Ruling — Royals

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Royalsbg-165986-en-1e

Players take turns in clockwise order, beginning with the starting player (the oldest player).[1][2] On your turn, you must carry out the following actions in this order:

1. Draw Cards [1]

* On your first turn, you must draw a specific number of Country cards based on the number of players: 1 card for the starting player, and 2 cards for the 2nd player (in a 2-player game); or 1 card for the starting player, 1 for the 2nd, and 2 for the 3rd (in a 3-player game), and so on.[1]

* From your second turn onward, you must choose one of two options: draw 3 Country cards, or draw 1 Country card and 1 Intrigue card (in either order).[1]

* Country cards can be drawn face-down from the draw pile and/or face-up from the display in any order.[1]

* Intrigue cards are always drawn from the face-down Intrigue draw pile.[1]

2. Play Cards [1]

* You may play any number of cards from your hand in any order.[1]

* You may play Country cards to claim a vacant Noble by playing the required number of cards for that Noble's title; when doing so, place one wooden noble on the portrait and a second on the matching Title scoring marker.[3]

* You may take over an opponent's Noble by simultaneously playing one Intrigue card for that country and the required number of Country cards; the original noble is moved to the Cathedral.[4]

* If you lack the required number of matching Country cards, you may play any three Country cards as one Country card of your and choice.[4]

* If you lack the correct Intrigue card, you may play any two Intrigue cards as one Intrigue card of your choice.[4]

* To take over a King, you must play two Intrigue cards with the matching coat of arms.[5]

3. End of Turn [1]

* Once you are done playing any chosen cards, your turn is over.[5]

* You must discard any excess cards if you are above the hand limit (12 Country cards and 4 Intrigue cards).[1][5]

* If you drew any face-up Country cards, you must refill the row to three cards by turning over new cards from the draw deck.[5]

* The player to your left then begins their turn.[1][5]

The game continues until the Country Card draw pile runs out.[1] A Period ends when the Country Card draw pile runs out, at which point scoring occurs for the two most influential players in each of the four Countries.[6][7] The game consists of three Periods.[7] For the third Period only, players continue taking turns until the round is complete so all players have an equal number of turns.[6] After the third Period, bonus points for Titles are awarded, and the player with the most points wins.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.4 · PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards

[2] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.3 · SETTING UP THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.4 · Claiming a V acant Noble

[4] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.5 · Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards

[5] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.5 · The King · 3. End of T urn

[6] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.6 · EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period

[7] RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook · p.3 · GOAL OF THE GAME

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 87 ms · ask 4663 ms · total 4752 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4752 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "Beginning with the starting player, players take turns in clockwise order. On your turn, carry out the following actions in the order listed: Draw Cards Play Cards End of Turn Then the player to your left takes a turn. Players continue taking turns until the Country Card draw pile runs out of cards ", "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "The players are the leaders of the great noble houses of the 17th Century, fighting for supremacy over Europe. With the help of Country cards, they place their nobles in cities of their choice, earning victory points. The higher the rank of the Noble, the more Country cards are required. But, Nobles", "headingPath": "GOAL OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Because of their great power, Kings are more resistant to intrigue. You must play two Intrigue cards with the matching coat of arms of that country to take over a King. The wild card rule applies here. These actions are mandatory. Once you are done playing any cards you choose to play , your turn is", "headingPath": "The King · 3. End of T urn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "If there is a tie, the marker goes to the tied player who has the Noble with the highest Title in that Country . The highest Title is determined by the number of Country cards required to claim that Noble (for example, a Princess (6 cards) is higher than a Duke (4 cards). In the rare case that this ", "headingPath": "Scoring · ENDING THE GAME · Title Scoring · WINNING THE GAME · Optional Rule", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "You may play Country cards to place a wooden noble on a vacant Noble portrait in any city , thus claiming ownership of that Noble. There are one or two Nobles available in each City . Each Noble has a portrait. The number to the left of the portrait indicates the number of Country cards of that coun", "headingPath": "Claiming a V acant Noble", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "If you fulfill the requirements to earn a Bonus, you immediately take the applicable marker (and the victory points shown) and place it face down in front of you. Keep your Bonuses in front of you until the end of the game. If you have at least one wooden noble in every City of a Country, you take t", "headingPath": "EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Each player chooses a player color and takes all the matching wooden nobles to form their 'supply'. Note: In a two-player game, the players must choose red and blue, since more pieces are needed. With more than two players, any colors can be used. Place the game board in the middle of the table. The", "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030886, "snippet": "If you do not have the required number of matching Country cards, you may play any three Country cards as one Country card of your choice. You can take over a Noble that is already claimed by another player. To do this you must do both of these at the same time: Play an Intrigue card for that Noble'", "headingPath": "Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Claiming a V acant Noble", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The King · 3. End of T urn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GOAL OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1283}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1283 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1283 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 0.91352 of 2093 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:24 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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards	p.4	0.04866 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	GOAL OF THE GAME	p.3	0.047131 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	The King · 3. End of T urn	p.5	0.046898 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Scoring · ENDING THE GAME · Title Scoring · WINNING THE GAME · Optional Rule	p.7	0.046402 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Claiming a V acant Noble	p.4	0.045928 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period	p.6	0.044557 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	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
#8	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards	p.5	0.030886 (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 12 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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards	p.4	#1	0.04866 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	The King · 3. End of T urn	p.5	#3	0.046898 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Claiming a V acant Noble	p.4	#5	0.045928 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period	p.6	#6	0.044557 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Scoring	p.6	#9	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	GOAL OF THE GAME	p.3	#2	0.047131 (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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards	p.5	#8	0.030886 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	#7	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 Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	PLAYING THE GAME · 1. Draw Cards · Hand Limit · 2. Play Cards	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Claiming a V acant Noble	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	Wild Card Rule For Country Cards · Taking Over an Opponent's Noble · Wild Card Rule For Intrigue Cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	The King · 3. End of T urn	p.5	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	EARNING BONUSES · Country Bonuses · Noble House Bonuses · PERIOD SCORING · The End of a Period	p.6	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Royals — Rulebook (corpus doc 1283)	GOAL OF THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 1377 ms · total 4752 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 87 ms · ask 4663 ms · gateway work 4752 ms · total 4752 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3132
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 660
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 660 output tokens in 3.268 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 27s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 10s 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 1213), 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.