You asked
How do I set up Terraforming Mars for 2 players?
Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstainAsked with: Terraforming Marsbg-167791-en-1e
Answered before
This question didn't get an answer just now — but Terraforming Mars has been asked something like it before. The corpus may have changed since, so check the date and the answerer on each one before you rule from it.
I looked through Terraforming Mars's rulebook and couldn't find a solid answer to that one — and I'd rather tell you so than guess at your table. Try asking it another way, or ask me about setup, turns, or how the game ends: those I know cold.
The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.
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
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
In Terraforming Mars, you control a corporation, and you buy and play cards describing different projects. The projects often directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process, but can also consist of business enterprises of different kinds. In order to win, you have to accumulate a good
Terraforming Mars is about making Mars earthlike enough to live freely on it. There are 4 parameters on the game board connected to this process: Terraform rating, temperature, oxygen level and ocean coverage. Terraform Rating (TR) is the measure of how much you have contributed to the terraforming
All rules apply as usual for solo play, with these exceptions: 1) Before you choose your cards, place 2 neutral city tiles on the map with an adjacent greenery tile each (these tiles are not yours, and do not increase the oxygen level): reveal and discard the 4 top cards of the deck and use their co
Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- warm abstain
-
- this ruling — W1 — generic warm abstain · receipt: none (generic)
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 242 ms · ask 5058 ms · total 5308 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 0 ms · generation 5308 ms
- retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
- [{"page": 7, "score": 0.04918, "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": 0.047379, "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": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "In Terraforming Mars, you control a corporation, and you buy and play cards describing different projects. The projects often directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process, but can also consist of business enterprises of different kinds. In order to win, you have to accumulate a good", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Terraforming Mars is about making Mars earthlike enough to live freely on it. There are 4 parameters on the game board connected to this process: Terraform rating, temperature, oxygen level and ocean coverage. Terraform Rating (TR) is the measure of how much you have contributed to the terraforming ", "headingPath": "Parameters", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "All rules apply as usual for solo play, with these exceptions: 1) Before you choose your cards, place 2 neutral city tiles on the map with an adjacent greenery tile each (these tiles are not yours, and do not increase the oxygen level): reveal and discard the 4 top cards of the deck and use their co", "headingPath": "Solo variant for Corporate Era:", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each area or tile on the game board represents 1% of the Martian surface, so 9 Ocean tiles represents 9% ocean coverage, which should be enough to enable stable hydrological cycles, air moisture, and weather patterns. Water is also important, as it moderates temperature swings. At very low temperatu", "headingPath": "A Terraformed Mars", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "All players perform this phase simultaneously. First, all energy is converted into heat (move all resource cubes from the energy box to the heat box). Secondly, all players receive new resources: Players get M€ according to their terraform rating plus any M€ production (which may be negative!), then", "headingPath": "4) Production phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Game design: Jacob Fryxelius Graphic design: Isaac Fryxelius Assistant design: FryxGames FryxGames thanks: Our partners, friends and family (especially Mom and Dad) for playtesting and feedback. We want to acknowledge Kim Stanley Robinson for great inspiration to this game in his Red Mars trilogy. A", "headingPath": "Credits", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
- citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
- []
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 59 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 59 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
past answered rulings were found and offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- ruling 2945 — matched by the same question (normalized, punctuation folded) — measured similarity 1.0
- ruling 2946 — matched by trigram similarity — measured similarity 0.9167
- ruling 2856 — matched by trigram similarity — measured similarity 0.9167
- debug row retained until
- Nov 10, 2026 18:26
retrieval — what the passage search returned
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 rank | document | heading | page | fused RRF score | snippet chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | 0.047379 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | GAME OVERVIEW | p.3 | 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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Parameters | p.14 | 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)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Solo variant for Corporate Era: | p.13 | 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)) | 300 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | A Terraformed Mars | p.3 | 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 4) Production phase | p.8 | 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Credits | p.16 | 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)) | 300 |
what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it
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 49 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 — not 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 at | document | heading | page | fused rank | fused RRF score | carried by | how it got its slot |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | SETUP | p.7 | #2 | 0.047379 (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 doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | GAME OVERVIEW | p.3 | #3 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Draft variant: | p.13 | #9 | 0.029324 (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 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Red border on icons | p.15 | #36 | 0.010417 (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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Solo variant for Corporate Era: | p.13 | #5 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | 4) Production phase | p.8 | #7 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Parameters | p.14 | #4 | 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)) | vector + the doc-priority boost arm | the re-ranker chose it |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) | Corporate Era (extended game): | p.13 | #10 | 0.027501 (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 |
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 |
|---|
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 242 ms · first delta 5189 ms · total 5308 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 242 ms · ask 5058 ms · gateway work 5308 ms · total 5308 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 2935
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 9
- tok/sec
- 136.4 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.066 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 55s 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
- ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below
- abstain rationale
-
I don't have enough information.
the answerer's own words, verbatim — hostile corpus/LLM text, rendered escaped
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)
-
set up
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.