You asked
What happens when 2 chains merge?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Acquirebg-5-en-1e
When two or more hotel chains merge, the following happens: 1. The smaller chain (the one with fewer building tiles) is acquired and becomes part of the larger chain [1][2][3]. 2. If the hotel chains are the same size, the mergemaker decides which chain survives and which is acquired [3]. 3. When merging three or more chains, the largest survives and the smaller ones are acquired one at a time from largest to smallest, with the mergemaker breaking any ties [3]. 4. The headquarters building from the smaller hotel chain is removed and returned to the game tray [3]. 5. The building tile that caused the merger does not add to the size of either hotel chain [4]. 6. Bonuses are handed out to the stockholders of the acquired (smaller) hotel chain in the form of money [2][3]. To determine bonuses: * Each player reveals their exact number of stocks in the acquired chain; the players with the most, second-most, and third-most stocks are the primary, secondary, and tertiary stockholders, respectively [4]. * The mergemaker goes first, and players proceed clockwise [3]. 7. Players with stock in the acquired hotel chain must do one or more of the following: * Keep the stock in hand in hopes a new hotel chain with the same name is founded later [3]. * Sell it back to the bank for the price indicated on the info card, which is determined by the chain's name and size [3]. * Trade it in: For every two stocks from the acquired chain, you receive one stock in the surviving chain from the stock market tray [3].
🔧 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 259 ms · ask 7821 ms · total 8092 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 8092 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 9, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "When you merge two hotel chains, immediately do the following: Count the building tiles in each of the hotel chains involved. Do not count the building tile that caused the merger. You may temporarily flip the merging tile over so it is not accidentally counted. Once the merger is complete, flip it ", "headingPath": "YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "If you place a building tile so that it connects two or more hotel chains, those hotel chains will merge and the smaller chain-that is, the one with fewer building tiles-becomes part of the larger chain. Remember, a hotel chain with eleven or more building tiles is safe and cannot be absorbed by ano", "headingPath": "YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When hotel chains merge, the smaller chain is acquired and its building tiles become part of the larger chain. When this occurs, bonuses are handed out to the smaller hotel chain's stockholders in the form of money. Stockholder bonuses are also handed out at the end of the game.", "headingPath": "Stockholder Bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "When a player places a building tile that connects two or more hotel chains, a merger occurs.", "headingPath": "Merger", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A hotel chain is dissolved when it is acquired by a larger chain and becomes inactive.", "headingPath": "Acquired Hotel Chains", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "After you place a building tile and resolve any mergers, you may (you don't have to) buy up to three stocks in any active hotel chains from the stock market tray. You can buy multiple stocks in the same hotel chain and/or buy stocks in multiple chains during the same turn. Stock prices depend on the", "headingPath": "2. Buy Stocks", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When you are determining stockholder bonuses for mergers, the merging building tile does not add to the size of either hotel chain. To determine stockholder bonuses, do the following: Determine who gets a bonus: Each player reveals the exact number of stocks they own in the hotel chain that was acqu", "headingPath": "DISTRIBUTING STOCKHOLDER BONUSES", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "The player who places a building tile that connects two or more hotel chains is considered the mergemaker.", "headingPath": "Mergemaker", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Stockholder Bonuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DISTRIBUTING STOCKHOLDER BONUSES", "sharpsignalDocId": 93}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 93 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 93 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)
- debug row retained until
- Nov 2, 2026 15:39
retrieval — what the search arm returned
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 Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER | p.9 | 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 Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER | p.8 | 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 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | Stockholder Bonuses | p.3 | 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)) | 279 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | Merger | p.3 | 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)) | 93 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | Acquired Hotel Chains | p.3 | 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)) | 86 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | 2. Buy Stocks | p.9 | 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 Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | DISTRIBUTING STOCKHOLDER BONUSES | p.11 | 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 Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | Mergemaker | p.3 | 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)) | 106 |
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 Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER | p.8 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | Stockholder Bonuses | p.3 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | YOU MERGE TWO OR MORE HOTEL CHAINS TOGETHER | p.9 | no quote on the wire |
| [4] | RULEBOOK Acquire — Rulebook (corpus doc 93) | DISTRIBUTING STOCKHOLDER BONUSES | p.11 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 259 ms · first delta 5455 ms · total 8092 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 259 ms · ask 7821 ms · gateway work 8092 ms · total 8092 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 1503
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 359
- tok/sec
- 137.8 tok/sec — 359 output tokens in 2.606 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 50s 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
- NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 24), 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.