[2]

3. If a tile is placed, certain events may occur before the action is finished, such as conflicts, monument building, or treasure distribution.[2]

4. A player's turn ends after they carry out their two actions (or choose to end before taking both).[3]

5. The player refreshes their hand by drawing from the bag so they end their turn with six tiles; if other players have fewer than six, they also refresh their hands.[3]

6. The player to the left of the active player becomes the next active player.[2]

Actions and Rules

* Positioning a Leader: A leader can be placed from outside the board or repositioned from another space.[4] A leader must be placed on an empty space, must be adjacent to a temple, cannot be placed on a river space, and cannot be placed in a way that unites kingdoms.[4]

* Placing a Tile: A player takes a tile from behind their screen and places it faceup on an empty space.[4] Farms must be placed on river spaces, while settlements, temples, and markets cannot be placed on river spaces.[4] A tile cannot be placed where it would unite more than two kingdoms.[4]

* Conflicts: Conflicts occur when two like-colored leaders are in one kingdom.[3][5] A "revolt" occurs when a leader is positioned in a kingdom that already contains a leader of the same color.[3] A "war" occurs when two kingdoms are united through a new tile and the new, larger kingdom contains leaders of the same color.[3] Conflicts are resolved using tiles on the board and additional tiles played from behind screens.[3]

* Civilization Buildings: If a player places a tile that forms an uninterrupted vertical or horizontal line of three or more tiles of the same color, they may take the corresponding color building (Palace, Library, Market Hall, or Granary) and place it on one of those tiles.[6]

* Victory Points: Players gain victory points by placing tiles.[4] A victory point is gained if the tile is placed in a kingdom and that kingdom contains a leader of the same color, or if there is no such leader but there is a king of that color.[7] Victory points are kept hidden behind screens.[7]

Ending the Game

1. At the end of the game, players compare their lowest spheres.[5]

2. The winner is the player with the most victory points in their lowest sphere.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.4 · ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS

[2] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.5 · TURN STRUCTURE

[3] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.7 · END OF A TURN · CONFLICTS

[4] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.6 · TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE

[5] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.5 · ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS

[6] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.14 · CIVILIZATION BUILDINGS

[7] RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook · p.7 · GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 109 ms · ask 6131 ms · total 9913 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 3667 ms · generation 6246 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Before you play your first game, assemble the six monuments. Each monument consists of two different-colored plastic pieces-a small top and a large base. Place the small top over the hole in the large base. Make sure that no two monuments are alike. See the image to the right for the proper combinat", "headingPath": "ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048172, "snippet": "The player taking his turn is called the active player . During his turn, the active player may resolve up to two actions in any order. After his turn is complete, the player sitting to his left becomes the active player. There are four different actions an active player can resolve. The two actions", "headingPath": "TURN STRUCTURE", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "There are four types of victory points; each one is colored to correspond to a specific tile as follows: Bricks A victory point is gained for placing a tile under the following circumstances: ‡ If the tile is placed in a kingdom, and this kingdom contains a leader of the same color, then the victory", "headingPath": "GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.043697, "snippet": "TIGRIS & EUPHRATES Tigris & Euphrates' civilization tiles, buildings, leaders, and victory points exist in one of four colors: black , red , blue , or green . Each component and color combination has a unique thematic name. For example, blue civilization tiles are ' farms . ' This rulebook reference", "headingPath": "OPTIONAL VARIANT COMPONENTS · TILES AND COLORS · SETUP · 1. SET THE GAME BOARD · 2. PREPARE THE RESERVES · 3. CHOOSE DYNASTIES", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "TIGRIS & EUPHRATES Treasure distribution can be initiated when a player positions a leader or places a tile. At the beginning of the game, ten treasure tokens are placed on the first ten temples on the board. Treasures are gained in the following way: If a kingdom contains more than one treasure at ", "headingPath": "MONUMENT BUILDING · TREASURE DISTRIBUTION · Andrew's Turn · Barbara's Turn · David's Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "TIGRIS & EUPHRATES Each player possesses a dynasty of four leaders: a king , a priest , a farmer , and a trader . A player may only position his own leaders. King Trader Priest Farmer A leader can either come from outside the board or be repositioned from another space on the board. Furthermore, a l", "headingPath": "TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "TIGRIS & EUPHRATES The goal of each player is to develop all four of the key spheres of civilization: settlements , temples , farms , and markets . T o do this, players will position their leaders, create and extend kingdoms, build monuments, and resolve conflicts. They will thus gain victory points", "headingPath": "ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Monument building can occur when someone places a tile. There are six monuments in the game. Each monument consists of two different-colored parts; be sure to assemble these in the correct configuration (see 'Assembling the Monuments' on page 4). If the active player places a tile in such a way that", "headingPath": "MONUMENT BUILDING", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURN STRUCTURE", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF A TURN · CONFLICTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CIVILIZATION BUILDINGS", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 305}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 305 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 305 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 0.90912 of 2751 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 22:56 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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS	p.4	0.048387 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE	p.5	0.048172 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES	p.7	0.048139 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	OPTIONAL VARIANT COMPONENTS · TILES AND COLORS · SETUP · 1. SET THE GAME BOARD · 2. PREPARE THE RESERVES · 3. CHOOSE DYNASTIES	p.4	0.043697 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	MONUMENT BUILDING · TREASURE DISTRIBUTION · Andrew's Turn · Barbara's Turn · David's Turn	p.12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS	p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	MONUMENT BUILDING	p.11	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

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 34 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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS	p.4	#1	0.048387 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	CIVILIZATION BUILDINGS	p.14	#9	0.029514 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	END OF A TURN · CONFLICTS	p.7	#10	0.029211 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE	p.6	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	Karen's Turn	p.12	#22	0.012346 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES	p.7	#3	0.048139 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS	p.5	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE	p.5	#2	0.048172 (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 Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	END OF A TURN · CONFLICTS	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	TURN STRUCTURE · POSITIONING A LEADER · PLACING A CIVILIZATION TILE	p.6	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	ASSEMBLING THE MONUMENTS · OBJECT OF THE GAME · KINGDOMS · THE TIGRIS AND EUPHRATES RIVERS	p.5	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	CIVILIZATION BUILDINGS	p.14	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Tigris & Euphrates — Rulebook (corpus doc 305)	GAINING VICTORY POINTS · PLAYING A CATASTROPHE TILE · REPLACING TILES	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 109 ms · first delta 2272 ms · total 9913 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 3667 ms · retrieval 109 ms · ask 6131 ms · gateway work 6246 ms · total 9913 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3166
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 789
tok/sec: 201.7 tok/sec — 789 output tokens in 3.911 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 59s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 8s 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 233), 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.