Ruling — Agricola (Revised Edition)

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered

To set up the game, follow these steps: 1. Place the stack of clay/stone room tiles next to the game board [1]. 2. Divide the stack of wood room tiles in two, placing one half with the wood rooms facing up and the other with the field tiles facing up [1]. 3. Place the game board in the middle of the play area [1]. 4. Depending on the number of players, take the appropriate game board extension and attach it to the game board with the proper side facing up [1]. 5. Place the red ('major') improvements on the designated spaces of the supply board [1]. 6. Randomly determine who gets the starting player token [1]. 7. Give the starting player 2 food and each other player 3 food [1]. 8. Shuffle the orange improvements and deal each player a hand of seven cards [1]. 9. Remove any cards that are not to be used according to your number of players and put them back into the game box [1]. 10. Shuffle the remaining cards and deal each player a hand of seven cards [1]. 11. Shuffle the 14 action space cards and sort them by the numbers on their back sides into 6 stacks, placing them on top of each other in descending order from bottom to top (so stage 1 cards are on top) [1]. 12. Place all animals (sheep, wild boar, cattle), building resources (wood, clay, reed, stone), crops (grain, vegetables), and food markers ready at hand as the general supply [1]. 13. Place the goods tiles with begging markers on their backs somewhere on the side of the table [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook · p.3 · Room and Field Tiles · Game Board with Action Spaces · Major Improvements · Minor Improvements · Occupations · Action Space Cards · …

🔧 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 219 ms · ask 6880 ms · total 7112 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7112 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 12, "score": 0.016393, "snippet": "As the solo player, you start the game with 0 food. You play one turn after another, according to the 2-player game rules with the following exceptions: your adult people require 3 food in the feeding phases (newborns still only require 1 food). Only 2 wood instead of 3 are placed on the 'Forest' ac", "headingPath": "Solo Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "The starting player does not change automatically from round to round. To become the starting player, you must use the 'Meeting Place' action space. (If no player uses it, the starting player token remains with its current holder.) The game ends at the end of the 14th round, after the final harvest.", "headingPath": "Starting Player · Game End and Winner · Details on Scoring · Number of Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "Place the stack of clay/stone room tiles next to the game board. Divide the stack of wood room tiles in two, placing one half with the wood rooms facing up and the other with the field tiles facing up. Place the game board in the middle of the play area. Depending on the number of players, take the ", "headingPath": "Room and Field Tiles · Game Board with Action Spaces · Major Improvements · Minor Improvements · Occupations · Action Space Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "ge 2 Here, you can only build an improvement after you renovate. Each of the 14 rounds goes through four phases , which are played one after another. The work phase is when you place your people on action spaces to take actions. Each round starts with some preparations. Most action spaces are pre-pr", "headingPath": "Improvements and Occupations · Course of Play · 1. Preparation Phase · 2. Work Phase · Details on the Work Phase House Redevelopment", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "Each room has space for one person. The reason why there are five people in this house is that, towards the end of the game, lack of space does not matter anymore. Initially composed of wood rooms, this house can now shine with stone rooms-after being renovated twice: luxury like this is worth a lot", "headingPath": "Suggestion Tiles · General Overview · What Happens on Your Farmyard Board", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "Later in the game, vegetables become available as a second crop. Vegetable Seeds If you have crops in your supply and unplanted fields on your farm, you can take the 'Sow' action on the appropriate action space, which comes into play between rounds 1 and 4. When you sow, place 1 grain or 1 vegetable", "headingPath": "Cultivation · Details on Cultivation · Harvest · Feeding Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "Use the 'Farm Expansion' action space and take the 'Build Rooms' action , paying the required building resources: 5 wood and 2 reed . Take a wood room tile and place it adjacent to your existing ones. In a single action, you can build as many rooms as you can afford, one after another. At the start ", "headingPath": "Adding Rooms · Details on Building a Room · Renovation", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "This prerequisite requires you have at least 2 occupations in front of you. Board Market Stall You immediately get 1 vegetable. (Effectively, you are exchanging 1 for 1 vegetable.) you get an additional Basically, the 'Market Stand' lets you exchange 1 grain for 1 vegetable. sheep. You immediately g", "headingPath": "Occupations", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Room and Field Tiles · Game Board with Action Spaces · Major Improvements · Minor Improvements · Occupations · Action Space Cards · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 131}]
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 14:04

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 Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Solo Game	p.12	0.016393 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Starting Player · Game End and Winner · Details on Scoring · Number of Components	p.12	0.016129 (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 Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Room and Field Tiles · Game Board with Action Spaces · Major Improvements · Minor Improvements · Occupations · Action Space Cards · …	p.3	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
#4	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Improvements and Occupations · Course of Play · 1. Preparation Phase · 2. Work Phase · Details on the Work Phase House Redevelopment	p.6	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
#5	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Suggestion Tiles · General Overview · What Happens on Your Farmyard Board	p.4	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
#6	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Cultivation · Details on Cultivation · Harvest · Feeding Phase	p.9	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)	300
#7	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Adding Rooms · Details on Building a Room · Renovation	p.7	0.014925 (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 Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Occupations	p.11	0.014706 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Agricola — Rulebook (corpus doc 131)	Room and Field Tiles · Game Board with Action Spaces · Major Improvements · Minor Improvements · Occupations · Action Space Cards · …	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 219 ms · first delta 4456 ms · total 7112 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 219 ms · ask 6880 ms · gateway work 7112 ms · total 7112 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3458
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 361
tok/sec: 138.3 tok/sec — 361 output tokens in 2.611 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s ago)
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): set up

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 53), 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.