Ruling — The Pillars of the Earth

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Pillars of the Earthbg-24480-en-1e

The game is played over 6 rounds.[1] The goal is to score the most victory points,[2] and the winner is the player with the most victory points on the victory point track at the end of the game.[2]

**Sequence of a Game Round**

Each round is divided into three phases:[1]

**Phase I: Selection of building resource cards and craftsman cards**

1. Draw the top 7 building resource cards, sort them by type, and place them face up next to the 2 craftsman cards at the bottom of the game board.[3]

2. Beginning with the starting player, players take turns in clockwise order choosing a card from the supply.[3]

3. A player may choose to pass; once a player passes, they may not take any more cards from the supply in that round.[3]

4. Phase I ends when all 9 cards have been taken or all players have passed.[3]

**Phase II: Master builder assignment and Game board actions**

Players perform actions in clockwise order following the layout of the board:[1]

1. **Events:** Reveal the top event card.[1]

2. **Archbishop's seat:** Protection from events.[1]

3. **Wool mill:** Collect income.[1]

4. **Kingsbridge:** Take an advantage card.[1]

5. **Kingsbridge priory:** Take victory points.[1]

6. **Resource production:** Claim resources from the forest, quarry, and gravel pit.[1]

7. **King's court:** Tax exemption (the first player receives an additional 1 metal).[1]

8. **Shiring:** Take a craftsman.[1] (Players who placed a master builder on a master builder space in Shiring receive the craftsman card placed above that space without paying the recruitment price [4]).

9. **Shiring Castle:** Take 2 workers for the next round.[1] (A player who placed a master builder on Shiring Castle receives 2 gray workers to add to their supply; these return to the Castle at the end of the next round [4]).

10. **Kingsbridge resource market:** Buy and sell building resources (only metal may be sold).[1]

11. **Cathedral:** Victory points from craftsmen.[1]

12. **Change the starting player:** The starting player places their cathedral building piece on the building site.[5] If a player placed a master builder in this location, they become the starting player for the next round; otherwise, the player seated clockwise from the current starting player becomes the new starting player.[5]

**Phase III: End of Round**

1. At the end of a round, all players build the cathedral.[5]

2. The starting player first selects which building resources they want to use and moves their victory point marker.[5]

3. The starting player places used building resources back on the game board.[5]

4. Remaining players perform their building and victory point conversion in clockwise order.[5]

5. Each player may save at most 5 building resources; any additional resources must be returned to the game board.[5]

**Ending the Game**

The game ends when the sixth cathedral piece has been placed.[5]

[1] RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook · p.4 · S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D

[2] RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook · p.4 · P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME

[3] RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook · p.5 · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards

[4] RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook · p.7 · 10. Shiring: Recruit a craftsman · 11. Shiring Castle: Take 2 workers for the next round

[5] RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook · p.8 · 13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player

🔧 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 98 ms · ask 5226 ms · total 5327 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5327 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "The game is played over 6 rounds. Each round represents several years in the building process. At the end of the game, the cathedral is complete. Each round is divided into 3 phases. While that sounds complex and long, the game is actually played in Phases I and II. Phase III requires very little ti", "headingPath": "S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Place the game board in the center of the table. Each player chooses a color (blue, red, green or yellow) and receives 3 master builders, 1 large worker, and 7 small workers in that color . The large worker is equal to 5 small workers, so each player starts with a total of 12 workers. Players place ", "headingPath": "P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.046394, "snippet": "From the 16 advantage cards, remove the 2 advantage cards designated for the final round, which are marked with a round window in the corners. Place them next to the board. Shuffle the remaining 14 advantage cards. Then, remove 4 of them from the game (these cards remain hidden ; do not look at them", "headingPath": "P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Before the next round begins, players must: a Restock the resource market: It should start the next round with 4 stone, 4 wood, and 4 sand a Place a metal on the King's court (if one is not already there) a Return any gray workers that have already been used, placing them on Shiring Castle. a Return", "headingPath": "BEFORE THE NEXT ROUND · E N D O F T H E G A M E · THE CRAFTSMEN", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044796, "snippet": "The player whose master builder was drawn first can now choose whether to place the master builder (for a cost of 7 gold) or to pass (and lose the first action!) If the player decides to place a master builder, he or she places the master builder on the chosen space and moves his or her wealth marke", "headingPath": "Phase II: Master Builder Assignment", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Place the remaining 2 craftsmen face up at the bottom of the game board, on the 2 lighter colored fields. Draw the top 7 building resources cards. Sort them by type and place them face up next to the 2 craftsman cards. Set aside the 2 remaining building resource cards as they will not be used in thi", "headingPath": "S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In this phase, the players resolve the actions associated with each numbered location on the game board. The actions are resolved in numerical order, which corresponds to a clockwise direction around the board. The master builders are returned to the bag once the actions of a location have been comp", "headingPath": "Phase III: Game Board Actions (in Clockwise Order) · 1. Events: Reveal the top event card · 2. Archbishop's seat: Protection from events · 3. Wool mill: Collect income · 4. Kingsbridge: Take an advantage card", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "At the end of a round, all players build the cathedral. In doing this, their craftsmen convert building resources into victory points, according to individual their abilities. How many and which building resources are converted into victory points depend on which craftsmen a player has (see 'The Cra", "headingPath": "13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "10. Shiring: Recruit a craftsman · 11. Shiring Castle: Take 2 workers for the next round", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player", "sharpsignalDocId": 463}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 463 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 463 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 0.88380 of 2401 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 13:48

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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D	p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E	p.3	0.048131 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME	p.4	0.046394 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	BEFORE THE NEXT ROUND · E N D O F T H E G A M E · THE CRAFTSMEN	p.8	0.045002 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	Phase II: Master Builder Assignment	p.6	0.044796 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards	p.5	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
#7	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	Phase III: Game Board Actions (in Clockwise Order) · 1. Events: Reveal the top event card · 2. Archbishop's seat: Protection from events · 3. Wool mill: Collect income · 4. Kingsbridge: Take an advantage card	p.6	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player	p.8	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

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 22 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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E	p.3	#2	0.048131 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME	p.4	#3	0.046394 (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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	Craftsmen Requirements	p.1	#14	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
#4	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)		p.1	#13	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
#5	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	10. Shiring: Recruit a craftsman · 11. Shiring Castle: Take 2 workers for the next round	p.7	#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
#6	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player	p.8	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards	p.5	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D	p.4	#1	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 The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S U M M A R Y O F G A M E P L A Y · S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	P R E P A R A T I O N F O R T H E G A M E · GOAL OF THE GAME	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	S E Q U E N C E O F A G A M E R O U N D · Phase I: Select Building Resource Cards and Craftsman Cards	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	10. Shiring: Recruit a craftsman · 11. Shiring Castle: Take 2 workers for the next round	p.7	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Pillars of the Earth — Rulebook (corpus doc 463)	13. Cathedral: Victory points from craftsmen · 14. Change the starting player	p.8	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 98 ms · first delta 1950 ms · total 5327 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 98 ms · ask 5226 ms · gateway work 5327 ms · total 5327 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3278
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 685
tok/sec: 205.4 tok/sec — 685 output tokens in 3.335 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 41s 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 393), 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.