Ruling — Citadels

← Citadels

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Citadelsbg-478-en-1e

To play Citadels, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Remove the bonus character and district cards (marked by a white star).[1]

2. Shuffle the eight remaining character cards into a Character Deck.[1]

3. Shuffle the remaining district cards into a District Deck.[1]

4. Deal four random district cards from the District Deck to each player.[1]

5. Give each player two gold from the bank.[1]

6. Give the Crown to the oldest player.[1]

**The Round Sequence**

1. Draw one random card from the Character Deck and set it facedown in the center of the table; this card will not be used this round.[1]

2. Draw a second set of cards from the Character Deck and set them faceup in the middle of the table (the number of cards depends on the number of players).[1]

3. The player with the Crown takes the Character Deck, looks at the cards, and secretly chooses a character.[1]

4. The chosen player passes the remaining cards to the player on their left, who also secretly chooses a card, continuing until each player has chosen one card.[1]

5. Place the single remaining unchosen card facedown in the center of the table.[1]

6. The player with the Crown calls out the name of each character one-at-a-time in order of numerical rank.[2]

7. When a player's character is called, they reveal their card, place it faceup in front of them, and take their turn.[2]

8. After a player's turn is over, the player with the Crown calls the next character.[2]

9. After all characters have been called, each player returns their character card to the Character Deck, which is then shuffled to begin a new round.[3]

**On Your Turn**

1. Take an action: either take two gold from the bank, or draw two district cards from the District Deck, choose one to put in your hand, and place the other on the bottom of the District Deck.[3]

2. Build a district card (optional): you may play one district card from your hand onto the table in front of you by paying its gold cost to the bank, provided you do not have two identical districts in your city.[3]

3. You may use your character's special power once during your turn.[3]

**Ending the Game**

1. The game ends after the current round is completed when a player builds their eighth district.[3]

2. Determine points:

* Total the combined gold cost of all district cards in your city.[3]

* Receive three points if you have at least one district in each of the five colors.[3]

* Receive four points if you were the first player to build eight districts; all other players who built eight districts receive two points.[3]

3. The winner is the player with the most points (in the case of a tie, compare the total gold cost of districts; if still tied, the player with the most gold wins).[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook · p.3 · settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters

[2] RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook · p.3 · Step Three: Player Turns

[3] RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook · p.4 · On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end

🔧 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 67 ms · ask 4956 ms · total 5027 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5027 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "To prepare Citadels for play, follow these steps: Remove the bonus character and district cards (marked by a white star). Shuffle the eight remaining character cards together into one deck. This is called the Character Deck . Shuffle the remaining district cards together into one deck. This is calle", "headingPath": "settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047619, "snippet": "A few more rules are explained below, including special modifications for games with two, three, seven, and eight players. In a two- or three-player game, all players play with two characters each. The game is played normally, except that each player has two turns each round (one turn for each chara", "headingPath": "other rules · Two- or Three-player Games · Two-player Game · The Three-player Game · The Seven-player Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.04728, "snippet": "Once all players have chosen a character card, the player who has the Crown now calls out the name of each character one-at-a-time in the order of numerical rank. In this way, he first calls out the 'Assassin' (#1), then the 'Thief' (#2), etc. If no player reveals that character when called, simply ", "headingPath": "Step Three: Player Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "On your turn, you must first take an action, after which you may build a district card. Take an Action: At the beginning of your turn, you must do one of the following: Take two gold from the bank, or Draw two district cards from the District Deck, choose one card to put in your hand, and place the ", "headingPath": "On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.045921, "snippet": "After you take an action, announce the title of another character who you wish to bewitch, and then immediately end your turn. When the bewitched character is called upon, its player must show his character card, take an action, and then immediately end his turn. The bewitched character cannot use h", "headingPath": "Bonus characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045541, "snippet": "The bonus character cards are used as follows: Before the game begins, players may agree to remove one or two of the original eight character cards and replace them with the bonus characters of the same rank numbers. For example, you may agree to remove the Merchant (#6) and replace him with the Alc", "headingPath": "Bonus Characters · Bonus Districts · dIstrIct cards · Bell Tower · Observatory & Library", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "You receive one gold for each noble (yellow) district in your city. When the King is called, you immediately receive the Crown. You now call the characters, and you will be the first player to choose your character during the next round. If there is no King during the next round, you keep the Crown.", "headingPath": "the characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044136, "snippet": "The Quarry's ability is triggered when someone builds, so if the Quarry is destroyed, its owner does not lose any duplicate districts he has already built. The owner of the Quarry may build multiple duplicate districts, but there may not be more than two identical districts in his city. The Graveyar", "headingPath": "Quarry · Graveyard · the characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Step Three: Player Turns", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end", "sharpsignalDocId": 557}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 557 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 557 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 0.91412 of 2224 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 07:27

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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters	p.3	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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	other rules · Two- or Three-player Games · Two-player Game · The Three-player Game · The Seven-player Game	p.5	0.047619 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Step Three: Player Turns	p.3	0.04728 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end	p.4	0.046635 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus characters	p.9	0.045921 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus Characters · Bonus Districts · dIstrIct cards · Bell Tower · Observatory & Library	p.6	0.045541 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	the characters	p.8	0.045228 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Quarry · Graveyard · the characters	p.7	0.044136 (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 15 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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters	p.3	#1	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end	p.4	#4	0.046635 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	the characters	p.8	#7	0.045228 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus Characters · Bonus Districts · dIstrIct cards · Bell Tower · Observatory & Library	p.6	#6	0.045541 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Quarry · Graveyard · the characters	p.7	#8	0.044136 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Bonus characters	p.9	#5	0.045921 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	other rules · Two- or Three-player Games · Two-player Game · The Three-player Game · The Seven-player Game	p.5	#2	0.047619 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Step Three: Player Turns	p.3	#3	0.04728 (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 Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	settIng up the BasIc game · playIng the game · Step One: Remove Characters · Step Two: Choose Characters	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	Step Three: Player Turns	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Citadels — Rulebook (corpus doc 557)	On Your Turn · Characters and Their Special Abilities · Step Four: End of Round · game end	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 67 ms · first delta 1762 ms · total 5027 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 67 ms · ask 4956 ms · gateway work 5027 ms · total 5027 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3845
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 660
tok/sec: 205.2 tok/sec — 660 output tokens in 3.217 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s 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 489), 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.