Ruling — QE — RuleSage

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You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: QEbg-266830-en-1e

### Setup

1. Give each player a Bid Tile, a Player Score Board of one nation, and a Dry Erase Marker.[1]

2. Flip the Player Score Board to the correct side based on the number of players (the UK is only used in a 5-player game).[1]

3. Shuffle the Industry Tokens and deal one to each player, which players keep hidden from others.[1]

4. Remove Company Tiles based on player count: in a 3- or 4-player game, remove the 3 x UK Company Tiles, the JP Government Tile, and the CN Government Tile, leaving 16 tiles in play; in a 5-player game, remove the 4 x 1 VP Company Tiles, the JP Agriculture Tile, and the CN Financial Tile, leaving 15 tiles in play.[1]

5. Shuffle the Company Tiles face down into one stack.[1]

6. The player who most recently visited a bank is the first Auctioneer and takes the First Auctioneer Token, which they keep for the whole game to remind players when a new round begins.[1]

### A Turn

1. The Auctioneer reveals the top Company Tile from the stack and places it face up on the table.[2]

2. The Auctioneer writes the amount they are $\text{willing}$ to pay for the Company on their Bid Tile and places it face up in front of them; they must bid a positive, whole number.[2]

3. All other players simultaneously write their bids for the Company on their Bid Tiles and hand them to the Auctioneer without revealing them to other players; players may bid any positive whole number or zero, but may not bid the same as the Auctioneer.[2]

4. The Auctioneer examines all the Bid Tiles and announces which player submitted the highest bid (the Auctioneer is also eligible to win).[2]

5. If there is a tie for the highest bid, all players tied for the highest bid rebid; rebids follow normal rules and do not have to be higher than the first bid, and all bids are then re-evaluated.[3]

6. The Auctioneer secretly writes the winning bid amount on the back of the Company Tile and gives the Company Tile to the highest bidder, keeping the bid hidden but leaving the Tile face up.[2]

7. If the Auctioneer made the highest bid, they must record it openly for all to see.[2]

8. The Auctioneer reveals any zero bids.[2]

9. The Auctioneer gives the Bid Tiles back to their owners, who wipe them clean.[4]

10. The player to the left of the current Auctioneer becomes the next Auctioneer.[4]

11. Play continues with Phase 1 again unless there are no more Companies to be auctioned.[4]

### Scoring

1. Calculate VP in the following order: [5][4]

2. Companies: Add together all VP shown on the faces of your Company Tiles.[4]

3. Zero Bids: 2 VP for each zero bid (max 1 per round).[4]

4. Nationalization: For each of your Company Tiles that matches your nation, score 1 VP for 1 matching Company, 3 VP for 2, 6 VP for 3, or 10 VP for 4.[4]

5. Monopolization: For each industry, score based on the number of Companies you own in that industry (including your face down Industry Token): 3 VP for 2 matching Companies, 6 VP for 3, or 10 VP for 4; or 6 VP for 2 matching Companies, 10 VP for 3, or 16 VP for 4.[4]

6. Diversification: For each set of Companies containing only unique industries (including your face down Industry Token): 4 VP for 3 different Industries, 8 VP for 4; or 3 VP for 3 different Industries, 8 VP for 4, 12 VP for 5; or 4 VP for 3 different Industries, 8 VP for 4.[4]

7. Subtotal: Add all victory points earned so far to calculate your subtotal.[4]

8. Total Spent: Players add up the values on the back of their Company Tiles to calculate their total spent; the player with the highest spent is eliminated (ties eliminate all tied players).[4]

9. The player who spent the least scores VP (in case of a tie, all tied players score full points): 6 VP.[4]

10. Grand Total: Add any victory points (VP) scored from the least spent bonus to your subtotal to create your grand total.[3][4]

### Ending the Game

1. The game ends when all Company Tiles have been awarded [

[1] RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook · p.1 · stats · contents · objective

[2] RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook · p.2 · objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:

[3] RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook · p.4

[4] RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook · p.3 · Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:

[5] RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook · p.4 · Calculate VP in the following order:

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 296 ms · ask 9130 ms · total 9428 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9428 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "4 scoring example T o make your dry erase markers and boards last as long as possible, fully erase all the Tiles and player aids when you are done playing and always use the eraser instead of your fingers so that oils from your skin don’t transfer to the marker. Tied Auction special rules In case of", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047875, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm Bleed: 3mm Gives the Bid Tiles back to their owners who wipe them clean. Play continues with Phase 1 again unless there are no more Companies to be auctioned, in which case the game is over. The player to the left of the current Auctioneer becomes the next Auctioneer. When all Company Til", "headingPath": "Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm Bleed: 3mm 3-5 players 30 minutes 21 Company Tiles 5 Industry Tokens 5 Bid Tiles 5 Player Score Boards 5 Dry Erase Markers 1 First Auctioneer Token 1 Rulebook Q.E. (Quantitative Easing) is a monetary policy in which a central bank prints new money in order to buy government bonds or other", "headingPath": "stats · contents · objective", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Bleed: 3mm Bleed: 3mm There are 16 turns in a 3 or 4 player game and 15 turns in a 5 player game. Each turn a Company is auctioned. Players will bid on the Company and whoever bids the highest is awarded the Company Tile. Simultaneously write their bids for the Company on their Bid Tiles. Hand them ", "headingPath": "objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Designer Artist Rules Editing Gavin Birnbaum Anca Gavril Travis D. Hill Bleed: 3mm", "headingPath": "Calculate VP in the following order:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 1, "quote": null, "headingPath": "stats · contents · objective", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Calculate VP in the following order:", "sharpsignalDocId": 617}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 617 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 617 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 0.89946 of 3173 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 22, 2026 23:20 UTC

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 QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)		p.4	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
#2	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:	p.3	0.047875 (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 QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	stats · contents · objective	p.1	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
#4	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:	p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Calculate VP in the following order:	p.4	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))	82

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 5 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 QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)		p.4	#1	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 QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:	p.2	#4	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
#3	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Calculate VP in the following order:	p.4	#5	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	stats · contents · objective	p.1	#3	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
#5	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:	p.3	#2	0.047875 (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 QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	stats · contents · objective	p.1	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	objective · Gameplay · Then all other players: · The Auctioneer: · 4. Reveal zero bids and record VP · Players who bid zero:	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)		p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Players who bid zero: · The Auctioneer: · final scoring End of Game · Calculate VP in the following order:	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK QE — Rulebook (corpus doc 617)	Calculate VP in the following order:	p.4	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 296 ms · first delta 1756 ms · total 9428 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 296 ms · ask 9130 ms · gateway work 9428 ms · total 9428 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2376
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 134.4 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.617 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 20s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 8s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 549), 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.