Ruling — The City of Kings

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The City of Kingsbg-207243-en-1e

The City of Kings is a fully cooperative game where players take the role of leaders working together to defeat the armies of Vesh.[1] Players explore realms, search for resources to trade for equipment, help survivors, and customize characters.[1]

Game Structure and Rounds

The game is played in rounds.[2] At the start of each round, players first attempt to resolve their current story, then move the Time Tracker.[2] Each player takes their turn in clockwise order, starting with the same player.[2] Once all players have completed their actions, the round ends and the next begins.[2]

Player Turn Sequence

Each player performs the following three steps before play passes to the next person:[3]

1. Resolve impairments: If a player starts their turn on a Map tile or Character Sheet with fire or poison tokens, they must resolve these effects before continuing.[3]

2. Activate creatures: All creatures next to a player's Character Sheet activate in order, starting with the newest and ending with the oldest.[3]

3. Perform actions:

* At the start of this phase, the player must remove all previously spent Action tokens from their Character Sheet.[3]

* The player may spend up to 4 Action tokens in any way they choose, using them for hero actions, worker actions, or a combination of both.[3]

* Hero actions include Move, Explore, Attack/Heal, perform Specials, or Interact.[3]

* Worker actions include Move, Explore, or Work.[3]

* Tokens are spent one at a time, and the player performs each action as they go.[3]

Time Tracker and Round Transitions

After players have taken their turns, the following occurs:[2]

1. Move the Time Tracker to the next phase of the day.[2]

2. Update tokens based on the new time of day icon (fire, poison, or frost): Weak tokens are removed, and strong tokens are turned to their weak side.[2]

3. If it is midnight:

* Move the Hope Tracker down 1 space.[2]

* Remove 1 Attention token from every Map tile that has at least 1 on it.[2]

Winning and Losing

* To win: Players must complete the objectives of each chapter in their chosen story.[1] If there are no more chapters, the players win.[2]

* To lose: The game ends in a loss if the city runs out of Hope or if the heroes run out of Morale.[1][2]

[1] RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook · p.2 · The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us

[2] RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook · p.10 · C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns

[3] RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook · p.11 · 3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 168 ms · ask 4951 ms · total 28125 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 23005 ms · generation 5120 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The rules for learning The City of Kings are split between two booklets, the Rulebook and the Quick Reference Booklet. You only need to read the Rulebook before you start playing your first game. Each time you play The City of Kings you will encounter new Quests, Tokens, Map Tiles and Creature abili", "headingPath": "Other Bits · Quick reference · Stories · Watch a video · Need help?", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "In The City of Kings, each player takes the role of a great leader and must co-operate with the other leaders to defeat the armies of Vesh. Players will explore the realms, searching for resources to trade for equipment while preparing for battle. They will help survivors and customise their charact", "headingPath": "The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "Player turns consist of resolving impairments, activating creatures, and performing actions. Each player will perform all 3 steps before play passes to the next person, clockwise. Impairments are created by creatures with abilities trying to disrupt your plans by placing fire and poison tokens on Ma", "headingPath": "3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045688, "snippet": "The first time you play, you will need to attach the stands to the Character Tokens and Creature War Banners. You will also need to attach the spinner to the Time Tracker. We recommend playing the Desecrated scenario first, followed by the stories in order, starting with Story 1. Every story and sce", "headingPath": "First time setup · 1 Choose a story or scenario · 2 Prepare the board · 3 Supply areas · Dice · Resources · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "The City of Kings is played in rounds. At the start of each round, you will first attempt to resolve your current story. Second, move the Time Tracker. Third, each player will take their turn in order, clockwise, always starting with the same player. On a player's turn, they will check for impairmen", "headingPath": "C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045335, "snippet": "3 The game 2 To win 2 To lose 2 Where to find us 2 Table of contents 3 Components 4 Learning the game 5 Quick reference 5 Need help? 5 Stories 5 Watch a video 5 Setup 6 Creature abilities 8 The 5 types of abilities 8 Creature set up 9 1 War Banner 9 2 Creature Template 9 3 Set health 9 4 Generate ab", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "The Move action allows you to move your hero from one tile to another. You can Move as many tiles as you like up to your move stat. change direction during a move action. move from an explored tile to an explored tile. move from an explored tile to an unexplored tile. move from an unexplored tile to", "headingPath": "Move · You can · You can't · Special · Explore · Interact · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "During your adventure, some creatures will move, others will summon minions, and a few will panic you into running away. Position cards are used to determine the movement and summoning locations for these abilities. The central X represents the target's current location, and the final position is re", "headingPath": "Position cards · Equipment cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1238}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1238 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1238 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 0.90618 of 1876 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:10 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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Other Bits · Quick reference · Stories · Watch a video · Need help?	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us	p.2	0.048387 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions	p.11	0.045921 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	First time setup · 1 Choose a story or scenario · 2 Prepare the board · 3 Supply areas · Dice · Resources · …	p.6	0.045688 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns	p.10	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
#6	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)		p.3	0.045335 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Move · You can · You can't · Special · Explore · Interact · …	p.14	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
#8	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Position cards · Equipment cards	p.25	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 34 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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	First time setup · 1 Choose a story or scenario · 2 Prepare the board · 3 Supply areas · Dice · Resources · …	p.6	#4	0.045688 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us	p.2	#2	0.048387 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Set up cards · 1 Trackers · Chapter set up	p.26	#13	0.026786 (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
#4	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Tokens · 5 Creature supply · 6 Choose a character · 7 Set up your Character Sheet	p.7	#19	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
#5	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Bosses · The Scorched · Game difficulty · 2-player · Frank West Ian O'Reilly	p.27	#12	0.026984 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	Other Bits · Quick reference · Stories · Watch a video · Need help?	p.5	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions	p.11	#3	0.045921 (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 The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns	p.10	#5	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	The game · To win · To lose · Where to find us	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	C Ability draw · First round · Second round and onwards · 2 Move time tracker · 3 Player turns	p.10	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The City of Kings — Rulebook (corpus doc 1238)	3 Player turns · 1 Resolve impairments · 2 Activate creatures · 3 Hero and worker actions	p.11	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 168 ms · first delta 2331 ms · total 28125 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 23005 ms · retrieval 168 ms · ask 4951 ms · gateway work 5120 ms · total 28125 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3617
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 543
tok/sec: 198.6 tok/sec — 543 output tokens in 2.734 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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.

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 1168), 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.