RuleSage cited table rulings
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You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Splendorbg-148228-en-1e · Splendor: Cities of Splendorbg-220653-en-1e

Based on the provided sources, the setup depends on the specific game version or expansion being played:
For the Base Game (4-Player):
1. Shuffle each Development card deck separately, then place them facedown in a column in the middle of the table in increasing order from bottom to top.[1]
2. Reveal 4 cards from each level deck, placing them in a row to the right of their respective decks.[1]
3. Shuffle the Noble tiles and reveal 5, lining them in a row above the cards; return the remaining Noble tiles to the box.[1]
4. Sort the pieces by color and place them within reach of all players to form the supply, creating 6 distinct stacks.[1]
5. The youngest player takes the First Player marker.[1]
For the "Route to the Orient" Expansion:
1. Place the board within players’ easy reach.[2]
2. Each player takes 5 identical coats of arms.[2]
3. Shuffle the 10 new level 1 cards, reveal 2 of them, and place them to the right of the base game cards, then place the 8 remaining Orient cards in a deck to the right.[2][3]
4. Proceed likewise with level 2 and level 3 Orient cards on their respective rows.[2][3]
For the Cities expansion:
1. Shuffle the city tiles and always place 3 of them on either of their sides randomly.[4]
2. Remove the unused tiles from the game.[4]
For the Strongholds expansion:
1. Each player takes 3 strongholds of the same color and places them in front of them.[5][4]
[1] RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook · p.2 · 4-Player game
[2] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook · p.2
[3] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook · p.2 · Lhe Orient
[4] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook · p.1
[5] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook · p.1 · ® Setup · & Power of the s

Now you know — make it count.

🔧 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 273 ms · ask 5884 ms · total 6162 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 6162 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "1 Shuffle each Development card deck separately, then place them facedown in a column in the middle of the table in increasing order from bottom to top ( ; ; ). 2 Reveal 4 cards from each level deck, placing them in a row to the right of their respective decks. 3 Shuffle the Noble tiles and reveal 5", "headingPath": "4-Player game", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.032266, "snippet": "Cities Instead, shuffle the city tiles and always place 3 of them on either of their sides randomly (whatever the number of players). The other tiles will not be used and are removed from the game. At the end of your turn, automatically take a city tile if you * 7 double-sidedcity tiles meet its req", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 891}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031514, "snippet": "To reserve a card, you simply take a faceup Development card from the middle of the table or (if you're feeling lucky) draw the top card from one of the three decks without showing it to the other players. Then, take 1 Gold piece. If no Gold pieces remain in the supply, you may still reserve a card.", "headingPath": "· Reserve 1 Development card and take 1 Gold piece", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.031025, "snippet": "You may purchase 1 of the faceup Development cards in the middle of the table OR 1 of your reserved cards. To purchase a card, you must spend the number of pieces indicated on the card. The spent pieces (including any Gold pieces) are returned to the supply. Gold pieces are wild and can be used in p", "headingPath": "· Purchase 1 Development card", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.03055, "snippet": "Contents on back of rules", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.03009, "snippet": "Play for free with the players around the world using the BOARD GAME ARENA platform. Join our community and get EXCLUSIVE REWARDS . TO LEARN HOW TO PLAY scan this QR Code. gift.unboxnow.com/splendor", "headingPath": "DISCOVER THE BEST OF BOARD GAMING", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029644, "snippet": "D uring the game, you can also obtain Noble tiles. At the end of your turn, check if you meet the swaying requirement for acquiring a Noble. To do so, you must have the number and color of bonuses indicated on the tile. If so, take the Noble tile and place it in your play area, where it will remain ", "headingPath": "NOBLE TILES", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.02901, "snippet": "Each time a card from the middle of the table is reserved or purchased, draw the top card from the corresponding deck to replace it. There must always be 4 face-up cards of each level in the middle of the table, unless the deck becomes depleted; in this case, continue the game with fewer than 4 card", "headingPath": "Replace cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4-Player game", "sharpsignalDocId": 99}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 891}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Lhe Orient", "sharpsignalDocId": 891}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 891}, {"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "® Setup · & Power of the s", "sharpsignalDocId": 891}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 99 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 99 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 0.88755 of 1165 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 17, 2026 19:03 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) 4-Player game p.2 0.032787 (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 Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) p.1 0.032266 (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 Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) · Reserve 1 Development card and take 1 Gold piece p.2 0.031514 (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 Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) · Purchase 1 Development card p.2 0.031025 (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 Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) SETUP p.2 0.03055 (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)) 25
#6 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) DISCOVER THE BEST OF BOARD GAMING p.1 0.03009 (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)) 198
#7 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) NOBLE TILES p.2 0.029644 (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 Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) Replace cards p.2 0.02901 (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 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 31 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 — 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) SETUP p.2 #5 0.03055 (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 Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) p.2 #11 0.015625 (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
#3 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) Replace cards p.2 #8 0.02901 (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 Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) Lhe Orient p.2 #13 0.013699 (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 Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) ® Setup · & Power of the s p.1 #10 0.016129 (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 re-ranker chose it
#6 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) NOBLE TILES p.2 #7 0.029644 (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 Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) p.1 #2 0.032266 (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
#8 RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) 4-Player game p.2 #1 0.032787 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 99) 4-Player game p.2 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) p.2 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) Lhe Orient p.2 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) p.1 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Splendor: Cities of Splendor — Rulebook (corpus doc 891) ® Setup · & Power of the s p.1 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 273 ms · first delta 2511 ms · total 6162 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 273 ms · ask 5884 ms · gateway work 6162 ms · total 6162 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
1934
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
364
tok/sec
102.4 tok/sec — 364 output tokens in 3.554 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 22h, checked 4s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
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

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 30), 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.