Ruling — Point City

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Point Citybg-368017-en-1e

Setup

1. Sort the Building/Resource Cards into 3 decks based on tier (indicated by the number of dots in the bottom left hand corner of the building side).[1]

2. Shuffle each deck and place them in piles with their resource side faceup.[1]

3. Based on the number of players, remove/use the following number of cards from each tier:

* 1-2P: Use 40 Tier 1, 24 Tier 2, 18 Tier 3.[1]

* 3P: Use 52 Tier 1, 36 Tier 2, 28 Tier 3.[1]

* 4P: Use 64 Tier 1, 48 Tier 2, 38 Tier 3.[1]

4. Return removed cards to the game box.[1]

5. Stack the tier decks on top of one and with the tier 3 deck on the bottom, the tier 2 deck on top of it, and finally, the tier 1 deck on the top.[1]

6. Place this combined deck in the center of the play area as the Draw Pile.[1]

7. Draw 16 cards from the Draw Pile to form the Market, placing them facedown (resource-side up) into a 4 X 4 grid, starting with the top left-most card and proceeding to fill all spaces until the bottom right-most card is placed.[1]

8. Flip all Civic Tokens facedown and shuffle them.[1]

9. Select a number of tokens based on player count (2P: 10, 3P: 12, 4P: 14), flip them faceup, and arrange them into a supply.[1]

10. Give each player one Ingenuity Starting Card at random and turn it over.[2] The player with the starting player symbol becomes the starting player.[2]

Turn Sequence

1. (Optional) If a row or column in the Market contains all Resource Cards, you may, once per turn before drafting, flip one of those Resource Cards to its Building Card side.[3]

2. Draft cards: You may draft any 2 orthogonally adjacent cards from the Market, or draft the top two cards of the Draw Pile.[3] You must always be able to draft both chosen cards.[3] If you choose the Draw Pile, you must draw two cards.[3] You may not select one card from the Draw Pile and one from the Market.[3]

3. Use Resource Cards: Take the Resource Card and place it in front of you; it can be used this turn or on future turns to provide resources.[3]

4. Construct Buildings: If you have the required resources, you may draft a Building Card.[3] Supply resources by discarding Resource Cards or using permanent resources from previously constructed buildings.[3] Place the Building Card into your City (a tableau of cards in front of you).[4]

5. Select Civic Tokens: If you constructed a Civic Building (buildings with a civic icon in the top right corner), you may select one Civic Token.[4]

6. End Turn and Refill Market: Once you have drafted two cards, paid resources for buildings, and selected earned tokens, your turn ends.[5]

7. Refill the Market: Take 2 cards from the top of the draw pile to refill the spaces (unless the player elected to take the top two cards of the draw pile, in which case this step is skipped).[5] Refill cards one-at-a-time from top-left to bottom-right.[5]

8. Update Card Sides: If the drafted card was a Resource Card, flip the replacement card from the draw pile to its building side; if the drafted card was a Building Card, place the replacement card on its resource side.[5]

AI Opponent Turn (2-Player Only)

1. The AI opponent takes a turn after you.[6]

2. The AI opponent always drafts 2 cards:[6] the card at the intersection of the two Market Tokens and the card below it.[6]

3. After the AI drafts, the Market is refilled as usual and Market tokens are advanced.[6]

4. The top Market token (tracking columns) moves one space left to right each turn; when it reaches the right-most column, it moves back to the left-most column.[6]

5. The bottom Market token (tracking rows) moves to the next row below it; when it reaches the bottom row, it moves to the top row.[6]

6. If a bottom row card is at the intersection of the two Market Tokens, the card "below" it is the card in the corresponding top row.[6]

End of Game and Scoring

[1] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.4 · BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.5 · SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE

[3] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.6 · GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action

[4] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.7 · Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building

[5] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.8 · TURN END

[6] RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook · p.10 · Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn

Rule found, game 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 90 ms · ask 6588 ms · total 6679 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6679 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "1 Sort the Buidling/Resource Cards into 3 decks based on tier (tiers are indicated by the number of dots in the bottom left hand corner of the card on the building side of each card). Shuffle each deck and place them in piles with their resource side faceup. Based on the number of players, remove/us", "headingPath": "BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Once you have drafted two cards, paid the required resources to construct any Building Cards, and selected any Civic Tokens you have earned, your turn ends and the Market is refilled. To refill the Market, take 2 cards from the top of the draw pile to refill the spaces in the Market. [Note: if a pla", "headingPath": "TURN END", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "The game ends when the Market is no longer able to be refilled because the Draw Pile has been depleted. [Note: Each player will play exactly 17 turns and the market will have 14 cards remaining in it.] Players add up the points printed on their constructed Building Cards and the points gained by the", "headingPath": "GAME END · SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "5 Take a number of Ingenuity Starting Cards equal to the number of players and be sure to include the card with the starting player symbol ( ). 6 Each player takes one Ingenuity Starting Card at random and turns it over. The player with the starting player symbol ( ) becomes the starting player. You", "headingPath": "SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Follow the setup rules for a 2-player game, with the following exceptions: Only give yourself an Ingenuity Starting Card. You take the first turn. Line up the 10 chosen Civic Tokens in a single line - their order is important. Place one token above the top left-most card, and place the other token t", "headingPath": "Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "On your turn, draft any 2 orthogonally adjacent cards from the Market, or draft the top two cards of the Draw Pile. You may always draft a Resource Card. Take the Resource Card and place it in front of you. This card may be used this turn, or on future turns to provide the required resources to cons", "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Once you have paid the required resources to construct a building (either from Resource Cards, or permanent resources from your previously constructed buildings), place the Building Card into your City (a tableau of cards in front of you). In order to keep track of which permanent resources you have", "headingPath": "Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "[Note: this movement is designed such that the AI opponent will always draft cards in a predictable pattern from left to right, top to bottom. This allows you to strategically plan out which cards the AI opponent will receive by drafting cards in their path.] [Note: the AI opponent is not required t", "headingPath": "AI opponent turn · Scoring · AI opponent scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TURN END", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1035}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1035 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1035 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 0.89114 of 3114 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 13:08 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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP	p.4	0.047875 (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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	TURN END	p.8	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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	GAME END · SCORING	p.9	0.045285 (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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE	p.5	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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn	p.10	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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action	p.6	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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	AI opponent turn · Scoring · AI opponent scoring	p.11	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

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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn	p.10	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP	p.4	#1	0.047875 (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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Setup · Turn Summary · LOVE POINT CITY?	p.12	#9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	TURN END	p.8	#2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action	p.6	#6	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
#6	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building	p.7	#7	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
#7	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	GAME END · SCORING	p.9	#3	0.045285 (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 Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE	p.5	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	BUILDING CARDS (FRONT) · SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	SETUP · 3 PLAYER SETUP EXAMPLE	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	GAMEPLAY · Optional Flip Action	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Constructing a Building · Constructing a Civic Building	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	TURN END	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Point City — Rulebook (corpus doc 1035)	Setup · Turn Summary · AI opponent turn	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 1548 ms · total 6679 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 90 ms · ask 6588 ms · gateway work 6679 ms · total 6679 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2776
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 202.0 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.070 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 20s 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 965), 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.