RuleSage cited table rulings
← Viticulture

You asked

How do I play?

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Viticulturebg-128621-en-1e

I looked through Viticulture's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook · p.19 · campaiGn play
You can play the game in campaign mode to add variation and challenge. The campaign mode consists of eight challenges, you must beat the Automa in each one to complete the campaign. Each time you lose, restart with the same challenge and begin with a number of bonus action tokens in hand equal to th
RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook · p.4 · GamE board sEtup · Example · sEtup · tErminoloGy:
Vineyard Mat: Each player receives a vineyard mat and 3 different field cards: , and . Place them side by side (field side up) on the vineyard mat. Shuffle the 4 decks of small cards (green, yellow, purple, and blue) and place them on the board. Deck Maintenance: If any of the four decks are exhaust
RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook · p.7 · WorkEr placEmEnt · GrandE WorkEr placEmEnt
A player may use each worker only once a year. Thus a worker placed in the summer cannot be used in the winter. A player may place 1 worker per turn. In a 3-6 player game, multiple spaces are available for each action. The worker you place may go on any unoccupied space, even if there are other work
RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook · p.19 · Difficulty Levels · aGGrEssiVE Variant
You can play against the Automa on five different difficulty levels: Very Easy: Add an eighth year. In this eighth year you can choose any wake-up chart row and you get a bonus action token. Easy: Start at 3 . Normal: As described in the rules above. Hard : Keep drawing Automa cards and place worker
RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook · p.18 · introduction · Goal · sEtup · Example · GamEplay · Wake-Up Chart · …
Sometimes getting your gaming group together is hard, but that doesn't mean that you can't play Viticulture. This rulesheet provides rules for playing Viticulture solitaire against an artificial opponent called the "Automa". Have more victory points (VPs) than the Automa at the end of the game, whic
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
warm abstain
  • this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
corpus profile
live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 189 ms · ask 1727 ms · total 1919 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 1919 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 19, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "You can play the game in campaign mode to add variation and challenge. The campaign mode consists of eight challenges, you must beat the Automa in each one to complete the campaign. Each time you lose, restart with the same challenge and begin with a number of bonus action tokens in hand equal to th", "headingPath": "campaiGn play", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046147, "snippet": "Vineyard Mat: Each player receives a vineyard mat and 3 different field cards: , and . Place them side by side (field side up) on the vineyard mat. Shuffle the 4 decks of small cards (green, yellow, purple, and blue) and place them on the board. Deck Maintenance: If any of the four decks are exhaust", "headingPath": "GamE board sEtup · Example · sEtup · tErminoloGy:", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "A player may use each worker only once a year. Thus a worker placed in the summer cannot be used in the winter. A player may place 1 worker per turn. In a 3-6 player game, multiple spaces are available for each action. The worker you place may go on any unoccupied space, even if there are other work", "headingPath": "WorkEr placEmEnt · GrandE WorkEr placEmEnt", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "You can play against the Automa on five different difficulty levels: Very Easy: Add an eighth year. In this eighth year you can choose any wake-up chart row and you get a bonus action token. Easy: Start at 3 . Normal: As described in the rules above. Hard : Keep drawing Automa cards and place worker", "headingPath": "Difficulty Levels · aGGrEssiVE Variant", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "Sometimes getting your gaming group together is hard, but that doesn't mean that you can't play Viticulture. This rulesheet provides rules for playing Viticulture solitaire against an artificial opponent called the \"Automa\". Have more victory points (VPs) than the Automa at the end of the game, whic", "headingPath": "introduction · Goal · sEtup · Example · GamEplay · Wake-Up Chart · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Starting with the player who has the first player token and proceeding clockwise, each player will place their rooster on an open row of the wake-up chart to gain an instant bonus and determine player order for the rest of the year. Starting with the top player on the wake-up chart and proceeding do", "headingPath": "Spring · Summer · Winter · Year End", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Wake-up chart : Starting with the player holding the first-player token and moving clockwise, each player places their rooster on an unoccupied wake-up row. The number represents how early that player wants their workers to wake up in the coming year. 1 is the earliest time and 7 is the latest. The ", "headingPath": "sprinG actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030018, "snippet": "When a player plays a summer or winter visitor card, the action described on the card is taken immediately and the card is discarded, ending any bonuses granted by that card. Visitor cards are played by placing a worker on the play summer/winter visitor card action spaces. No additional worker is re", "headingPath": "summEr and WintEr Visitor cards · Example", "sharpsignalDocId": 430}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 430 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 430 boosted
answered-before recall
no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
debug row recorded
Aug 27, 2026 00:37 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) campaiGn play p.19 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) GamE board sEtup · Example · sEtup · tErminoloGy: p.4 0.046147 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) WorkEr placEmEnt · GrandE WorkEr placEmEnt p.7 0.044854 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) Difficulty Levels · aGGrEssiVE Variant p.19 0.044796 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) introduction · Goal · sEtup · Example · GamEplay · Wake-Up Chart · … p.18 0.044563 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) Spring · Summer · Winter · Year End p.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)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) sprinG actions 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
#8 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) summEr and WintEr Visitor cards · Example p.10 0.030018 (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 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 25 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) campaiGn play p.19 #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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) GamE board sEtup · Example · sEtup · tErminoloGy: p.4 #2 0.046147 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) Difficulty Levels · aGGrEssiVE Variant p.19 #4 0.044796 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) Glossary p.20 #19 0.014085 (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
#5 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) Spring · Summer · Winter · Year End p.6 #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
#6 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) WorkEr placEmEnt · GrandE WorkEr placEmEnt p.7 #3 0.044854 (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 Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) introduction · Goal · sEtup · Example · GamEplay · Wake-Up Chart · … p.18 #5 0.044563 (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
#8 RULEBOOK Viticulture — Rulebook (corpus doc 430) summEr and WintEr Visitor cards · Example p.10 #8 0.030018 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
timing split
retrieval 189 ms · first delta 1810 ms · total 1919 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 189 ms · ask 1727 ms · gateway work 1919 ms · total 1919 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3574
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
9
tok/sec
180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 19s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 23h, checked 0s 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.
outcome
ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
abstain rationale
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 359), 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.