Ruling — Gaia Project

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Gaia Projectbg-220308-en-1e

For your first game, follow these steps:

1. Choose a faction based on player count: 1 player (Hadsch Hallas or Taklons), 2 players (Hadsch Hallas or Xenos), 3 players (Terrans, Taklons, or Geodens), or 4 players (Terrans, Hadsch Hallas, Xenos, or Taklons).[1]

2. The first player chooses one of the available factions and takes the matching faction board, then players continue choosing factions in clockwise order.[1]

3. Place your faction board in front of you with the chosen faction faceup.[1]

4. Take all structures and Gaiaformers of your color, placing the structures on their corresponding spaces on your faction board and placing your three Gaiaformers near your faction board.[1]

5. Take one ore, one knowledge, and two credit markers and place them on the starting positions of your resource track, then return unused markers to the box.[1]

6. If playing as Terrans, take any Q.I.C. shown below your name from the supply and place them on your faction board.[1]

7. For each area of the power cycle on your faction board, take the number of power tokens shown from the supply and place them in that area.[1]

8. Determine a first player using a method of your choice; that player takes the first player marker.[2]

9. Assemble the game board by taking all 10 sector tiles and placing them as shown in the basic setup, ensuring tiles 05, 06, and 07 are solid-side up.[2] (Alternatively, use tiles 01 to 07 with 05, 06, and 07 outlined-side up, or use other methods described in the rules).[2][3]

10. Place the research board next to the game board.[2]

11. Randomly place nine standard tech tiles (with green marks on the back) faceup on different tech spaces of the research board, then stack the remaining standard tech tiles on the placed tiles of the same type to create nine piles of four.[2]

12. Randomly place one advanced tech tile faceup on each space between level 4 and 5 of the six research areas, then return unused advanced tech tiles to the box.[2]

13. Set aside the Gleens' federation token, then randomly take one federation token from the remaining supply and place it on level 5 of the 'Terraforming' research area.[2]

14. Sort and stack the remaining federation tokens by type and place the six piles next to the game board with their green sides faceup (except for 12 VP tokens, which have two gray sides).[2]

15. Place the scoring board next to the game board.[4]

16. Randomly place one round scoring tile faceup on each numbered tile space of the scoring board, then return unused tiles to the box.[4][5]

17. Randomly place one final scoring tile faceup on each tile space to the right of the green ranking tracks, then return unused tiles to the box.[4][5]

18. Randomly select as many round boosters as there are players plus three and place them next to the game board, then return unused boosters to the box.[4]

19. Place all action tokens, Gaia Planet tokens, the Lost Planet token, power tokens, Q.I.C., and record tokens near the game board as a general supply.[4]

20. Take six player tokens of your color and place one on level 0 of each research area on the research board.[1]

21. If your faction board shows level 1 of a research area, advance your token one level in that area and gain any specified one-time bonuses.[1]

22. Take your seventh player token of your color and place it on space 10 (10 VP) of the VP track as a VP marker.[6]

23. Take all satellites of your color, placing one on each '0' space on the scoring board and the rest near your faction board.[6]

24. Take one player aid and place it faceup near your faction board.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.6 · The First Game

[2] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens

[3] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.19 · 3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities

[4] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.5 · Scoring Board · Round Boosters and General Supply

[5] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.8 · GOAL AND GAMEPLAY

[6] RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook · p.6 · The First Game

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 236 ms · ask 6694 ms · total 6932 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6932 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "For your first game, play with the following game board setup and factions. For future games, also use the Advanced Setup on page 18, which features a variable game board and all factions. For a solo game, also see the Automa rulebook. With two or more players, return the Automa cards and Automa pla", "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "When you are familiar with the basic rules, you can play with a more variable game setup. Instead of choosing a faction from the list, the first player chooses any one of the seven faction boards, then chooses either of the factions on it and places the board on the table with that side faceup. Cont", "headingPath": "ADVANCED SETUP: BEYOND THE FIRST GAME · Choosing Your Faction · Placing Your First Structures · Variable Turn Order · Variable Game Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 19, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "Use all 10 space sector tiles and place sectors 05, 06, and 07 solid-side up . Method 1: Place space sector tiles 01 through 04 as described in the basic setup, then randomly place tiles 05 through 10 to create the same board shape as the basic setup. Rotate each tile as you choose. Method 2: Random", "headingPath": "3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045743, "snippet": "For your first game, choose one of the following factions: 1 player: Hadsch Hallas ( Human ), Taklons ( Automa ) 2 players: Hadsch Hallas, Xenos The first player chooses one of the above factions and takes the matching faction board . Continuing in clockwise order, each other player chooses one of t", "headingPath": "The First Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045476, "snippet": "At the end of the game, the player with the most VP wins. You will gain VP during the game as well as at the end of the game. Track your VP using your marker on the VP track. The various ways to gain VP are detailed below. By uniting planets to form federations during the game, you gain federation t", "headingPath": "GOAL AND GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045455, "snippet": "token from the supply and place it on your faction board. To gain a Gaiaformer, take one of your set-aside Gaiaformers and place it on your faction board. Note: The level 1 bonuses of the 'Economy' and 'Science' research areas are income bonuses and are not gained during setup. The Terrans' faction ", "headingPath": "The First Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "For your first game, place your mines as shown below. Always take your mines from left to right on your faction board. By placing your first structures, you colonize your first planets, and you reveal spaces on your faction board. This is important for your income, which is explained on page 10. Sta", "headingPath": "The First Game · Choosing Your First Round Booster · Neutral Player (1-2 Players) · Return Player Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "You can build a mine on a planet, thereby colonizing that planet. To build a mine, you must spend two credits and one ore (this cost is shown to the left of the mines on your faction board). You must have at least one mine on your faction board in order to build a mine. You can build a mine only on ", "headingPath": "1) Build a Mine", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The First Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scoring Board · Round Boosters and General Supply", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GOAL AND GAMEPLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The First Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 252}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 252 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 252 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 0.90657 of 2954 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 12, 2026 03:45 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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	ADVANCED SETUP: BEYOND THE FIRST GAME · Choosing Your Faction · Placing Your First Structures · Variable Turn Order · Variable Game Board	p.19	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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities	p.19	0.047131 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	0.045743 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GOAL AND GAMEPLAY	p.8	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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	0.045455 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game · Choosing Your First Round Booster · Neutral Player (1-2 Players) · Return Player Components	p.7	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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	1) Build a Mine	p.11	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 42 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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens	p.4	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities	p.19	#3	0.047131 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	#6	0.045455 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	THE POWER CYCLE · Charging Power · Spending Power · Gaining and Discarding Power	p.9	#9	0.02879 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	Scoring Board · Round Boosters and General Supply	p.5	#12	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
#6	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GOAL AND GAMEPLAY	p.8	#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
#7	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	#4	0.045743 (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 Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	ADVANCED SETUP: BEYOND THE FIRST GAME · Choosing Your Faction · Placing Your First Structures · Variable Turn Order · Variable Game Board	p.19	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GAME SETUP · Setup for 3 and 4 players · Setup for 1 and 2 players · Research Board and Federation Tokens	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	3 or 4 Players · 1 or 2 Players · Even More Possibilities	p.19	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	Scoring Board · Round Boosters and General Supply	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	GOAL AND GAMEPLAY	p.8	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Gaia Project — Rulebook (corpus doc 252)	The First Game	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 236 ms · first delta 2280 ms · total 6932 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 236 ms · ask 6694 ms · gateway work 6932 ms · total 6932 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3414
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 916
tok/sec: 201.5 tok/sec — 916 output tokens in 4.545 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 7s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 178), 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.