RuleSage cited table rulings
← Underwater Cities

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Underwater Citiesbg-247763-en-1e

**General Setup**
1. Place the main game board in the center of the table.[1] (The side shown is for a 3 or 4-player game; use the other side for a 2-player game).[1]
2. Keep components representing cities, tunnels, buildings, and resources in a common supply.[1]
3. Separate cards with divers on the back into three decks (one for each era), setting Era II and Era III aside.[1]
4. Shuffle the Era I cards face down and place the deck on the main game board.[1]
5. Place the era marker on the starting space of the era track.[1]
6. Place one score marker for each player on the zero space of the scoring track.[1]
7. Separate Special cards into two groups: those that cost one or two credits, and those that cost three credits.[2]
8. Shuffle the one-or-two-credit Special cards deck and place it on the main board, turning the top card face up.[2]
9. Shuffle the three-credit Special cards deck and deal 6 face up to the corresponding spaces in the center of the game board; return the rest of this deck to the box.[2]
10. Place the era marker on the first space of the era track.[2]
11. Place one score marker for each player on the starting space of the scoring track.[2]
**Player Setup**
1. Each player chooses a color and takes the 3 action tiles, the Personal Assistant card, and the final scoring card in that color.[3] (The Personal Assistant is an action card already claimed and in play at the beginning of the game).[4]
2. Each player takes a different player board, chosen at random.[3] (For the first game, use the side depicted as #1-4; later games can use the more asymmetric side #5-8).[3]
3. Each player takes a player info card.[3]
4. Each player starts with 1 kelp, 1 steelplast, 1 science, and 2 credits.[3] (Note: Some players may receive additional resources once order of play is determined).[3]
5. Your nation's infrastructure begins with a nonsymbiotic city (white dome) in the lower right corner of your board.[3]
6. Separate brown hexagonal metropolis tiles from blue ones; mix the brown ones and randomly give one to each player.[3]
7. Mix the blue ones and randomly give two to each player.[3]
8. Place your brown metropolis on the hexagonal space in the upper left corner of your board, and assign the other two blue tiles to the remaining two spaces.[3]
**Setup Adjustments for Player Count**
1. For fewer than four players, leave the action-cloning tile in the box.[5][1]
2. Use fewer symbiotic cities (purple domes): use 7 for two players and 10 for three players.[5][1] (A four-player game uses all 13 symbiotic city domes).[5][1]
**Order of Play Setup (First Round Only)**
1. Place play-order markers randomly on the play-order track.[6]
2. On the Federation track, place markers in the opposite order of the play-order track.[6]
3. Specifically: The player on space 1 of the play-order track plays first; their marker starts below the track on the matching color space.[6]
4. The player on space 2 plays second; their marker starts on space 4 of the Federation track.[6]
5. The player on space 3 plays third and starts with one extra credit; their marker starts on space 3 of the Federation track.[6]
6. The player who plays last starts on space 2 of the Federation track and receives an additional 1 credit and 1 steelplast in addition to usual starting resources.[6]
[1] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.4
[2] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.5
[3] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.6 · SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS · /angle-double-right PLAYER BOARD SETUP
[4] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.8 · /angle-double-right LIMIT OF FOUR You may use one of your action cards. · PERSONAL ASSISTANT · /angle-double-right PRODUCTION CARDS · /angle-double-right END-SCORING CARDS · /angle-double-right SPECIAL CARDS
[5] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.4 · SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS
[6] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook · p.6 · ORDER OF PLAY
🔧 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 357 ms · ask 17571 ms · total 17953 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 17953 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 4, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Œ MAIN GAME BOARD CITIES (DOMES) (USE 13 SYMBIOTIC CITIES IN A FOUR-PLAYER GAME) BUILDINGS GREEN ACTION SLOTS GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS (USE THESE SPACES ONLY DURING ADVANCED GAME WITH GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS.) ALWAYS-A VAILABLE ACTION SLOT YELLOW ACTION SLOTS RESOURCES (CREDITS) TUNNELS RED ACTION SLOTS AC", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "E ach player chooses a color and takes the 3 action tiles, the Personal Assistant card and final scoring card in that color. Although the Personal Assistants have different illustrations, they all have the same effect. Each player should also take a player info card. E ach player starts with 1 kelp,", "headingPath": "SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS · /angle-double-right PLAYER BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "W hen setting up the game for fewer than four players, make two changes: Leave the action-cloning tile in the box. Use fewer symbiotic cities (purple domes): With two players, use 7 symbiotic cities. With three players, use 10. A four-player game uses the action-cloning tile and all 13 symbiotic cit", "headingPath": "SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "T o play Underwater Cities by yourself, use the advanced side of a player board and the two-player side of the main board. The number of symbiotic domes is not limited in this variant. Set up the game as you would for two players, except do not use this metropolis tile (shown here). T ake three tile", "headingPath": "/angle-double-right 3) SOLO GAME · /angle-double-right GAMEPLAY · /angle-double-right GOAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "T wo tracks determine the order of play. The play-order track shows the order of play for the current round. The Federation track is where players jockey for position for the next round. F or the first round, place the play-order markers on the play-order track randomly. Then, on the Federation trac", "headingPath": "ORDER OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.030622, "snippet": "Ž ERA I, II AND III CARD DECKS VARIOUS COMPONENTS THREE-CREDIT SPECIAL CARDS SCORING TRACK RESOURCES (KELP) RESOURCES (STEELPLAST) RESOURCES (SCIENCE) RESOURCES (BIOMATTER)  PLACE THE ERA MARKER ON THE FIRST SPACE OF THE ERA TRACK. ERA TRACK  PLACE ONE SCORE MARKER FOR EACH PLAYER ON THE STARTING", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "P layers take turns choosing actions. They play in the order depicted on the play-order track, and this order does not change during the round. Y ou always start your turn with 3 cards. On your turn, you play one card and simultaneously choose one of the available action slots. That is, you choose a", "headingPath": "/angle-double-right PLAY ORDER · /angle-double-right A TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The always-available slot allows you to gain 2 cards and 2 credits. Note: Some Special card effects allow you to use the action depicted at an action slot. These effects apply only to the colored slots, not to the always-available slot. In a four-player game, the important action slots become occupi", "headingPath": "/angle-double-right THE ALWAYS-AVAILABLE SLOT · /angle-double-right THE ACTION-CLONING TILE (4 PLAYERS) · /angle-double-right ONE-TIME USE · /angle-double-right SUMMARY OF CHOOSING AN ACTION SLOT · TIMING", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS · /angle-double-right PLAYER BOARD SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "/angle-double-right LIMIT OF FOUR You may use one of your action cards. · PERSONAL ASSISTANT · /angle-double-right PRODUCTION CARDS · /angle-double-right END-SCORING CARDS · /angle-double-right SPECIAL CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ORDER OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 265}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 265 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 265 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 8, 2026 03:39

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) p.4 0.048652 (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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS · /angle-double-right PLAYER BOARD SETUP p.6 0.047712 (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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS p.4 0.047371 (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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) /angle-double-right 3) SOLO GAME · /angle-double-right GAMEPLAY · /angle-double-right GOAL p.18 0.046642 (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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) ORDER OF PLAY p.6 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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) p.5 0.030622 (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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) /angle-double-right PLAY ORDER · /angle-double-right A TURN p.7 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
#8 RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) /angle-double-right THE ALWAYS-AVAILABLE SLOT · /angle-double-right THE ACTION-CLONING TILE (4 PLAYERS) · /angle-double-right ONE-TIME USE · /angle-double-right SUMMARY OF CHOOSING AN ACTION SLOT · TIMING p.13 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

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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

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 Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) p.4 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) p.5 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS · /angle-double-right PLAYER BOARD SETUP p.6 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) /angle-double-right LIMIT OF FOUR You may use one of your action cards. · PERSONAL ASSISTANT · /angle-double-right PRODUCTION CARDS · /angle-double-right END-SCORING CARDS · /angle-double-right SPECIAL CARDS p.8 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) SETUP FOR 2 OR 3 PLAYERS p.4 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Underwater Cities — Rulebook (corpus doc 265) ORDER OF PLAY p.6 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 357 ms · first delta 11695 ms · total 17953 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 357 ms · ask 17571 ms · gateway work 17953 ms · total 17953 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3423
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
849
tok/sec
137.3 tok/sec — 849 output tokens in 6.185 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 18s 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.
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 193), 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.