Ruling — Civolution

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Civolutionbg-400602-en-1e

The game is played over 4 eras.[1] Each era consists of 8 phases, starting with phase 1 and ending with phase 8.[1][2] The phase indicator moves along the sequence board from phase 1 to phase 2, and so on.[2]

The phases are:

1. Phase 1: New cards.[1][2] During this phase, the top card of each of the 5 face-down research stacks is revealed and placed face up.[2]

2. Phase 2: New goals.[1][2] In seating order, each civilization may choose one goal chip from the goal chip display and place it face up in its goal area, or decline.[2] After all civilizations have chosen, empty spaces in the display are refilled with chips randomly drawn from the dark blue bag.[2]

3. Phase 3: Extra find.[1]

4. Phase 4: The main phase, consisting of action rounds.[1]

5. Phase 5: Site phase.[1]

6. Phase 6: Feeding phase.[1]

7. Phase 7: Event phase.[1] At the start of the era, an event card is revealed from the event stack, which determines the weather development and the event that will occur at the end of the era.[2]

8. Phase 8: Income phase.[1]

The game ends after the Income phase of the fourth era with a final scoring.[1]

In solo mode, the game is played as usual with the following adjustments to the phases:

1. Phase 1: Played as usual.[3]

2. Phase 2: When it is V.I.C.I's turn to 'choose' a goal chip, one of V.I.C.I's dice is rolled once; the goal chip is removed from the display space matching the rolled value (top, second, third, or fourth from top).[3] If a specific result is rolled or the space is empty, no chip is removed.[3]

3. Phase 3: Played as usual, with V.I.C.I making no extra find.[3]

4. Phase 4: Action rounds are played as usual with the player and V.I.C.I taking alternating turns.[3] On V.I.C.I's turns, the top card from V.I.C.I's action stack is revealed and its actions are carried out.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook · p.11 · Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories

[2] RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook · p.12 · How to play an era · Phase 1: New cards · Phase 2: New goals

[3] RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook · p.39 · Solo mode: Playing the game

🔧 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 6905 ms · total 6997 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6997 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 39, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "The game is played as usual. In each era, go through the 8 phases as always, but with the following adjustments: Phase 1: Play as usual. Phase 2: When it is V.I.C.I's turn to 'choose' a goal chip, roll one of V.I.C.I's dice once and remove the goal chip from the space of the goal chip display whose ", "headingPath": "Solo mode: Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 39, "score": 0.047379, "snippet": "Set the game up as in a 2-player game , but carry out setup steps 12 to 16 only for yourself as a single civilization. Afterwards, set up V.I.C.I's play area next to your console as follows: Take the 22 cards for the solo mode . Place the 7 display cards (with a purple mark and a number in the top r", "headingPath": "Solo mode: Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.045245, "snippet": "A game by Stefan Feld for 1 to 4 players, ages 14 and up Artwork: Dennis Lohausen | Development: Viktor Kobilke RULEBOOK GO HERE FOR THE ‘HOW TO PLAY’ VIDEO", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "Civolution is played over 4 eras. Each era consists of 8 phases, with phases 1 to 3 acting as preparatory phases and phases 5 to 8 as post-action phases. The main phase is phase 4. Phase 1: New cards (see page 12) Phase 5: Site phase (see page 32) Phase 8: Income phase (see page 36) Phase 2: New goa", "headingPath": "Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044567, "snippet": "Components Setup How to play the game How do you gain success points?", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044192, "snippet": "Option A (newcomers): For your first couple of plays, we recommend using pre-made starting hands. To do this, take the starting marker cards and find the 6 cards showing a number in the bottom left (1 to 6). Shuffle these and give each civilization one at random. Return any excess starting marker ca", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.043549, "snippet": "Shuffle the starting chip cards and display as many of them face up as there are civilizations plus one. On the bottom half of each of these starting chip cards, place a face-up goal chip randomly drawn from the dark blue bag. Return any excess starting chip cards to the game box. Starting with the ", "headingPath": "Option B (advanced):", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 44, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The game ends as usual. In the final scoring, V.I.C.I gains success points for the scoring categories per the usual rules. V.I.C.I has no console and thus does not score in this regard. If you managed to have more success points in total than V.I.C.I, congratulations on a successful Civolution ! Beg", "headingPath": "Solo mode: End of the game · Difficulty level", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "How to play an era · Phase 1: New cards · Phase 2: New goals", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}, {"page": 39, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Solo mode: Playing the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 319}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 319 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 319 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 0.86626 of 1488 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 13:19

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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: Playing the game	p.39	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: Setup	p.39	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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.1	0.045245 (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))	156
#4	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories	p.11	0.045037 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.3	0.044567 (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))	69
#6	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.9	0.044192 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Option B (advanced):	p.10	0.043549 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: End of the game · Difficulty level	p.44	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

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 80 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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: Playing the game	p.39	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories	p.11	#4	0.045037 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.3	#5	0.044567 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Setup	p.7	#14	0.025974 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.1	#3	0.045245 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)		p.9	#6	0.044192 (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 Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: Setup	p.39	#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
#8	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	How to play an era · Phase 1: New cards · Phase 2: New goals	p.12	#9	0.027799 (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

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Playing the game · How do you gain success points? · The 9 scoring categories	p.11	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	How to play an era · Phase 1: New cards · Phase 2: New goals	p.12	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Civolution — Rulebook (corpus doc 319)	Solo mode: Playing the game	p.39	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 90 ms · first delta 4383 ms · total 6997 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 6905 ms · gateway work 6997 ms · total 6997 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2920
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 530
tok/sec: 206.1 tok/sec — 530 output tokens in 2.571 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 36s 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 247), 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.