Ruling — Babylonia

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Babyloniabg-266164-en-1e

### Setup

1. Place the board in the centre of the table.[1]

2. For 4 players, use the whole board; for 3 players, do not use the area of land north of the Tigris; for 2 players, do not use the area of land south of the Euphrates.[1][2]

3. Place a Ziggurat on each hexagon outlined in blue.[1]

4. Mix the Cities and Crop Fields face down and place a tile face up randomly on each hexagon outlined in green.[1]

5. Display Ziggurat Cards numbers 1-7 at the side of the board.[1]

6. Each player takes the Stand, the Clan Tokens, and the Scoring Marker of a single colour.[1]

7. Each player mixes their Clan Tokens face down on the table to form a personal reserve.[1]

8. Each player draws 5 tokens and places them on their Stand.[1]

9. Each player places their Scoring Marker on the '0' space of the Scoring Track.[1]

### A Turn

The starter player is chosen at random, and each player plays their entire turn before passing clockwise to the next player.[3] On your turn, you must perform the following steps:

1. **Play Clan Tokens from your Stand**: You have two options:[3]

* **Option A**: Play any 2 Clan Tokens (Nobles and/or Farmers).[3] If you choose this, you can place one or both tokens in any river hexagon.[3] In the first round, the first player can only play 1 Clan Token and the second player can only play 2.[3]

* **Option B**: Play 3 or more Farmers (no Nobles).[3] If you choose this, you cannot place any of them in the river.[3]

* Tokens can be placed in any free hexagon (a hexagon that does not contain any Clan Tokens, Location Tiles, or Ziggurats).[3] Tokens placed in rivers must be placed face down.[3]

2. **Score Cities and Ziggurats that have been surrounded**: This must be done after finishing playing your Clan Tokens.[4]

* **Scoring Ziggurats**: A Ziggurat is scored when all land hexagons next to it are occupied with Clan Tokens of any player.[4][5] If the Ziggurat is next to a river, river hexagons do not need to be occupied to score it, but if they are occupied, those tokens are counted.[4][5] The player with the most Clan Tokens next to the Ziggurat (including those in the river) chooses one available Ziggurat Card and places it in front of them.[5]

* **Scoring Cities**: A City is scored when all land hexagons next to it are occupied with Clan Tokens of any player.[4] If the City is next to a river, river hexagons do not need to be occupied to score it, but if they are occupied, those tokens are counted.[4] The player with the most Clan Tokens next to the City (including those in the river) wins the City Tile and places it face up in front of them; in the case of a tie, the tile is discarded.[5] When a player wins a City Tile, all players receive points equal to the number of cities they have in front of them.[5]

* **Scoring Nobles**: In a surrounded City, each player receives 2 points for each of their Clan Tokens that has the same symbol as the City's symbols and is next to or connected to the City via their own tokens (river tokens count for connection but provide no points as they are face down).[4]

* **Scoring Crop Fields**: To place a Farmer Token in a Crop Field, you must already have another of your Clan Tokens (Noble and/or Farmer) next to that field.[4] The field is scored and removed from the game (your token takes its place).[4] You receive the points indicated on the field, or if it shows a City symbol, you get as many points as there are Cities in front of all players.[4]

3. **Fill your Stand to 5 tokens**: Draw Clan Tokens from your personal reserve to refill your Stand to 5 tokens; if the reserve is exhausted, continue with the tokens left on your Stand.[6]

### End of the Game

The game ends immediately at the end of a player's turn if:

1. That player no longer has any Clan Tokens on their Stand.[6]

2. Only one City or no Cities remain on the board.[6]

The player with the most points wins.[6] In the case of a tie, the player with the most Cities in front of them wins; if the tie persists, the tied players share the victory.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.3 · COMPONENTS

[2] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.2

[3] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.4 · SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND

[4] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.5 · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded

[5] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.6 · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded

[6] RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook · p.7 · 3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 79 ms · ask 9909 ms · total 14896 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 4904 ms · generation 9992 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "In Babylonia you will try to make your clan prosper under the peaceful and imperial rule of the era. You must place your nobles on the map to make your relationships with the cities as profitable as possible. Placing your tokens wisely next to the Ziggurats will permit you to get the special power o", "headingPath": "SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "Adam decides to play any 2 Clan Tokens, placing one of them (a Farmer) face down in the river. Ziggurats: Each time you place a Clan Token next to a Ziggurat (even if the hexagon is in the river or even if you already have tokens next to that Ziggurat), after placing your token you receive one point", "headingPath": "1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "Once you have finished scoring the surrounded Cities and surrounded Ziggurats (if any), you must draw Clan Tokens from your personal reserve to fill up your Stand so that it has 5 tokens again. If your reserve has been exhausted, continue playing with the tokens that you have left on your Stand. The", "headingPath": "3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "After winning a Ziggurat, choose one of the available Ziggurat Cards and place it face up in front of you. You can have more than one card at any one time and combine their effects (∞ = permanent effect; x1 = one time effect). Receive 10 points immediately . Next, turn the card face down: you can no", "headingPath": "ZIGGURAT CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Place the board in the centre of the table. This shows the south-eastern region of ancient Mesopotamia with its two main rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates. For 4 players, the whole board is used. For 3 players, the area of land north of the Tigris is NOT USED. For 2 players, the area of land sout", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Adam places his Merchant next to the City , meaning the City is now surrounded by land. The Nobles score as follows: Adam gets 12 points for the 3 Merchants and the 3 Priests that he has next to or connected to the City, and Valentina gets 6 points for the Merchant and the 2 Priests that she has nex", "headingPath": "Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "2 The rebirth of the Neo-Babylonian empire, above all, during the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 BC), was a time of splendour and wealth. This was mainly due to the proliferation of trade routes between the main cities and settlements in the area and the optimal use of the fertile valley betwee", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "RULEBOOK", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "COMPONENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 724}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 724 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 724 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 0.90562 of 3274 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 16:09 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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND	p.4	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded	p.5	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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS	p.7	0.047371 (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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	ZIGGURAT CARDS	p.8	0.046898 (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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	COMPONENTS	p.3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded	p.6	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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)		p.2	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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)		p.1	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))	8

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 9 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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded	p.5	#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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	ZIGGURAT CARDS	p.8	#4	0.046898 (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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	COMPONENTS	p.3	#5	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
#4	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)		p.2	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)		p.1	#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
#6	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded	p.6	#6	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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS	p.7	#3	0.047371 (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 Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND	p.4	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	COMPONENTS	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)		p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	SUMMARY AND OBJECTIVE · PLAYING · 1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	1. PLAY CLAN TOKENS FROM YOUR STAND · 2. SCORE CITIES AND ZIGGURRATS THAT HAVE BEEN SURROUNDED · Scoring Cities that have been surrounded	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	Scoring Cities that have been surrounded · Adam · Scoring Ziggurats that have been surrounded	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Babylonia — Rulebook (corpus doc 724)	3. FILL YOUR STAND TO 5 TOKENS · END OF THE GAME · GAME VARIANT · CREDITS	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 79 ms · first delta 2055 ms · total 14896 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 4904 ms · retrieval 79 ms · ask 9909 ms · gateway work 9992 ms · total 14896 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3042
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1023
tok/sec: 130.3 tok/sec — 1023 output tokens in 7.850 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 658), 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.