Ruling — Architects of the West Kingdom

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Architects of the West Kingdombg-236457-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

1. Proceeding clockwise from the starting player, each player takes their turn in full.[1]

2. On their turn, players must place 1 of their Workers from their Player Board to a chosen location on the Main Board.[1]

3. Players continue taking turns until a set number of constructions have been completed.[1]

4. Once the required number of constructions is reached, all players take 1 last turn before the game ends.[1]

5. Add up your score as normal.[2]

**Additional Rules and Mechanics:**

* **Turns:** You will always take your turn first, followed by your opponent.[2] If a player starts their turn with no Workers on their Player Board, their entire turn is spent returning any 1 Worker from the Main Board to their Player Board, and they cannot place that Worker until their next turn.[1] (Note: A special rule for an opponent states that if they start their turn with no Workers, they do not draw a Scheme Card, but instead return all Workers to their Board and shuffle discarded Scheme Cards back into the Draw Pile [2]).

* **Worker Investment:** Each player has 20 Workers.[1] Generally, the more times a player visits the same location, the more they benefit from it.[1]

* **Capturing Workers:** While at the Town Centre, players can capture groups of Workers from various locations (except the Black Market, Guildhall, or Prison) and place them onto their Player Board.[3][1] Captured Workers can later be sent to the Prison to earn 1 Silver per Worker.[1]

* **Advancing the Cathedral:** To advance work on the Cathedral, players must pay the indicated resources (one level above their current Player Marker), discard 1 Building Card from their hand, and move their Player Marker 1 level up the Cathedral.[4] Upon doing so, they reveal the top card from the Reward Card Pile and gain its benefits.[4]

* **The Guardhouse:** This location allows players to take actions such as sending captured Workers to the Prison to gain Silver, releasing their own Workers from Prison, or paying Silver (or a Debt and loss of Virtue) to release Workers from other players' Boards.[5]

* **The Guildhall:** Players place Workers here to construct Buildings or advance work on the Cathedral.[5] Workers should be placed flat, from left to right, top to bottom.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.6 · first time players · playing the game

[2] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.27 · Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring

[3] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.7 · playing the game · A note to new players:

[4] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.15 · Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:

[5] RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook · p.13 · Guardhouse · Guildhall

🔧 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 83 ms · ask 4316 ms · total 4400 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4400 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "From the Supply, place 4 Silver in the space above the Tax Stand. Each player takes 1 Player Board (side 1 faceup, unless using the V ariable Setup rules) and 20 Workers in their chosen colour. Each player places 1 of their coloured Player Markers underneath the Cathedral and the other on number 7 o", "headingPath": "aim of the game · Variable Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "When playing for the first time or teaching others, there are 3 key concepts to understand: Worker Investment - Each player has 20 Workers. Each turn they will place just 1 of these onto the Main Board. As a general rule, the more times a player visits the same location, the more they benefit from i", "headingPath": "first time players · playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.046871, "snippet": "You will always take your turn first, followed by your opponent. Your turns function just as they would in the standard game. Your opponent's turns operate differently. On their turn, reveal the top card from the Schemes Draw Pile. Each Scheme Card instructs you to place 1 opposing Worker in a speci", "headingPath": "Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Rather than pursuing their own endeavours, players may also dedicate some time and resources to constructing the Cathedral. To do this, players should follow these steps: Pay the indicated resources to the left of the Cathedral, 1 level above where their Player Marker currently sits (all players sta", "headingPath": "Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 24, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Betting House, Clay Pit, Drafting Room, Factory, Lumber Camp, Smithy, Thieves' Den, Treasury, Well The controlling player immediately gains the resources or cards shown. The controlling player immediately takes the action shown, in the same manner as it would be taken at the Town Centre or Guardhous", "headingPath": "Gain Resources / Cards · Armoury, Barracks, Fortress, Hideout · Church · Library · Monument · Palace · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 16, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Each player's Virtue is recorded by their Player Marker on the Virtue Track. Any time players gain Virtue , or lose Virtue , it is immediately shown by moving their Player Marker up or down the Virtue Track. Depending on how much Virtue they have at the game's end, they may gain or lose Victory Poin", "headingPath": "virtue track", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The end of the game will be triggered once the last Worker is placed in the Guildhall. The current player finishes their turn, then each player (including the current player) has 1 final turn before the game ends (1 final round). The 2 right columns of the Guildhall are not used in this 3 player exa", "headingPath": "end of the game · end-game scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 28, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "For a more variable game, all players should use side 2 of their Player Boards (randomly dealt or chosen). This gives each player a unique ability throughout the game. It also determines how much Silver, Virtue and other items they begin with. The player with the most Virtue starts the game, followe", "headingPath": "End-game Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "first time players · playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 27, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "playing the game · A note to new players:", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Guardhouse · Guildhall", "sharpsignalDocId": 303}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 303 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 303 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 0.91466 of 1910 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 08:41

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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game · Variable Setup	p.5	0.048387 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	first time players · playing the game	p.6	0.048139 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring	p.27	0.046871 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:	p.15	0.046402 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Gain Resources / Cards · Armoury, Barracks, Fortress, Hideout · Church · Library · Monument · Palace · …	p.24	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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	virtue track	p.16	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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	end of the game · end-game scoring	p.18	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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	End-game Scoring	p.28	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 29 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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring	p.27	#3	0.046871 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game	p.4	#13	0.027619 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	End-game Scoring	p.28	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Guardhouse · Guildhall	p.13	#12	0.027885 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:	p.15	#4	0.046402 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	playing the game · A note to new players:	p.7	#9	0.029031 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	aim of the game · Variable Setup	p.5	#1	0.048387 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	first time players · playing the game	p.6	#2	0.048139 (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 Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	first time players · playing the game	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Playing the Game · There are a few additional rules to observe during the game. Your opponent: · End of the Game · End-game Scoring	p.27	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	playing the game · A note to new players:	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Advancing Work on the Cathedral · Important rule:	p.15	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Architects of the West Kingdom — Rulebook (corpus doc 303)	Guardhouse · Guildhall	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 1832 ms · total 4400 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 83 ms · ask 4316 ms · gateway work 4400 ms · total 4400 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3236
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 513
tok/sec: 204.3 tok/sec — 513 output tokens in 2.511 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 1s 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 231), 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.