You asked
How do I setup the game?
Answered counted as answeredFor the standard game (2-5 players), follow these steps: 1. Place the game board centrally on the table [1]. 2. Place the 9 ocean tiles on their reserved space [1]. 3. Place the temperature and oxygen markers on their starting positions [1]. 4. Place the generation marker on '1' on the TR track [1]. 5. Place resource cubes and remaining tiles so everyone can reach them [1]. 6. Ensure there are no Corporate Era cards in the project deck or among the corporation cards (these are marked with a red and white icon) [1]. 7. Shuffle the project cards and place the project deck next to the board, leaving space for a discard pile [1]. 8. Give the first player marker to the player who most recently won a game of Terraforming Mars [1]. 9. Players choose colors and take corresponding player markers and a player board [1]. 10. In the standard game, players place markers on the tracks to show 1 production of each resource [1]. 11. Each player places one marker at the starting position (2/20) of the TR track [1]. 12. New players receive a Beginner Corporation card, follow its instructions to get 42 MegaCredits and draw 10 project cards, then examine their cards [1]. 13. Experienced players shuffle the 10 standard corporation cards (excluding Corporate Era corporations) and deal 2 to each remaining player [1]. 14. Deal 10 project cards to each remaining player [1]. 15. Players choose which corporations they want to play and which of the 10 project cards they want to keep for their starting hand, paying 3 M€ for each card kept [1]. 16. Discard unused cards (discarded corporations go back in the box; project cards are discarded face down) [1], [2]. 17. In player order, players reveal their chosen corporation and get their starting resources/production [1], [2].
Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ANSWERED — Answered
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 231 ms · ask 9829 ms · total 10071 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 10071 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "This describes the setup for the standard game for 2-5 players. See additional rules for other game variants on page 13. resources and production (if any), and then pay 3 M€ for each project card they keep. Be aware that your resources for the following few generations will be quite limited until yo", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The cards not kept are discarded (put discarded corporations back in the box) cards are always discarded face down! In player order, players then reveal their chosen corporation, get their starting Start the game: The first generation starts without a player order phase and without a research phase ", "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.028783, "snippet": "If more interaction is desired, the Draft variant may be used. During the Research phase the players draft 4 cards to buy from instead of just drawing 4 to buy from: Each player first gets 4 cards and chooses one to draft, putting it aside and passing the rest to the next player. Then you have 3 car", "headingPath": "Draft variant:", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.027921, "snippet": "To play the extended game, simply add all cards marked with a red and white icon ( )on the cards' lower left border at the start of setup, including 2 new corporations. Players start with no extra production of resources (see Setup - Players on page 7). Corporate Era can be combined with any of the ", "headingPath": "Corporate Era (extended game):", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with a corporation card . During the game, players buy and play many project cards to get benefits of different kinds. The cards are divided into active cards (blue frame, see example), automated cards (green) and event cards (red), read more on page 10. Tag: Places the c", "headingPath": "CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "In order to play a card you must meet its requirements and be able to perform the effects stated on the card, with the following exceptions: You may play a card that... raises global parameters that have already reached their goal (for example when there are no more ocean tiles, or when the temperat", "headingPath": "1) Check the requirements.", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "The game board has a map where tiles may be placed. When placing a tile, you must first check to see if there are any placement restrictions. There are areas reserved for ocean and specific cities, where no other tiles may be placed. Furthermore, each tile may have specific restrictions printed on t", "headingPath": "TI L E S", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "The first player marker shifts 1 step clockwise and the generation marker is moved up 1 step. This phase is skipped the first generation (see setup).", "headingPath": "1) Player Order phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
- 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)
- debug row retained until
- Oct 31, 2026 01:42
retrieval — what the search arm returned
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.032787 (at the 2-arm ceiling (0.03279) — the top of a 2-arm fuse; whether more arms ran here was never recorded) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.032258 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Draft variant: | p.13 | 0.028783 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Corporate Era (extended game): | p.13 | 0.027921 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | CARDS | p.6 | 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 1) Check the requirements. | p.9 | 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | TI L E S | p.5 | 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 1) Player Order phase | p.8 | 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) | 149 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 231 ms · first delta n/a · total 10071 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 231 ms · ask 9829 ms · gateway work 10071 ms · total 10071 ms
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s ago)
- stream path
- not recorded — this ruling predates the stream-path column (V41)
- 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
- SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
- 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 8), 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.