Ruling — Foundations of Metropolis

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Foundations of Metropolisbg-412865-en-1e

To play Foundations of Metropolis, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Place the City Board, Deed Board, and Score Board near each other.[1]

2. For 3 or 4 player games, use the front side of the City Board with more Lots; for 2 player games, use the back side with fewer Lots.[1]

3. Place Building Tiles and Lot Markers on the corresponding spaces on the Player Boards.[1]

4. Each player chooses a color and takes the corresponding Player Board, 8 Lot Markers, and 2 Score Cubes.[1]

5. Place 2 Cubes on the designated spaces of the Score Board matching the player color (one on the Prestige Tracker and one on the Population Tracker).[1]

6. Decide who the first player is and give them the First Player Token.[1]

7. The starting player takes 5 Coins; proceeding clockwise, each subsequent player receives 1 more Coin than the previous player (e.g., in a 4-player game, players receive 5, 6, 7, and 8 Coins respectively).[1]

8. Place the remaining Coins in a common supply.[1]

9. For 4 players, use the entire 9x9 City Board (81 Lots).[2]

10. For 3 players, use an 8x8 layout (64 Lots) and remove all Deed Cards.[2]

11. For 2 players, use a 7x7 layout (49 Lots) and remove all Deed Cards.[2]

12. Shuffle the remaining Deed Cards and deal six to each player.[2]

13. Place Lot Markers of your color on each City Board Lot that corresponds to the Deed cards you were dealt.[2]

14. Split the remaining Deed Cards into three approximately equal piles and place one pile each on the Year 1, Year 2, and Year 3 spaces on the Deed Board.[2]

15. Using the Year 1 pile, turn over six Deed Cards and place them faceup in the "Deeds for Sale" area of the Deed Board.[2]

Gameplay

1. The game is played over three Years, with each Year consisting of multiple rounds of player turns.[3]

2. Players take turns clockwise, starting with the first player.[3]

3. On your turn, you must choose one of the following actions:[3]

* Take Income: Gain 5 Coins from the supply, plus Coins equal to the value of the Commercial Buildings you have constructed on the City Board.[3]

* Petition the City Council: Gain 5 Coins from the supply, plus Coins equal to the value of the Commercial Buildings you have constructed on the City Board.[3]

* Construct a Building: You can only construct Buildings on Lots you own.[4] To construct, you must choose a building from your Player Board and place it on the City Board where you have adjacent Lots matching the building's shape.[4] You may "build over" an existing building if the new building is larger than the one being replaced.[4] When constructing or removing a Residential Building, players must update the Population Tracker.[4] There is no cost to construct, as the City Council supplies materials and labor.[4]

* Purchase Deeds: Players compete to purchase deeds to empty lots.[5]

4. A Year continues until the stack of Deed Cards for that Year (including those on the Deed Board) runs out.[3]

5. When the Deed Board is empty for the round, each player takes one final turn to collect income or build.[6]

Scoring and Ending the Game

1. Players earn Prestige at the end of each Year and record it on the Score Board.[3]

2. At the end of a Year, players score Prestige from Residential, Commercial, and Civic Buildings they have constructed.[6]

3. During the final Year's scoring, players also score 1 Prestige for each Lot Marker they have on the City Board (marking an empty Lot they own).[7]

4. The game ends after the third Year's scoring is complete.[3]

5. The player with the most Prestige is the winner and is appointed Grand Architect; in the event of a tie, the player with the most leftover Coins wins.[7]

[1] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME SETUP

[2] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.5 · Player Count and Deed Cards

[3] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.6 · PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!

[4] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.8 · ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!

[5] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.2

[6] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.9 · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING

[7] RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook · p.13 · The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING

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 221 ms · ask 6211 ms · total 6434 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6434 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "On your turn, you must choose one of these actions. After you complete your action, your turn is over and the player to your left begins their turn. You may petition the City Council for more resources. Doing so will gain you 5 Coins from the supply . In addition, you will receive Coins equal to the", "headingPath": "PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "When playing with 4 players, you will play on the entire 9x9 City Board using 81 Lots (Columns A - I and Rows 1 - 9) . When playing with fewer players, you will use less of the City Board and not use certain rows or columns of Lots. Depending on the number of players, you will need to remove some of", "headingPath": "Player Count and Deed Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046432, "snippet": "1 GAME OVERVIEW Over three rounds of play, you will compete to be the greatest architect in your city by purchasing the deeds to empty lots and constructing your new buildings on them. More complex buildings require more lots, but will bring you even greater glory (in the form of Prestige). The play", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "! Players can build new buildings on top of buildings they have already placed on the City Board. Remove the Building being replaced and return it to your Player Board, along with any of the Lot Markers. You may reuse those pieces. When constructing over one of your own Buildings, any Lots you own r", "headingPath": "HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Lay out the Boards Place the City Board, Deed Board, and Score Board near each other. For 3 or 4 player games, use the Front side of the City Board with more Lots. For 2 player games, use the Back side of the City Board with fewer Lots. Board. Player Boards contain Building Tiles and 8 Lot Markers P", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During the final Year's scoring, players gain Prestige as normal through end of round scoring, with two exceptions: Players score 1 Prestige for each Lot Marker they have on the City Board (marking an empty Lot they own) . The player who has the most Prestige is appointed Grand Architect! In the eve", "headingPath": "The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each player takes Coins from the supply equal to the total value of Coin icons across the Commercial Buildings they have constructed in the City (just like the Take Income action, but without gaining the extra 5 Coins) . Additionally, players gain a flat amount of Prestige for some of their Commerci", "headingPath": "COMMERCIAL BUILDING SCORING · END OF THE CURRENT YEAR · REPLENISH DEEDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "You can only construct Buildings on Lots that you own. Each player has their own supply of 24 Buildings. Buildings come in different shapes and sizes. To construct a Building, the player must first own a set of adjacent Lots that match the shape of the Building. To construct a Building, choose the o", "headingPath": "ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Player Count and Deed Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING", "sharpsignalDocId": 1180}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1180 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1180 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 0.89400 of 3019 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:07 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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.6	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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	Player Count and Deed Cards	p.5	0.048139 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)		p.2	0.046432 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING	p.9	0.045476 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	GAME SETUP	p.4	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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING	p.13	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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	COMMERCIAL BUILDING SCORING · END OF THE CURRENT YEAR · REPLENISH DEEDS	p.12	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
#8	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.8	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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	Player Count and Deed Cards	p.5	#2	0.048139 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.6	#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
#3	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.8	#8	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
#4	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)		p.2	#3	0.046432 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	CIVIC BUILDING SCORING · EXAMPLE	p.11	#14	0.013514 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING	p.13	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING	p.9	#4	0.045476 (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 Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	GAME SETUP	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	GAME SETUP	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	Player Count and Deed Cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	PLAYER TURNS: ACTIONS · ACTION: TAKE INCOME · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	ACTION: CONSTRUCT A BUILDING · Constructing Residential Buildings · EXAMPLE · IMPORTANT! · HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP!	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	HERE'S A HELPFUL TIP! · Constructing over buildings · IMPORTANT! · EXAMPLE · END OF AN YEAR: SCORING	p.9	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Foundations of Metropolis — Rulebook (corpus doc 1180)	The game ends after the third Year. · Empty Lots: · DEED DRAFTING	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 221 ms · first delta 1721 ms · total 6434 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 221 ms · ask 6211 ms · gateway work 6434 ms · total 6434 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2778
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 926
tok/sec: 199.4 tok/sec — 926 output tokens in 4.643 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 1s 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 1110), 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.