Ruling — Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

← Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game

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How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Gamebg-77130-en-1e

The game is played over a number of game turns, each composed of five phases performed in order.[1] During each phase, starting with the first player and continuing clockwise, every player has the opportunity to perform the associated actions.[1]

**Phases of a Turn:**

1. Start of Turn [1]

2. Trade [1]

3. City Management [1]

4. Movement [1]

5. Research [1]

**Start of Turn Phase:**

During this phase, players can expand their civilizations and change their forms of government.[2] The first player performs their desired actions, then play passes to the player's left.[2]

**Battle Mechanics:**

When engaging in battle, players alternate playing units from their battle force faceup on the table until all units in their forces have been played.[3] The defender starts first, unless the attacker is attacking a walled city, in which case the attacker plays the first unit.[3]

* **Starting a Front:** A player starts a new front by playing a unit without attacking another unit.[3]

* **Attacking a Front:** A player attacks an existing front by placing their unit card in front of a faceup enemy unit.[4]

* **Resolving Combat:** The two units immediately attack each other, with each unit dealing wounds equal to its strength to the other.[4] A unit is killed and returned to its original unit deck if it suffers wounds equal to its strength.[4] Even if a unit is wounded, it still inflicts its full strength in wounds.[4] All wounds are removed at the end of the battle.[4]

* **Combat Bonuses:** Players may calculate combat bonuses (such as for Barracks, Academies, or Great Generals) to determine a combat bonus card.[5]

**Exploration:**

A player can discover a facedown map tile by spending one square of movement when a figure is orthogonally adjacent to the tile.[6] The tile is then turned faceup and oriented so the arrow points away from the figure.[6] This may reveal hut or village icons, which trigger the placement of random facedown markers.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.12 · 5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview

[2] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.13 · Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn

[3] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.24 · 3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs

[4] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.24 · aTTackinG an enemy frOnT

[5] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.23 · 2. calculaTinG cOmbaT bOnuses

[6] RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook · p.19 · DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 90 ms · ask 4883 ms · total 4975 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4975 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 8, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "'The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is or has been is but the twilight of the dawn.' -H. G. Wells Before playing Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game for the first time, carefully punch out the cardboard components, making sure to keep them away from small children and an", "headingPath": "preparinG fOr The firsT Game · The GOlDen rule · General seTup · 1. chOOse civilizaTiOns anD cOlOrs · 2. DisTribuTe player cOmpOnenTs · Players also receive: · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Now, starting with the defender, then alternating back and forth, each player must play a unit from their battle force faceup on the table between them until both players have played all of the units in their battle forces. Exception: If the attacker is attacking a walled city, the attacker must pla", "headingPath": "3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "During this phase, the first player marker is passed one player to the left (except on the first turn). Then, the new first player performs any start of turn actions (usually found on wonders or culture event cards), builds any new cities (see page 13), and changes governments if desired (see page 1", "headingPath": "1. sTarT Of Turn · 2. TraDe · 3. ciTy manaGemenT · 4. mOvemenT · 5. research", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.045416, "snippet": "This section explains each phase of the turn in detail. During this phase, players can expand their civilizations and change their civilizations' form of government. The first player has the first opportunity to perform those actions during the Start of Turn Phase. After the first player has perform", "headingPath": "Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.042745, "snippet": "Each player stacks their government cards so that the Despotism/ Republic card is on top of the cards, with the Despotism side faceup. They then place the stack of cards on the indicated space on their civilization sheet. Exceptions: Rome begins as a Republic , while Russia begins governed by Commun", "headingPath": "5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Look at the four faceup wonder cards in the market spaces below the wonder deck, find the matching wonder marker for each, and place the marker in the space next to its wonder card. Separate the culture event cards into ancient (one column), medieval (two columns), and modern (three columns) decks. ", "headingPath": "e. wOnDer markers (nOT useD in The learninG Game) · f. culTure evenT carDs · G. culTure level markers · 4. seT up markeT resOurces · 5. builD map · 6. shuffle ranDOm markers · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "A military victory is achieved by conquering another player's capital city (see 'Combat,' below). This requires the player to build up their military forces and technology. A player wishing to win with a military victory should increase their military power. This includes building a supply of units ", "headingPath": "miliTary vicTOry · OTher rules · cOmbaT", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "As briefly mentioned earlier, there are four ways to win Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game . Each method requires a civilization to focus on a different aspect of the game to achieve greatness. A culture victory is attained by spending enough culture and trade to advance to the end of the cul", "headingPath": "winninG The Game · culTure vicTOry · Tech vicTOry", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "aTTackinG an enemy frOnT", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. calculaTinG cOmbaT bOnuses", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}, {"page": 19, "quote": null, "headingPath": "DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles", "sharpsignalDocId": 479}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 479 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 479 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)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90887 of 1635 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 07:16

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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	preparinG fOr The firsT Game · The GOlDen rule · General seTup · 1. chOOse civilizaTiOns anD cOlOrs · 2. DisTribuTe player cOmpOnenTs · Players also receive: · …	p.8	0.048412 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs	p.24	0.047643 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	1. sTarT Of Turn · 2. TraDe · 3. ciTy manaGemenT · 4. mOvemenT · 5. research	p.12	0.047131 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn	p.13	0.045416 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview	p.12	0.042745 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	e. wOnDer markers (nOT useD in The learninG Game) · f. culTure evenT carDs · G. culTure level markers · 4. seT up markeT resOurces · 5. builD map · 6. shuffle ranDOm markers · …	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	miliTary vicTOry · OTher rules · cOmbaT	p.23	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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	winninG The Game · culTure vicTOry · Tech vicTOry	p.22	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 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 57 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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs	p.24	#2	0.047643 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	preparinG fOr The firsT Game · The GOlDen rule · General seTup · 1. chOOse civilizaTiOns anD cOlOrs · 2. DisTribuTe player cOmpOnenTs · Players also receive: · …	p.8	#1	0.048412 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	aTTackinG an enemy frOnT	p.24	#9	0.028475 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview	p.12	#5	0.042745 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles	p.19	#27	0.012987 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	2. calculaTinG cOmbaT bOnuses	p.23	#31	0.012195 (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 Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	Overview	p.2	#23	0.013699 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn	p.13	#4	0.045416 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	5. seT sTarTinG GOvernmenTs · 6. seT TraDe Dial · 7. seT ecOnOmy Dial · 8. place unbuilT fiGures · Game Turn Overview	p.12	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	Game Turn in DeTail · 1. sTarT Of Turn	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	3. enGaGinG in baTTle · armies vs. uniTs	p.24	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	aTTackinG an enemy frOnT	p.24	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	2. calculaTinG cOmbaT bOnuses	p.23	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game — Rulebook (corpus doc 479)	DiscOverinG unexplOreD map Tiles	p.19	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 2704 ms · total 4975 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 90 ms · ask 4883 ms · gateway work 4975 ms · total 4975 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2910
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 453
tok/sec: 203.2 tok/sec — 453 output tokens in 2.229 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s 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 410), 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.