RuleSage cited table rulings
← Fief: France 1429

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Fief: France 1429bg-152470-en-1e

Setup
1. Place the Game Board in a central location.[1]
2. Shuffle all Fortune & Disaster cards together and place them on the Fortune & Disaster Card Draw Deck space.[1]
3. Shuffle the Lord cards and place them on the Lords Draw Deck space.[1]
4. Players pick a color and place all associated counters and markers (8 Knights, 13 Men at Arms, 2 Siege Engine counters, 3 Diplomacy markers, 2 Vote markers, 3 Tax markers, 1 Marriage marker, 5 Deniers) on their Family Board.[1]
5. Each player draws a Lord card from the Lords Draw Deck and places it with their starting units; if a Cardinal or the d' ARC card is drawn, shuffle it back and draw another.[1]
6. Find the corresponding Lord token for the drawn Lord card.[1]
7. Determine a starting player who takes the First Player card and chooses his starting Village, placing 1 Knight, 3 Men at Arms, 1 Stronghold, and Lord token inside.[2]
8. In clockwise order, other players do the same, placing units into remaining unoccupied Villages.[2]
9. Sort and place Lord tokens, Stronghold/Fortified City counters, Mill, Assassination, Capture and Excommunication markers, and Denier coins within easy reach.[2]
10. Place the 8 Fief Title counters, 5 Bishop Title Staff counters, King, Queen, Pope, and Crown Prince counters on their respective spaces.[2]
11. Place the 3 Cardinal Biretta counters, the purchasable Cardinal Biretta counter, and the d' ARC Title counter on their respective spaces.[2]
Round Overview
Each round consists of seven phases, with players executing actions in clockwise order:[3]
1. Phase 1: 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye': Announce Marriage Alliances, Elect Bishops, Elect the Pope, and Elect the King.[3]
2. Phase 2: Draw & Play Cards: Players may discard and/or draw new Lord and Fortune cards into their hands, resolve all drawn Disaster cards, and play Lord and Fortune cards from their hands.[3]
3. Phase 3: Collect Income: Players collect 1 Denier for each controlled Village; an additional 2 Deniers for each Village in a Fief where a Tax card was played to Tallage; 2 Deniers for each controlled Mill (plus 1 Denier per Mill for each Bountiful Harvest or Good Weather card played on the Bishopric); and 2 Deniers for the player with the Queen Title.[3] A player also takes all Mill incomes in a Bishopric where they played a Tax card to Tithe.[3]
4. Phase 4: Purchase: Players purchase units and titles in order (Men at Arms cost 1 Denier, Knights cost 3, Mills cost 3, Strongholds cost 10, Fief Titles cost 4, 6, or 8, and the purchasable Cardinal Title costs 5).[3]
5. Phase 5: Movement: Players move all Troops and Lords in order; Lords may move up to two Villages away, and Troops must move with a Lord.[3]
6. Phase 6: Battles: Opposing Troops in the same Village can engage in battle.[4]
7. Phase 7: End Round: All Disaster cards on the map are removed to the Discard Pile; determine if there is a winner; if not, pass the First Player card to the left and begin a new round.[4]
Winning the Game
The game is played over a number of rounds until one Player, or an alliance of two Players, gains enough Victory Points (VPs) at the round's end:[3]
* A Player wins with 3VPs.[4]
* An Alliance wins with 4VPs.[4]
[1] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook · p.2 · game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with:
[2] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook · p.3 · A Player begins the game with: · Placement
[3] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook · p.5 · Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order)
[4] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook · p.5 · Phase 6. Battles (Play ALL Battles in order) · Phase 7. End Round

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 122 ms · ask 7852 ms · total 7976 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 7976 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 5, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Fief is played over a number of rounds until one Player, or an alliance of two Players, have gained enough Victory Points (VPs) to win the game at the round's end. Each round consists of seven Phases. During each Phase, Players execute each action in clockwise order. Announce Marriage Alliances (1.1", "headingPath": "Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "A Lord leaving a plagued Bishopric and entering an adjacent plagued Bishopric does not roll again. Troops entering a plagued Bishopric lose half of their number, rounded down. New Troops placed in the Bishopric during the Purchase Phase are not affected by the Plague. Note: These new units are consi", "headingPath": "2.3.3 Plague (2 Cards) · 2.4 Play Cards · 2.4.1 Lords (18 cards)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "Allows an Army (Troops and Lords in the same Village) to take one Move in a Bishopric with Heavy Rain. This can include moving into or out of the Bishopric. This is not a bonus Move, but only allows one Move in a Bishopric where movement is usually not allowed due to the Heavy Rain. Avoid a Battle T", "headingPath": "· Move in Heavy Rain · 10.2.2 Played during a Battle · · Attack from the Tunnels · 10.2.3 During any phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "10 7 B B Determine a starting player who takes the First Player card and chooses his starting Village. In it he places his 1 Knight , 3 Men at Arms , 1 Stronghold , and Lord token. In clock wise order, the other Players do the same, placing their units into any remaining unoccupied Village. Then the", "headingPath": "A Player begins the game with: · Placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "1 Place the Game Board in a central location. The map represents a portion of France in the Middle Ages. Villages have square outlines and are connected by roads that allow Lord and Troop movement. Each Village is located in one of eight uniquely colored background Fiefs (Fiefdoms). Each Village als", "headingPath": "game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "If the Player wants to move through opponent Troops without permission from their Lord, the Player can try to fight his way through during the Movement Phase with a Cavalcade. Cavalcades allow Players to battle and then keep moving. A Cavalcade may be used to: Exit from a besieged Stronghold/Fortifi", "headingPath": "5.2 Cavalcades", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "In the game of Fief, each Player heads a noble family in the medieval Kingdom of France. A family is comprised of individual Lords (noble men and women) that strive to attain Royal and Ecclesiastical titles. These titles not only gain the Player's family wealth and power, but also the right to vote ", "headingPath": "Game Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Royal Titles include: King, Queen (Queen Regent), and Crown Prince. The King (1.8) is elected by Lords with Titles. A Titled Lord is any Lord with at least one of the above Titles. When a Lord receives a Title, its corresponding Title Crown or Staff Counter is placed next to the Lord card. Note: a L", "headingPath": "1.2 Titles · 1.3 Elections and Voting", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A Player begins the game with: · Placement", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 6. Battles (Play ALL Battles in order) · Phase 7. End Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1273}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1273 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1273 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 0.89130 of 2668 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 5, 2026 15:15 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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order) p.5 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
#2 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) 2.3.3 Plague (2 Cards) · 2.4 Play Cards · 2.4.1 Lords (18 cards) p.10 0.047163 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) · Move in Heavy Rain · 10.2.2 Played during a Battle · · Attack from the Tunnels · 10.2.3 During any phase p.17 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
#4 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) A Player begins the game with: · Placement p.3 0.032787 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with: 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
#6 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) 5.2 Cavalcades p.13 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
#7 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Game Overview p.4 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
#8 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) 1.2 Titles · 1.3 Elections and Voting p.6 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 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 58 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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) A Player begins the game with: · Placement p.3 #4 0.032787 (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
#2 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Q: Can a Player decide not to vote in an election? · Phase 2. Cards p.19 #23 0.024503 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Phase 6. Battles (Play ALL Battles in order) · Phase 7. End Round p.5 #15 0.026541 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) 2.4.5 Tallage can be played by: · 2.4.6 Tithe can be played by: p.10 #9 0.028992 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) · Move in Heavy Rain · 10.2.2 Played during a Battle · · Attack from the Tunnels · 10.2.3 During any phase p.17 #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)) vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) 8.0 Diplomacy · 9.0 Lord Opportunity Cards · 9.1 d'ARC (1 card) p.16 #24 0.024497 (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 Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order) p.5 #1 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
#8 RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with: p.2 #5 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

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
[1] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) game setup (6 player setup shown) · A Player begins the game with: p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) A Player begins the game with: · Placement p.3 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Round Overview · Phase 1. 'Hear Ye, Hear Ye' (Play each Action in order) · Phase 2. Draw & Play Cards (Play each Action in order) · Phase 3. Collect Income (Collect simultaneously) · Phase 4. Purchase (Purchase ALL units and titles in order) · Phase 5. Movement (Move ALL Troops and Lords in order) p.5 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Fief: France 1429 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1273) Phase 6. Battles (Play ALL Battles in order) · Phase 7. End Round p.5 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 122 ms · first delta 3679 ms · total 7976 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 122 ms · ask 7852 ms · gateway work 7976 ms · total 7976 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3555
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
834
tok/sec
199.8 tok/sec — 834 output tokens in 4.174 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 22h, checked 9s 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
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1203), 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.