Ruling — Arkadia

← Arkadia

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Arkadiabg-25643-en-1e

1. The youngest player starts.[1]

2. Play continues in a clockwise direction.[1]

3. On a turn, a player chooses one of the following possibilities:

* Playing a building card and laying out the corresponding building.[1]

* Introducing one or several workers.[1]

4. If playing a building card:

* The player chooses a building card from their hand and takes the corresponding building.[1]

* The building is placed on the game board so that it is horizontally or vertically adjacent to any building already placed (the castle building lot is also considered a building) and/or adjacent to any worker already placed.[1]

* The squares covered by the building must be vacant.[1]

* A seal of the colour shown on the played building card is placed on the building to indicate it is under construction and which family placed the order.[1]

* The played building card is placed on a discard pile.[1]

* The player replenishes their hand to four cards by choosing one of the three face-up cards or drawing the top card from the face-down stack.[1] If a face-up card is chosen, a new card is turned over from the stack to replenish the face-up cards.[1]

* If the building covers a tent camp, the player may immediately take one neutral worker from the pool per covered tent camp square and place them behind their screen.[1]

5. If introducing workers:

* The player chooses any building on the game and places any number of their own and/or neutral workers from their pool on vacant squares horizontally or vertically adjacent to that building.[2]

* All workers introduced during a single turn must touch the same building.[2]

6. At the end of each turn, a player may choose to use one of their four architect banners.[3]

* Using a banner provides the player with two workers of their colour from the general pool, and the banner is then out of the game.[3]

* After playing a banner, the player can execute an evaluation for themselves, converting any number of collected seals into gold.[3] The value of a seal depends on the number of castle squares of that colour visible from a bird's-eye view.[3]

7. The end of the game begins when a player places the last castle piece on the second floor of the castle.[4]

* The two last pieces from the second floor pool are added to the third floor pool.[4]

* Players may execute one last turn.[4]

* The player who began the end of the game is the last to play.[4]

* After the last round, each player performs a final evaluation of their remaining seals.[4]

* The player with the most gold wins (multiple winners are possible in the event of a tie).[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook · p.3 · HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …

[2] RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook · p.4 · B) Introducing workers

[3] RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook · p.5 · 2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:

[4] RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook · p.5 · END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 93 ms · ask 3999 ms · total 4096 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4096 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "---------=--------- The youngest player starts. Then, play continues in a clockwise direction. The player chooses one of the following possibilities: Playing a building card and laying out the corresponding building or Introducing one or several workers Afterwards, the player may use one of their ar", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "----------=---------- If you are playing for the first time, punch out the elements carefully. Stick one of the 28 square seal tiles in each castle piece as shown in the illustration. For the first game we recommend the set-up shown on page 7 of these rules. This will make it easier to learn the gam", "headingPath": "PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "--------=-------- The end of the game begins as soon as a player places the last castle piece on the second floor of the castle. The remaining two castle pieces are added to the pool for the third floor. The player ends his turn as usual (he can for example execute one more evaluation if he still ha", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "At the end of each of their turns, players may decide if they want to use one of their 4 architect banners. If they play it, they get two workers of their colour from the general pool for it (the banner is then out of game). In addition, after having played their banner, players can execute an evalu", "headingPath": "2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "shows three possibilities how the building may not be laid out. In possibility 5 the trade centre covers part of the already constructed monastery. In the possibilities 6 and 7 it neither touches a worker nor a building (diagonally is not enough). The player chooses possibility 4 and places the buil", "headingPath": "Illustration 2 · Illustration 3", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Remove the following seven building cards from the game: Place the seven corresponding buildings and the building lot for the castle on the game board as shown on the illustration. While placing them on the game board simply take your bearings by the tent camps. Place a seal of the shown colour on e", "headingPath": "To make it easier to learn the game, we recommend the following set-up for your first game:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The player chooses any building on the game board. He places any number of his own and / or neutral workers from their pool behind the screen on vacant squares that are horizontally or vertically adjacent to this building. Important: All workers that a player introduces during their turn have to tou", "headingPath": "B) Introducing workers", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "For this reason, the value of the individual seals changes, since it depends on the number of family seals that is actually visible on the 10 squares of the castle when looking at the castle from a bird's-eye view. When placing a castle piece, players have to observe the following rules: At first, t", "headingPath": "A building is completed:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B) Introducing workers", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1246}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1246 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1246 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 0.92894 of 2125 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 13:41 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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …	p.3	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	PREPARATION	p.2	0.047371 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:	p.5	0.047123 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:	p.5	0.04598 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	Illustration 2 · Illustration 3	p.3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	To make it easier to learn the game, we recommend the following set-up for your first game:	p.6	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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	B) Introducing workers	p.4	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
#8	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	A building is completed:	p.4	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

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 11 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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …	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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	PREPARATION	p.2	#2	0.047371 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	B) Introducing workers	p.4	#7	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
#4	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	A building is completed:	p.4	#8	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
#5	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	Illustration 2 · Illustration 3	p.3	#5	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
#6	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:	p.5	#3	0.047123 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:	p.5	#4	0.04598 (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 Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	To make it easier to learn the game, we recommend the following set-up for your first game:	p.6	#6	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	HOW TO PLAY · 1. MUST · 2. CAN · A) Laying out a building · Neutral workers: · Example for laying out a building (see illustrations below): · …	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	B) Introducing workers	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	2. CAN: Use the architect banner · Example:	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Arkadia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1246)	END OF THE GAME · Tactical hints:	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 1003 ms · total 4096 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 93 ms · ask 3999 ms · gateway work 4096 ms · total 4096 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2728
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 609
tok/sec: 200.4 tok/sec — 609 output tokens in 3.039 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 22h, 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.

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 1176), 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.