Ruling — Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

← Cleopatra and the Society of Architects

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Cleopatra and the Society of Architectsbg-22141-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Place the empty bottom of the box upside down in the center of the table.[1]

2. Lay the Palace's Garden on top of the box and position the Plaza of the Sphinx adjacent to the corresponding illustration on one side of the box.[1]

3. Place the Dice of the Great Priest, blank side face-up, in a group next to the Plaza of the Sphinx, and place the empty Altar of the Great Priest in front of the Plaza.[1]

4. Place the Quarry and all its contents within reach of all players.[1]

5. Place the figure of Cleopatra on her illustration at the start of the Plaza of the Sphinx.[1]

6. If playing for the first time, place the punched-out Mosaics of the Gods in a random pile inside the Quarry.[1]

7. Place the punched-out Amulets of Corruption in a pile next to the game board.[1]

8. Place the Talents in sorted piles of increasing value, face up, next to the Plaza.[1]

9. Hand each player a Summary Sheet, a Pyramid of Corruption, and two Statues of Anubis of matching color.[1]

10. Give each player 3 Merchants of the Nile (visible to all) and 5 Talents (kept in a face-down pile).[1]

11. Remove the promotional card from the deck, shuffle, and deal 3 cards face down to each player.[2][1]

12. Cut the deck in two equal halves, flip one half face-up, and shuffle the two halves back together.[2]

13. Draw the top three cards from this deck and lay them side-by-side to form the Market.[2]

Gameplay

1. The player with the best Egyptian credentials (or the youngest player if no one has such credentials) starts the game.[3]

2. Play proceeds clockwise around the table, with each player taking one turn at a time.[3]

3. On a turn, a player MUST perform one (and ONLY ONE) of the following two actions: Visit the Market or Visit the Quarry.[3]

Visiting the Market

1. The player picks all cards from a chosen Market stall and takes them into their hand.[4]

2. If the player's turn ends with more than 10 cards in hand, they must either:

* Discard chosen cards into the discard pile to keep only 10 cards and take 1 Corruption Amulet.[4]

* Keep all excess cards and take 1 Corruption Amulet for EACH card in excess of 10.[4]

3. The player replenishes each Market stall by drawing the top three cards from the draw pile and placing them in the stall, maintaining their face-up/face-down orientation.[4]

Visiting the Quarry

1. The player may choose to visit the Quarry to acquire pieces of the Palace.[5]

2. To build a piece, the player plays any combination of Resource cards and/or Nile Merchants from their hand that matches or exceeds the construction requirements, discarding them onto the Market's discard pile.[5]

3. Nile Merchants played are removed from the game.[5]

4. The player takes the corresponding piece from the Quarry and places it on its reserved spot on the Palace grounds (choosing the spot if multiple are available).[5]

5. The player collects the Talents earned as indicated on the Summary Sheet; if two pieces are built, add 2 more Talents; if three or more are built, add 5 more Talents.[5]

6. If the pieces built complete an entire category (e.g., Sphinxes, Obelisks, etc.), move Cleopatra one space forward toward the Palace's door.[5]

7. Roll all dice of the Great Priest whose face up is still blank; move any dice that land face up onto the Altar of the Great Priest and put the others back blank face up.[5]

8. If all 5 dice fill the Altar, proceed to an Offering to the Great Priest.[5]

Additional Rules

* Character cards can be used at ANY time during a player's turn, regardless of whether they visited the Market or Quarry.[5]

* Any 'tainted' Resource or Character card used adds the indicated number of Corruption Amulets to the player's Pyramid of Corruption immediately upon being played.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.3 · SETTING UP THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.3 · SETTING UP THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.4 · SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN

[4] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.4 · Visit the Market

[5] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.5 · Visit the Quarry

[6] RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook · p.5 · Important notes regarding Game Turn

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 98 ms · ask 19498 ms · total 33349 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 13751 ms · generation 19598 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The players also receive 3 Merchants of the Nile and 5 Talents each ❽ . The Merchants are visible to all, while the Talents are kept in a pile, face down, in front of the player, their value hidden from all others. Remove the promotional card from the deck of cards and shuffle the deck. Then deal 3 ", "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "We invite you to join our online community of players and test your skills against fellow players from around the world at Days of Wonder Online, where we host a number of online versions of our games. Here is your Days of Wonder Online Web Card Access number: To use it, simply visit: www.cleopatrag", "headingPath": "ONLINE PLAY · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "The player may opt to visit the Quarry instead, to acquire the pieces of the Palace he wishes to build this turn. To build a piece of the Palace, the player must: Play from his hand any combination of Resource cards and/or Nile Merchants that matches or exceeds the construction requirements of the p", "headingPath": "Visit the Quarry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "Any 'tainted' Resource or Character card used (identified by the corruption symbol) adds the number of Corruption Amulets indicated on the card to the player's Pyramid of Corruption the moment it is played. A Nile Merchant can be played in lieu of any single missing resource required (including in l", "headingPath": "Important notes regarding Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045262, "snippet": "Remove the five Punch boards, the Quarry with its contents, the deck of cards, the dice, players' pyramids and Summary Sheets from the box. Turn the now empty (except for the tray inside it) bottom of the box upside down and place it in the center of the table. Lay the Palace's Garden on top of it, ", "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "3 3 The object of the game is to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra's architects, by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her Palace. Given the intense competition that reigns among the members of the Society of Architects, you will often be tempted to deal with shady characters a", "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "5 5 Following a visit to the Quarry and the ensuing dice roll that may occur, or following the play of a Scribe card, all five dice may now display the Great Priest symbol face up. An offering to the Great Priest must then be made. Each player puts in hand a secret amount of Talents he wishes to off", "headingPath": "Important notes regarding Game Turn · Offerings to the Great Priest", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "1 The player who chooses to visit the Market picks all the card(s) from the column of cards (called a 'Market stall') of his choice and takes them in hand. If the player's turn ends with more than 10 cards in his hand, he must immediately: Discard the cards of his choice into the discard pile next t", "headingPath": "Visit the Market", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Visit the Market", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Visit the Quarry", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Important notes regarding Game Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1213}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1213 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1213 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 0.90827 of 3118 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:32 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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	ONLINE PLAY · CREDITS	p.12	0.04741 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Quarry	p.5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Important notes regarding Game Turn	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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	0.045262 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN	p.4	0.045228 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Important notes regarding Game Turn · Offerings to the Great Priest	p.6	0.044118 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Market	p.4	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

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 21 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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	#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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Quarry	p.5	#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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Market	p.4	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	ONLINE PLAY · CREDITS	p.12	#2	0.04741 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN	p.4	#6	0.045228 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Important notes regarding Game Turn	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
#7	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Cost: 1 Corruption Amulet · Cost: Variable cost (see below) · Cost: 2 Corruption Amulets (or zero)	p.11	#9	0.030092 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	#5	0.045262 (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 Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	SETTING UP THE GAME · OBJECT OF THE GAME · THE GAME TURN	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Market	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Visit the Quarry	p.5	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Cleopatra and the Society of Architects — Rulebook (corpus doc 1213)	Important notes regarding Game Turn	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 98 ms · first delta 1726 ms · total 33349 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 13751 ms · retrieval 98 ms · ask 19498 ms · gateway work 19598 ms · total 33349 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3071
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 962
tok/sec: 54.1 tok/sec — 962 output tokens in 17.774 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 7s 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 1143), 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.