Ruling — Council of 4

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Council of 4bg-173101-en-1e

The game is played in turns, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise.[1] Each turn consists of two phases:

1. Phase 1: Draw a Politics Card from the card deck and add it to your hand; if the deck finishes, reshuffle the discarded cards to form a new deck.[1]

2. Phase 2: Perform one Main Action and, if you wish, one Quick Action, choosing the order in which to perform them.[1]

Main Actions

A player must choose one of the following four main actions:[1]

* Action 1: Elect a Councilor: Choose one available Councilor Miniature from the side of the board.[1] In a Council Line of your choice, insert the Councilor to the side closest to the printed arrow, pushing existing Councilors in that line until the last one is out of the line.[1] Remove the excluded Councilor and place them with the other Councilors side of the board.[1] Receive 4 Coins by moving your marker on the Coin Track.[1]

* Action 2: Acquire a Business Permit Tile: Choose and satisfy the council of a region by discarding 1-4 Politics Cards corresponding to the Councilors present in that Balcony (the multi-coloured Joker card can be any colour).[2] Pay Coins by moving your marker on the Coin Track based on the number of Councilors satisfied: 1 card played costs 10 coins, 2 cards cost 7 coins, 3 cards cost 4 coins, and 4 cards cost 0 coins; additionally, pay 1 extra coin for each multi-coloured card played.[2] Choose one of the two faceup Business Permit Tiles across the board from the Council Line you satisfied, take it, and place it face up in front of you.[2] Immediately obtain the bonuses indicated at the tile, then replace the tile with the top tile from the corresponding deck.[2]

* Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile: Choose one of the faceup Business Permit Tiles in front of you.[2] Place one of your small Merchant miniatures on the corresponding space in the city indicated on the tile (if the tile indicates multiple cities, you may choose which one).[2] Turn the used tile facedown to indicate it can no longer be used to send another Merchant.[2]

* Action 4: Place a Merchant with the Help of the Queen.[1]

Quick Actions

Quick Actions are not obligatory and can be performed before or after the main action.[3] A player may choose one of these four quick actions:[3]

* Action 1: Engage a Servant: Pay 3 Coins and take 1 Servant from the pool, provided you are able to move back 3 spaces on the Coin Track.[3]

* Action 2: Change building permit tiles: Return 1 Servant to the pool, then return the two faceup Business Permit Tiles in a region to the bottom of their corresponding deck and draw two new tiles from the top of the deck.[3]

* Action 3: Send a Servant to elect a councilor: Return 1 Servant to the pool, then take a Councilor and insert it in a Line exactly as with the Main Action "Elect a Councilor".[3] This action does not earn any Coins.[3]

* Action 4: Perform an additional main action: Return 3 Servants to the pool to perform two Main Actions instead of one this turn (you may perform the same action twice).[3]

End of the Game

The game ends when the first player to place their 10th Merchant immediately earns 3 Victory Points (VPs).[4] All other players take one last turn, then the game ends.[4]

Scoring

* Each player earns the VPs marked on their Reward Tiles.[4]

* The player furthest ahead on the Nobility Track earns 5 VPs, while the player in second place earns 2 VPs (if there is a tie for first, all tied players earn 5 VPs and no second place is awarded; if there is a tie for second, all tied players earn 2 VPs).[4]

* The player with the most Business Permit Tiles receives 3 VPs.[4]

* The player with the most VPs is the winner; in the event of a tie, the player with the most Servants and Politics cards wins.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook · p.6 · Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor

[2] RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook · p.7 · Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile

[3] RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook · p.10 · Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action

[4] RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook · p.12 · END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME

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 6055 ms · total 27113 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 20967 ms · generation 6146 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "The game is played in turns, starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise. Your turn is composed of two phases, performed as follows: Phase 1: Draw a Card 'Coins are always useful, but often influence is a more valuable currency. Gather political favors as you carefully watch for the righ", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "Main Action 2: Acquire a Business Permit Tile 'Expanding your mercantile empire can be quite expensive if you don't have enough political favors to cash in.' Choose and satisfy the council of a region by discarding 1-4 Politics Cards corresponding to the Councilors present in that Balcony. The Joker", "headingPath": "Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "Place the Main Board and the Track Board, side by side, in the centre of the table . The map is double-sided - you may choose either side when starting to play. NOTE: Each region contains 5 cities with their names in alphabetical order: from A-E on the coast, from F-H in the hills, and from K-O in t", "headingPath": "1. Game Boards · 2. City Tokens · 3. Business Permit Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Quick Actions are not obligatory and can be performed before or after the main action. The player may choose one of these four quick actions: Action 1: Engage a Servant Action 2: Change building permit tiles Action 3: Send a Servant to elect a councilor Action 4: Perform an additional main action 'G", "headingPath": "Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "'Business requires speed as much as it requires planning. Spend and do what you must to move your merchants into the cities of the Empire as efficiently as you can, and reap the rich rewards from the Three Kingdoms and the Queen.' The first player to place their 10th Merchant immediately earn 3 Vict", "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "8 'The Queen is amenable to donations to the royal coffers and is willing to reward Her financial supporters.' You must satisfy the Queen's Council Balcony following the same rules of 'Acquire a Business Permit Tile.' Move the Queen to the city of your choice. The Queen must use uninterrupted roads ", "headingPath": "Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile · Main Action 4: Place a Merchant with the Help of the Queen · Rules for Placing a Merchant · General and Queen's Reward Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "'While a strong mercantile empire provides money and influence, nobility has privileges all its own. A noble reputation is a great boon to any merchant aspiring to great renown.' There are two ways to move forward on this track: As an instant bonus from an acquired Business Permit Tile OR by gaining", "headingPath": "The Nobility Track", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "It is a time of wealth and prosperity for the three great Kingdoms of the Empire, and you - rich merchants seeking to expand your business interests - want some of that prosperity. Each Kingdom is governed by a ruling council of four nobles from the six powerful families of the Empire. Help certain ", "headingPath": "INTRODUCTION", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 1292}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1292 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1292 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 0.91135 of 3136 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:13 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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor	p.6	0.048916 (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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile	p.7	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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	1. Game Boards · 2. City Tokens · 3. Business Permit Tiles	p.4	0.047123 (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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action	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
#5	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME	p.12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile · Main Action 4: Place a Merchant with the Help of the Queen · Rules for Placing a Merchant · General and Queen's Reward Tiles	p.8	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
#7	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	The Nobility Track	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
#8	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	INTRODUCTION	p.2	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 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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor	p.6	#1	0.048916 (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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME	p.12	#5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action	p.10	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	INTRODUCTION	p.2	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	The Nobility Track	p.11	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	4. The Queen · Council of 4 · 6. Bonus Tiles · 7. Council Line · 8. Politics Cards · 9. Servants · …	p.5	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile	p.7	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	1. Game Boards · 2. City Tokens · 3. Business Permit Tiles	p.4	#3	0.047123 (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 Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Playing the Game · MAIN ACTIONS · Main Action 1: Elect a Councilor	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Council of 4 · Main Action 3: Place a Merchant Using a Permit Tile	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	Quick Action 1: Engage a Servant · Quick Action 2: Change Building Permit Tiles · Quick Action 3: Send a Servant to Elect a Councilor · Quick Action 4: Perform an Additional Main Action	p.10	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Council of 4 — Rulebook (corpus doc 1292)	END OF THE GAME · Credits · SETTING UP A TWO-PLAYER GAME	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 1331 ms · total 27113 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 20967 ms · retrieval 90 ms · ask 6055 ms · gateway work 6146 ms · total 27113 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3114
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 947
tok/sec: 201.2 tok/sec — 947 output tokens in 4.707 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 14s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 5s 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 1222), 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.