RuleSage cited table rulings
← Coffee Traders

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Coffee Tradersbg-325022-en-1e

PHASE 1: WORK PHASE
1. In turn order, perform 1 of the 4 Cooperative actions on your turn.[1]
2. Alternatively, you may drop out, forgoing all of your actions for the remainder of this phase.[1]
3. This continues until all players have dropped out.[1]
(To perform an action, you must place Action markers on one of the ACTIONS on your player board [1]).
PHASE 2: ASSIGN WORKERS
1. Simultaneously send workers from your II. Assign Workers: WORKER POOLS to your own unoccupied plantations, placing a worker in the 1st row before higher rows.[2]
2. In turn order, until everyone drops out, either move a worker from your WORKER POOL to an opponent's unoccupied plantation, or drop out.[2]
3. After everyone has dropped out, pay penalties for each unoccupied plantation by discarding coins, moving back on Arabica tracks, or a combination of both.[2]
4. If unable to pay in full, remove your highest-placed (by row) unoccupied plantations from the game.[2]
PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD
1. In turn order, perform one of the following actions until everyone passes consecutively: Pay 2 coins to send 1 of your traders in the 1st space of an unoccupied trading house, then take a Stock counter and place it on the matching bottom space of IV. Harvest: WAREHOUSE.[3]
2. Other players may "piggyback" by placing a trader in the next empty space for free in wrapping turn order.[3]
[1] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook · p.8 · PHASE 1: WORK PHASE
[2] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook · p.10 · PHASE 2: ASSIGN WORKERS · 0 Move back on an Arabica track
[3] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook · p.10 · PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 88 ms · ask 4127 ms · total 7669 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 3451 ms · generation 4218 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "In turn order, perform 1 of the 4 Cooperative actions on your turn. Alternatively, you may drop out, forgoing all of your actions for the remainder of this phase. This continues until all players have dropped out. To perform an action, you must place Action markers on one of the ACTIONS on your play", "headingPath": "\u0007 PHASE 1: WORK PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Spend all of the coffee indicated on one of your contracts. Remove that contract from the game. Get the coins depicted beside its space. Get the bonus depicted below its space; if there is a slash (/), take either the bonuses left of the slash, or the bonuses right of the slash. 0 Coins, donkeys, an", "headingPath": "ACTION A: FULFILL A CONTRACT", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "If you fulfill a milestone at any time, place a marker on the most valuable (i.e. topmost) empty space of that milestone. These points will be added at the end of the game. Vicious 2-player variant: If you'd like to make the game a little more cutthroat, use only the topmost space on each milestone.", "headingPath": "MILESTONES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In turn order, perform one of the following actions until everyone passes consecutively : 1. Pay 2 coins to send 1 of your traders in the 1st space of an unoccupied trading house. Take a Stock counter, and place it on the matching bottom space of IV. Harvest: WAREHOUSE. Piggyback : In wrapping turn ", "headingPath": "\u0007 PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "\u0007 If you have received no other identical counters, place it on the bottommost empty space on your Counter track, and skip the rest of these steps. \u0007 If the counter is a duplicate (you have received an identical counter), set it to the right of your player board. \u0007 If you now have accumulated two co", "headingPath": "To apply these rules, perform the following steps: · Note: · To reiterate:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030679, "snippet": "In the trading house, stack the 3 Stock markers, that are the same color as the trading house, on their space below 1st . In the trading house, place 1 coin on the space matching the player count (e.g. in a 4-player game , on the 4th). In the town center, place 6 workers. Pile the remaining coins an", "headingPath": "THE FIVE COOPERATIVES · SUMATRA · ARABICA TRACK · CONTRACT BONUS · PERIOD & PHASE · TURN ORDER · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "I. Work \u0007 COMPANY SUPPLY 1 VP for each donkey/civet (but not for coins). 3 VP for each truck. -3 VP for each -3 VP token. 4 VP if you built your level-3 plantation in Row B. II. Assign Workers: WORKER POOL : 1 VP for each worker here. III. Trade & Build: VP for each constructed building , as depicte", "headingPath": "PLAYER BOARD · THE PLAYER WITH THE MOST VP WINS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030018, "snippet": "Cover the 2:1 with your Trade counter, 4:1 side up. Place each of your Coffee cubes on 0 on its matching track. Stand the last warehouse on the shaded Warehouse space. CONTRACTS 1970-1980: For spaces A - E, place a random matching contract on the space, flipped to the side for your player count* (se", "headingPath": "IV. Harvest: Warehouse · Note:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "\u0007 PHASE 1: WORK PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PHASE 2: ASSIGN WORKERS · 0 Move back on an Arabica track", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "\u0007 PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1005 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1005 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 0.90393 of 1145 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 7, 2026 02:56 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 1: WORK PHASE p.8 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
#2 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) ACTION A: FULFILL A CONTRACT p.12 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
#3 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) MILESTONES p.7 0.031746 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER p.10 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
#5 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) To apply these rules, perform the following steps: · Note: · To reiterate: p.8 0.030769 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) THE FIVE COOPERATIVES · SUMATRA · ARABICA TRACK · CONTRACT BONUS · PERIOD & PHASE · TURN ORDER · … p.4 0.030679 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PLAYER BOARD · THE PLAYER WITH THE MOST VP WINS. p.14 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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) IV. Harvest: Warehouse · Note: p.5 0.030018 (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 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 39 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 1: WORK PHASE p.8 #1 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
#2 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) To apply these rules, perform the following steps: · Note: · To reiterate: p.8 #5 0.030769 (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
#3 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) MILESTONES p.7 #3 0.031746 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) ACTION A: FULFILL A CONTRACT p.12 #2 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
#5 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) IV. Harvest: Warehouse · Note: p.5 #8 0.030018 (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
#6 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 2: ASSIGN WORKERS · 0 Move back on an Arabica track p.10 #23 0.012346 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER p.10 #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)) vector + the doc-priority boost arm the re-ranker chose it
#8 RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) COOPERATIVES · I. Work · II. Assign Workers · III. Trade & Build p.5 #13 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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 1: WORK PHASE p.8 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 2: ASSIGN WORKERS · 0 Move back on an Arabica track p.10 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER p.10 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 88 ms · first delta 2391 ms · total 7669 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 3451 ms · retrieval 88 ms · ask 4127 ms · gateway work 4218 ms · total 7669 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3026
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
347
tok/sec
199.7 tok/sec — 347 output tokens in 1.738 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 29s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage)
reachable (for 22h, checked 8s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 935), 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.