You asked
How do I setup the game for 4 players
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Coffee Tradersbg-325022-en-1e
Answered before
This question didn't get an answer just now — but Coffee Traders has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.
I looked through Coffee Traders's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
SET UP ANDRÉ'S BOARD USING THE COMPONENTS OF A THIRD PLAYER COLOR AS FOLLOWS: Stack 8 plantations (2 level-1, 4 level-2, 2 level-3 plantations) on their respective spaces to the right of Phase 1 . Place all 3 fair trade posts on the bottom spaces of Phase 3 . Place 3 traders on their spaces to the r
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
: Take 1 Animal counter of each type (except Wild), and give each player a random one of them. Return the rest to the box. COMPANY MARKERS: Place 3 black Action markers here. In a 4-player game : Add 1 player-color Action marker; at other player counts, you do not use the Action marker of your color
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
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. If the counter is a duplicate (you have received an identical counter), set it to the right of your player board. If you now have accumulated two co
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live,vps
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 227 ms · ask 2229 ms · total 2458 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 2458 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "SET UP ANDRÉ'S BOARD USING THE COMPONENTS OF A THIRD PLAYER COLOR AS FOLLOWS: Stack 8 plantations (2 level-1, 4 level-2, 2 level-3 plantations) on their respective spaces to the right of Phase 1 . Place all 3 fair trade posts on the bottom spaces of Phase 3 . Place 3 traders on their spaces to the r", "headingPath": "THE FOUR SUPPLIES · NOTES", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046898, "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}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": ": Take 1 Animal counter of each type (except Wild), and give each player a random one of them. Return the rest to the box. COMPANY MARKERS: Place 3 black Action markers here. In a 4-player game : Add 1 player-color Action marker; at other player counts, you do not use the Action marker of your color", "headingPath": "COOPERATIVES · I. Work · II. Assign Workers · III. Trade & Build", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "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": 8, "score": 0.03125, "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": 10, "score": 0.030303, "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": 7, "score": 0.029851, "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": 8, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "\u0007 \u0007 You must have at least one 1-row plantation for each 2/3-row plantation in this cooperative. \u0007 \u0007 Each 1-row plantation can support one 1/2-row plantation and one 2/3-row plantation. \u0007 \u0007 When you use a truck, the new plantation needs neither a 'supporting' plantation in the 1/2 row, nor a pair of", "headingPath": "Note: · COUNTER TRACK", "sharpsignalDocId": 1005}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- 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
-
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- ruling 6339 — matched by trigram similarity — measured similarity 0.6316
- ruling 5573 — matched by trigram similarity — measured similarity 0.6316
- debug row recorded
- Sep 13, 2026 02:46 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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | THE FOUR SUPPLIES · NOTES | p.6 | 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | IV. Harvest: Warehouse · Note: | p.5 | 0.046898 (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) | COOPERATIVES · I. Work · II. Assign Workers · III. Trade & Build | p.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)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | THE FIVE COOPERATIVES · SUMATRA · ARABICA TRACK · CONTRACT BONUS · PERIOD & PHASE · TURN ORDER · … | p.4 | 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 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | To apply these rules, perform the following steps: · Note: · To reiterate: | p.8 | 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 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER | p.10 | 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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | MILESTONES | p.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)) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | Note: · COUNTER TRACK | 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 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 at | document | heading | page | fused rank | fused RRF score | carried by | how it got its slot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | COOPERATIVES · I. Work · II. Assign Workers · III. Trade & Build | p.5 | #3 | 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 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | THE FIVE COOPERATIVES · SUMATRA · ARABICA TRACK · CONTRACT BONUS · PERIOD & PHASE · TURN ORDER · … | p.4 | #4 | 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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | PHASE 3: TRADE & BUILD · ACTION A: PLACE A TRADER | p.10 | #6 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | PHASE 6: REFRESH | p.13 | #10 | 0.014286 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | PHASE 1: WORK PHASE | p.8 | #25 | 0.011765 (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 Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | PHASE 4: HARVEST · PERFORM THE FOLLOWING STEPS: | p.12 | #11 | 0.014085 (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) | THE FOUR SUPPLIES · NOTES | p.6 | #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 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Coffee Traders — Rulebook (corpus doc 1005) | IV. Harvest: Warehouse · Note: | p.5 | #2 | 0.046898 (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
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.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 227 ms · first delta 2332 ms · total 2458 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 227 ms · ask 2229 ms · gateway work 2458 ms · total 2458 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 3118
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 180.0 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.050 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 6s ago)
- answerer host (measured by rulesage)
- reachable (for 24h, checked 9s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
BOILERPLATE, not reasoning: this is the answerer's fixed abstention phrase, the same sentence it emits whenever it declines. It records THAT the answerer declined and never why — no per-ruling reason was captured, because none was sent. Hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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 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.