Ruling — Age of Steam

You asked

Tell me a joke

Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below counted as honest abstain

Asked with: Age of Steambg-4098-en-1e

What's a meeple's favorite exercise? The worker placement. And when you're ready to get back to it, the rules and I are right here.

The closest rulebook passages are below — check them before ruling.

RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.4 · ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares

The game ends when the last turn is completed. The number of turns played depends upon the number of players and is denoted on the Turn Track. For example, a 5 player game ends at the end of the seventh turn. After final scoring, the player with the most Victory Points WINS the game. Issue Shares De

RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.11 · Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End

This phase happens before the Issue Shares phase. The auction for turn order is no longer used. Instead, randomly determine the first player for the first turn; then turn order on later turns alternates between the two players. The player whose turn it is to go first each round must pay $5. If this

RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.9 · V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income

In Player Order, players may each move one Goods cube, then complete a second round of moving one Goods cube each. If a player has chosen the First Move action, they may move a Goods cube before the 1st player in each of the 2 rounds instead of doing so in their usual turn order. Goods must be moved

RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.10 · IX. Goods Growth · X. Adv ance Turn Marker · Victory Point Computations · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · Western U.S.

EXAMPLE: It is the second turn of a three player game and 3 dice are rolled: 3, 3, 4. The top two Goods in column '3', are placed in Kansas City (light City 3). New City 'A' was placed during the Urbanization action in the Indianapolis hex, so it is on the map. New City A is in column 3, so the two

RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.4 · II. Determine Player Order

Slide the disks on the Player Order T rack upward just above the printed circles. Players now bid for the new Player Order beginning with the 1st player. The 1st player may bid $1 or more to stay in the bidding or they may drop out of the bidding by moving their disk to the last position on the trac

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome

ABSTAINED — Abstained — no grounded answer; closest passages below

warm abstain

this ruling — W4 — off-topic, with a joke back · receipt: ask ends with the authored off-topic phrase "tell me a joke" · joke: rotation slot 3 of 8 (ruling 3266 mod 8 = 2, counting from zero) · closer: one authored sentence, the same after every joke · authored copy, never generated — identical for every reader of this ruling

corpus profile

live,vps

answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)

gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70

timings

search 87 ms · ask 2016 ms · total 2106 ms

single-flight (PR-5)

queued 0 ms · generation 2106 ms

retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read

[{"page": 4, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "The game ends when the last turn is completed. The number of turns played depends upon the number of players and is denoted on the Turn Track. For example, a 5 player game ends at the end of the seventh turn. After final scoring, the player with the most Victory Points WINS the game. Issue Shares De", "headingPath": "ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "This phase happens before the Issue Shares phase. The auction for turn order is no longer used. Instead, randomly determine the first player for the first turn; then turn order on later turns alternates between the two players. The player whose turn it is to go first each round must pay $5. If this ", "headingPath": "Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "In Player Order, players may each move one Goods cube, then complete a second round of moving one Goods cube each. If a player has chosen the First Move action, they may move a Goods cube before the 1st player in each of the 2 rounds instead of doing so in their usual turn order. Goods must be moved", "headingPath": "V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "EXAMPLE: It is the second turn of a three player game and 3 dice are rolled: 3, 3, 4. The top two Goods in column '3', are placed in Kansas City (light City 3). New City 'A' was placed during the Urbanization action in the Indianapolis hex, so it is on the map. New City A is in column 3, so the two ", "headingPath": "IX. Goods Growth · X. Adv ance Turn Marker · Victory Point Computations · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · Western U.S.", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Slide the disks on the Player Order T rack upward just above the printed circles. Players now bid for the new Player Order beginning with the 1st player. The 1st player may bid $1 or more to stay in the bidding or they may drop out of the bidding by moving their disk to the last position on the trac", "headingPath": "II. Determine Player Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A player may redirect a T rack tile at the end of an unfinished T rack Section with a different T rack tile if they have ownership of the track or if it is unowned. Complex Track tiles must be redirected so that existing track owned by other players is maintained. Redirection is commonly done by pla", "headingPath": "Redirection", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Now place the starting Goods cubes on the map. NOTE: Setup will vary between maps. If you are not playing the Rust Belt map, check the setup rules for the map you have chosen (page 10). Randomly draw three Goods cubes from the bag and place them in Pittsburgh 10 . Randomly draw three Goods cubes fro", "headingPath": "Map Setup · Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "No Unfinished Track Sections may be built, only Completed Railroad links may be built. Players are still limited to placing three track tiles in their turn. A number on a hex is the cost to place a Simple Track tile on that hex. A track link may be built directly between Düsseldorf/Cologne and Essen", "headingPath": "Building Track · Goods Growth · Acknowledgments · Barbados · Setup · Issue Shares · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}]

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 308 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true

base rulebook doc 308 boosted

answered-before recall

no past answered ruling for this game matched closely enough

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 12, 2026 15:53

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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares	p.4	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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End	p.11	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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income	p.9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	IX. Goods Growth · X. Adv ance Turn Marker · Victory Point Computations · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · Western U.S.	p.10	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
#5	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	II. Determine Player Order	p.4	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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Redirection	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
#7	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Map Setup · Player Setup	p.3	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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Building Track · Goods Growth · Acknowledgments · Barbados · Setup · Issue Shares · …	p.11	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 21 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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Southern U.S. · Historical Context · Setup · Actions · Move Goods · Goods Growth · …	p.11	#16	0.013158 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Track Ownership	p.6	#12	0.013889 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	II. Determine Player Order	p.4	#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
#4	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	IX. Goods Growth · X. Adv ance Turn Marker · Victory Point Computations · ACKNOWLEDGMENTS · Western U.S.	p.10	#4	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)		p.8	#18	0.012821 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	VII. P a y Expenses · IX. Goods Growth	p.9	#11	0.014085 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income	p.9	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Setup · Moving Goods · Building Track · Mountains cost $5 · Victory · Acknowledgments	p.10	#14	0.013514 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 87 ms · first delta 1973 ms · total 2106 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 87 ms · ask 2016 ms · gateway work 2106 ms · total 2106 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3640
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 9
tok/sec: 138.5 tok/sec — 9 output tokens in 0.065 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 23s 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: 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 236), 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.