Ruling — La Città

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: La Cittàbg-554-en-1e

To play the game, follow these procedures:

Setup

1. One player shuffles the terrain tiles face down and places them on all empty triangular spaces on the board, then turns them all face up.[1]

2. Choose a starting player.[1]

3. The starting player places one of his castles on a hexagon of his choice (on a path) and places 3 citizen figures on it; if it is next to farm land, he takes food tokens equal to the number of food symbols on the farm land areas.[1]

4. Players take turns in counter-clockwise order, each placing a castle, putting 3 citizens on it, and taking food tokens if appropriate, ensuring at least 3 empty hexagons between the new castle and all other castles along a path.[1]

5. After all players have placed their first castle, the last player places a second castle, puts 3 citizens on it, and takes appropriate food tokens.[1]

6. Players then take turns in clockwise order placing their second castles.[1]

7. The initial placing of castles is complete when all players have placed two castles.[1]

8. The player to the left of the player who placed the last castle becomes the new starting player and starts the first year.[1]

The Game Year (8 Phases)

Each year consists of the following phases:[2]

1. Change the starting player.[2]

2. Lay out the "voice of the people" cards.[2]

3. Quarry earnings (in gold coins).[2]

4. Population growth.[2]

5. Five political rounds: players take turns in clockwise order playing 1 political or action card and executing the action on the card.[2]

6. Tally the voice of the people.[2]

7. Citizen relocation.[2]

8. Feeding the citizens.[2]

Political Rounds

1. There are 5 consecutive political rounds.[3]

2. In each round, players take turns playing cards, one at a time, in clockwise order, starting with the starting player.[3]

3. On a turn, a player may play one of his 3 action cards by announcing the action, executing it, and placing the card face down.[3]

4. Alternatively, a player may take one of the 7 face up politics cards and play it immediately by placing it face up, executing the action, and turning it face down.[3]

5. A political round ends when all players have played one card.[3]

6. Players may expand their cities during these rounds.[3]

Building and Expansion

1. To build a new building, a player plays the card that allows the building to be built, takes the building token from the supply, and places it on an empty hexagon next to the castle or any other building in the city.[4]

2. The player moves a spare citizen figure from the castle in that city to the new building (the figure must not be the last one in the castle).[4]

3. Exception: When building a market place, the player takes a citizen figure from the general supply and places it on the market place.[4]

4. Small buildings (those with no more than one arch) do not cost anything and only require an action card to build.[4]

5. When building using a politics card, the player must pay gold based on the building's value.[4]

6. A player may only start one new city each game year.[5] To start a new city, the player places a castle on an empty hexagonal space (ensuring 3 empty hexagons between it and other cities), moves one spare citizen from an existing castle to the new castle, and adds two citizens from the general supply.[5]

Winning the Game

1. The game lasts 6 game years.[2]

2. The winner is the player with the most victory points (citizen figures and cities with 3 colors of arches) at the end of the game.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook · p.4 · Setup for experienced players

[2] RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook · p.3 · The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth

[3] RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook · p.3 · Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards

[4] RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook · p.3 · How to build a building · Important building rules · The costs

[5] RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook · p.3 · · Start a new city. · · Build a small building. · -Farm house (no arch) · -Quarry (no arch) · - Fountain (blue arch)

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 190 ms · ask 5767 ms · total 5959 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5959 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.046871, "snippet": "I One player shuffles the terrain tiles face down and then places the tiles face down on all the empty triangular spaces on the board. After all have been placed face down, he turns them all face up. The different colored paths have special meaning when playing with fewer than four players. For deta", "headingPath": "Setup for experienced players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046696, "snippet": "There are 5 consecutive political rounds. In each round, the players take turns playing cards, one at a time, in clockwise order, starting with the starting player. On a player's turn, he plays one card and executes the action shown on it. A political round is over when all players have played one c", "headingPath": "Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "A player uses this card to double the food production of one of his farm houses for one game year. The player places one of his colored citizen figures on the farm house (not castle) of his choice: usually, the one that produces the most food. For example, a player who uses this card to add a colore", "headingPath": "Rich harvest · Polling the people · End of a player's turn in a political round · End of a political round", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046239, "snippet": "The winner is the player with the most victory points (citizen figures and cities with 3 colors of arches) at the end of the game (after 6 game years). Each year is played in 8 phases: 1 change the starting player 2 lay out the voice of the people cards 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) 4 population", "headingPath": "The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045772, "snippet": "Before the first game, carefully remove all tiles and tokens from their frames. Note: the board has several large triangular land areas, separated by the hexagonal paths on which the players will start and expand their cities. The large land areas have different terrain characteristics, randomly det", "headingPath": "PREPARATION · n Place the board in the middle of the table. · n Sort the hexagonal building tokens.", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.044949, "snippet": "Shuffle the voice of the people cards thoroughly and place them face down on the board next the the four brown circles. There are 3 extra cards so that players cannot count cards for the last year. n Place the food tokens and the gold coins next to the board. Gold coins Each player takes 1 gold coin", "headingPath": "n Prepare the 27 voice of the people cards · · Food tokens · Initial board setup for beginners for 5 players · III Take food tokens · example:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When two services tie with 2 cards each for the 'voice of the people', both services may attract relocating citizens. On a player's turn, he decides for each of his cities separately, which of the two services applies. This service (education, culture, or health) applies in all neighboring cities to", "headingPath": "Two services tie for voice of the people · Demolishing unsupported buildings", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029762, "snippet": "In clockwise order, starting with the starting player, each player counts his food units and the citizen figures in all his cities. -If the player has at least as many food units as citizen figures, all are fed and his turn in this phase ends. Note: a player shares all his food among all his cities.", "headingPath": "8 feeding the citizens · Penalty for having unfed citizens · End of a game year · Special rule for the 6th game year", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Setup for experienced players", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to build a building · Important building rules · The costs", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "· Start a new city. · · Build a small building. · -Farm house (no arch) · -Quarry (no arch) · - Fountain (blue arch)", "sharpsignalDocId": 1069}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1069 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1069 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 0.90609 of 2875 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 15:05 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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Setup for experienced players	p.4	0.046871 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards	p.3	0.046696 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Rich harvest · Polling the people · End of a player's turn in a political round · End of a political round	p.4	0.046394 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth	p.3	0.046239 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	PREPARATION · n Place the board in the middle of the table. · n Sort the hexagonal building tokens.	p.2	0.045772 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	n Prepare the 27 voice of the people cards · · Food tokens · Initial board setup for beginners for 5 players · III Take food tokens · example:	p.4	0.044949 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Two services tie for voice of the people · Demolishing unsupported buildings	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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	8 feeding the citizens · Penalty for having unfed citizens · End of a game year · Special rule for the 6th game year	p.2	0.029762 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Setup for experienced players	p.4	#1	0.046871 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	PREPARATION · n Place the board in the middle of the table. · n Sort the hexagonal building tokens.	p.2	#5	0.045772 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards	p.3	#2	0.046696 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Fourth political round · Fifth political round · What happens next? · Strategy tips	p.2	#13	0.028439 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	· Start a new city. · · Build a small building. · -Farm house (no arch) · -Quarry (no arch) · - Fountain (blue arch)	p.3	#18	0.013333 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth	p.3	#4	0.046239 (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 La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	AN INTRODUCTION	p.1	#10	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
#8	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	How to build a building · Important building rules · The costs	p.3	#12	0.029236 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Setup for experienced players	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	The goal · the sequence of the phases in a game year · 1 change the starting player · 2 lay out the voice of the people cards · 3 quarry earnings (in gold coins) · 4 population growth	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	Overview · · Action cards · · Politics cards · Action cards	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	How to build a building · Important building rules · The costs	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK La Città — Rulebook (corpus doc 1069)	· Start a new city. · · Build a small building. · -Farm house (no arch) · -Quarry (no arch) · - Fountain (blue arch)	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 190 ms · first delta 1567 ms · total 5959 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 190 ms · ask 5767 ms · gateway work 5959 ms · total 5959 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4459
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 850
tok/sec: 199.7 tok/sec — 850 output tokens in 4.257 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 4s 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 999), 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.