Ruling — Mexica

← Mexica

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mexicabg-2955-en-1e

Setup

1. Each player takes 1 Mexica, 18 buildings, 1 scoring marker, and 1 rule summary card in their chosen color.[1]

2. Each player selects 9 buildings (3 @ 1, 3 @ 2, 2 @ 3, and 1 @ 4) and places them in their play area.[1]

3. Place the game board in the middle of the table.[1]

4. Put two 2-space canal tiles on the four spaces on the board that already have canals printed on them.[1]

5. Shuffle 15 Calpull and select 8 at random, turn them over, and place them in the Calpulli bank on the board in ascending order.[1]

6. Place canal tiles, bridges, and action chips next to the board as supplies.[1]

7. Place all scoring markers on space 0 of the scoring track.[1]

Playing the Game

1. The oldest player (or a player chosen by the players) begins.[2]

2. In clockwise order, each player places their Mexica on one of the 4 starting spaces.[2]

3. Play continues in clockwise order.[2]

4. On a player's turn, they may use 6 action points (AP) to perform any of the following actions in any order, any number of times (subject to limitations): [2]

* Place canal tile [2]

* Build/move bridges [2]

* Move Mexica [2]

* Build building [2]

* Acquire action chips [2]

5. A player may also perform the following for no AP cost: [2]

* Build a district [2]

* Found a district [2]

Actions

* Acquire Action Chips: A player may spend 1 AP to acquire an action chip, placing it in their play area; a player may acquire at most 2 per turn.[3] These chips can be used on later turns to use more than 6 AP.[3]

* Move Mexica: A player may move their Mexica to any empty adjacent (not diagonal) land space for 1 AP per space.[4] They may move along canals and the lake from bridge to bridge for 1 AP per bridge, provided the water spaces are connected adjacently.[4] A player may pay 5 AP to jump to any empty land space or bridge on the board.[4]

* Build Building: A player may build a building on an empty land space in the district where their Mexica is standing, provided it is not a sacred site or starting space.[5] The cost is the building's value (1, 2, 3, or 4) in AP.[5]

* Build/Found District: A player may build a district by playing canal tiles to partition the city into smaller districts surrounded by water.[6] A player may found a district by placing an appropriate Calpulli tile (where the turquoise number matches the number of land spaces) in the district, provided their Mexica is in that district.[6]

Scoring and Game End

Part One

1. The first part of the game is complete when the initial 8 Calpulli tiles have been placed in districts founded by players and one player has built all 9 of their initial buildings.[2]

2. Players score their positions in the city.[2]

3. When founding a district, the player with their Mexica in the district scores the points shown by the yellow number on the Calpulli tile, and other players with Mexica in that district score the points shown by the white number.[6]

Part Two

1. After the first scoring, players place the remaining 7 Calpulli tiles in the bank in ascending order and place their remaining 9 buildings in their play area.[7]

2. The player who started the first part also starts the second part.[7]

3. The second part ends when all districts that can be founded have been founded and at least one player has built all their buildings.[7]

4. During the second scoring, players score all founded districts (even those scored in the first part).[7]

5. For built districts (those without Calpulli tiles), the player with the most valuable buildings scores points equal to the spaces in the district; the second most valuable player scores half that amount (rounded up), and the third most valuable player scores half of the second player's points (rounded up).[7]

6. A player scores an extra 5 points if their Mexica is on one of the four starting spaces during scoring.[7]

7. The game ends after the second scoring.[2] The winner is the player whose scoring marker is furthest along the

[1] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.3 · CCONTENTS · PREPARATION

[2] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.4 · MPLAYING THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.10 · MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS

[4] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.8 · MMOVE MEXICA

[5] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.9 · MMOVE MEXICA · BUILD BUILDINGM

[6] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.5 · FOUND DISTRICTM

[7] RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook · p.11 · THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 128 ms · ask 6866 ms · total 6996 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6996 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Beginning with the oldest player (or the player chosen by the players using any method they desire), each player, in clockwise order, places his Mexica on one of the 4 starting spaces. Play then continues in clockwise order. On a player's turn, he may take the following actions: place canal tile bui", "headingPath": "MPLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "The first part of the game ends and the players score their positions when: the first 8 districts have been founded. This means that all 8 Calpulli tiles that were placed in the Calpulli bank at the beginning of the game have been placed in districts on the board and at least 1 player has built all ", "headingPath": "MTHE FIRST SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "After the first scoring is complete, place the remaining 7 Calpulli tiles in the Calpulli bank in ascending order from the upper left corner. Each player places his remaining 9 buildings in his play area. If a player has buildings left from the first part of the game, these are also available to be ", "headingPath": "THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "A player plays canal tile X , building a district of 6 spaces. He then founds the district by placing the #6 Calpulli tile in it (his Mexica is in the district). He scores 3 points for this. As no other players have their Mexica in this district, no other players score for the founding of this distr", "headingPath": "FOUND DISTRICTM", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "A player may acquire an action chip for 1 AP. He places the chip in his play area. A player may acquire at most 2 action chips in a turn. On a later turn, if the player wants to use more than 6 AP, he may use the action chips he has acquired. For each extra AP , the player must use 1 action chip.", "headingPath": "MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "per player. The following actions are possible: | Symbol | Action | Cost (number of AP) | What must be considered | | | place 1 canal tile (1 or 2 space tile) | | On any empty land spaces, but not in a founded district, not on the sacred site, a starting space, other canal tiles, the lake, or at the", "headingPath": "MACTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044557, "snippet": "lake canal land space scoring track bank of Calpulli tiles Each player takes the following in his chosen color: 1 Mexica, 18 buildings, 1 scoring marker, and 1 rule summary card. From his 18 buildings, each player finds the following 9 : 3 @ 1, 3 @ 2, 2 @ 3, 1 @ 4 and places them before him on the t", "headingPath": "CCONTENTS · PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "first places 1 canal tile (X) for 1 AP , then builds, also for 1 AP , a bridge (bridge A), next moves his Mexica over bridge A for 2 AP , builds a value 1 building for 1 AP , and finally takes an action chip for 1 AP . first places 2 canal tiles (X) for a total of 2 AP , then builds, for 1 AP , a br", "headingPath": "Player A · Player B · Player C", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CCONTENTS · PREPARATION", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MPLAYING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MMOVE MEXICA", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "MMOVE MEXICA · BUILD BUILDINGM", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FOUND DISTRICTM", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM", "sharpsignalDocId": 721}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 721 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 721 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 0.89690 of 3259 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 5, 2026 15:41 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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MPLAYING THE GAME	p.4	0.048916 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MTHE FIRST SCORING	p.10	0.047643 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM	p.11	0.047619 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	FOUND DISTRICTM	p.5	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
#5	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS	p.10	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))	297
#6	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MACTIONS	p.6	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
#7	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	CCONTENTS · PREPARATION	p.3	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
#8	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	Player A · Player B · Player C	p.12	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 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 17 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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MPLAYING THE GAME	p.4	#1	0.048916 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	FOUND DISTRICTM	p.5	#4	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS	p.10	#5	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MMOVE MEXICA	p.8	#12	0.013889 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MMOVE MEXICA · BUILD BUILDINGM	p.9	#10	0.014493 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MMOVE MEXICA	p.8	#13	0.013699 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	CCONTENTS · PREPARATION	p.3	#7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM	p.11	#3	0.047619 (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 Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	CCONTENTS · PREPARATION	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MPLAYING THE GAME	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MACQUIRE ACTION CHIPS	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MMOVE MEXICA	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	MMOVE MEXICA · BUILD BUILDINGM	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	FOUND DISTRICTM	p.5	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Mexica — Rulebook (corpus doc 721)	THE SECOND PART OF THE GAMEM · THE SECOND SCORINGM · GAME ENDM	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 128 ms · first delta 1747 ms · total 6996 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 128 ms · ask 6866 ms · gateway work 6996 ms · total 6996 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3207
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 198.9 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.148 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 23h, 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.

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 655), 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.