RuleSage cited table rulings
← Evolution: Climate

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Evolution: Climatebg-182134-en-1e

To play Evolution: Climate, follow these steps:
**Setup**
1. Assemble the Climate Board on the table.[1]
2. Put the Climate Marker in the TEMPERATE zone of the Climate Board.[1]
3. Put the Food Tokens in a pile (the Food Bank).[1]
4. Give each player 1 Food Token Bag.[1]
5. Shuffle the Trait Cards and place them facedown on the table (the Draw Deck).[1]
6. Remove cards from the Draw Deck depending upon the number of players: 2 Players (remove half), 3 Players (remove 60), 4 Players (remove 30), 5 & 6 Players (do not remove cards).[1]
7. Shuffle and place the 15 card deck of Cold Side Climate Events on the bottom left side of the Climate Board, draw the top card, and place it faceup under the named climate zone.[1]
8. Shuffle and place the 15 card deck of Hot Side Climate Events on the bottom right side of the Climate Board, draw the top card, and place it faceup under the named climate zone.[1]
9. Randomly determine the first player and give them the First Player Marker.[1]
**Game Structure**
A game usually takes 5 to 7 rounds, and each round consists of the following 5 phases:[2]
1. Deal Cards [2]
2. Select Food Cards [2]
3. Play Cards [2]
4. Modify Environment [2]
5. Feeding [2]
**Phase 1: Deal Cards**
1. Place a Species Board in front of any player who does not have one; if it is the first round, every player gets a Species Board.[2]
2. If it is the first round, put a green Wooden Marker on the '1' space of the Population track and a brown Wooden Marker on the '1' space of the Body Size track.[2]
3. Deal each player 4 cards from the Draw Deck, plus 1 card for each Species Board they have.[2]
4. If the Draw Deck runs out (or ran out due to extinction in the previous round), this is the final round.[2]
5. If the Draw Deck runs out, shuffle the Discard Pile into a new Draw Deck (5-6 players) or use the cards set aside (2-4 players).[2]
**Phase 2: Select Food Cards**
1. Each player chooses a Trait Card from their hand and puts it facedown on the Watering Hole; these are the Food Cards.[2]
**Phase 3: Play Cards**
1. Starting with the First Player and moving clockwise, a player may play as many or as few Trait Cards as they want.[3]
2. During this phase, players play their cards at the same time without looking at what opponents are doing.[4]
3. A player may perform any of these three actions with each Trait Card in any order and multiple times:
* Place a Trait Card facedown above one of their species (a species may not have duplicates or more than 4 Trait Cards).[3]
* Discard a Trait Card faceup into the Discard Pile to get a new species (the new species must be placed to the left or right of existing species, not between them; the new species starts with a green marker on '1' Population and a brown marker on '1' Body Size).[3]
* Discard a Trait Card faceup into the Discard Pile to increase the Body Size or Population of one of their species by 1 (markers cannot move beyond 6, unless a trait like Hard Shell allows otherwise).[3]
4. Any time during their turn, a player may remove a Trait Card from a species and place it faceup in the Discard Pile to make room or remove an unadvantageous trait.[3]
5. After playing cards, a player may return any number of cards from their hand to the bottom of the facedown Draw Deck and draw the same number from the top (provided enough cards are available).[3]
6. Newly drawn cards cannot be played as traits until the next round's Phase 3.[3]
7. When everyone has played, flip all newly played Trait Cards faceup.[3]
**Phase 4: Modify Environment**
1. Check for Trait Cards with a specific icon on the top left corner; if a player has more than one, they choose the order of activation.[5]
2. Reveal the Food Cards on the Watering Hole.[5]
3. Move the Climate Marker 1 zone warmer if there are more Sun icons than Snowflake icons on the Food Cards, or 1 zone colder if
[1] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook · p.4 · SET-UP
[2] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook · p.6 · COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS
[3] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook · p.7 · PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population
[4] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook · p.11 · EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · …
[5] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook · p.8 · PHASE 4: MODIFY ENVIRONMENT · 1) Adjust the Climate · 2) Trigger Climate Events · 3) Climate Population Loss

One rule clearer, zero feelings hurt.

🔧 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 6662 ms · total 6746 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 6746 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 7, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Starting with the First Player and moving clockwise around the table, a player may play as many or as few Trait Cards as they want. There is no limit to the number of cards a player can save in their hand for a later time. Play will go one time around the table which means every player will only get", "headingPath": "PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047883, "snippet": "This game is the culmination of years of collaboration between nine game designers, a world renowned nature artist, and a Russian scientist. The result is an exceedingly fun board game that was featured in the world's leading scientific journal: Go to www.NorthStarGames.com for products that can exp", "headingPath": "WELCOME TO EVOLUTION: CLIMATE! · MORE WAYS TO PLAY!", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.047163, "snippet": "If the Population of any species is reduced to 0, it goes extinct and the owner immediately does the following: Discards the Trait Card(s) on that species and draws 1 card from the Draw Deck for each discarded card. If the Draw Deck runs out of cards, shuffle the Discard Pile into a new Draw Deck (5", "headingPath": "EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "G O A L The goal of Evolution: Climate is to thrive in the midst of an ever-changing ecosystem where food is scarce, predators lurk, and the climate can fluxuate between extreme temperatures. You will get points for feeding your species, increasing their population, and evolving them to best ensure ", "headingPath": "COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.044337, "snippet": "Add (or remove) Plant Food to (or from) the Watering Hole based upon the Food Cards and the Climate zone. The number in the leaf at the bottom right of each Food Card represents the amount of Plant Food that will be added to the Watering Hole. First total all of these numbers, then adjust that amoun", "headingPath": "4) Adjust the Plant Food · 5) Replace Climate Event Card · PHASE 5: FEEDING · Feeding Non-Carnivores", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Assemble the Climate Board on the table. One side is for 2-3 player games and the other side is for 4-6 player games. Put the Climate Marker in the TEMPERATE zone of the Climate Board. Put the Food Tokens in a pile. This is the Food Bank. There is supposed to be an unlimited supply of Food in the Fo", "headingPath": "SET-UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "Game Designers: Artist: Project Manager: Game Developers: Graphic Designer: Card Layout Design: Rules: Editing: Scientific Advisors: Production Manager: Playtester Coordinator: Official Playtesters: Other Playtesters: Dominic Crapuchettes, Dmitry Knorre, Sergey Machin Catherine Hamilton Dominic Crap", "headingPath": "GAME CREDITS · GAME HISTORY", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "This species has the option to take Food even when it is not hungry . Place the taken Food on the Fat Tissue card instead of the Species Board. The Food stored on Fat Tissue may not be greater than the Body Size of this species. Immediately before the Food Cards are revealed next round, place the Fo", "headingPath": "Fat Tissue", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "SET-UP", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PHASE 4: MODIFY ENVIRONMENT · 1) Adjust the Climate · 2) Trigger Climate Events · 3) Climate Population Loss", "sharpsignalDocId": 568}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 568 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 568 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 0.89822 of 3144 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 25, 2026 18:52 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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population p.7 0.048916 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) WELCOME TO EVOLUTION: CLIMATE! · MORE WAYS TO PLAY! p.3 0.047883 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · … p.11 0.047163 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS p.6 0.047123 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) 4) Adjust the Plant Food · 5) Replace Climate Event Card · PHASE 5: FEEDING · Feeding Non-Carnivores p.9 0.044337 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) SET-UP p.4 0.031746 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) GAME CREDITS · GAME HISTORY p.20 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
#8 RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) Fat Tissue p.13 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

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 25 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 atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population p.7 #1 0.048916 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · … p.11 #3 0.047163 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) p.1 #11 0.028039 (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
#4 RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) PHASE 4: MODIFY ENVIRONMENT · 1) Adjust the Climate · 2) Trigger Climate Events · 3) Climate Population Loss p.8 #9 0.029469 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) End of Feeding p.10 #12 0.014493 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) SET-UP p.4 #6 0.031746 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) WELCOME TO EVOLUTION: CLIMATE! · MORE WAYS TO PLAY! p.3 #2 0.047883 (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 Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS p.6 #4 0.047123 (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

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) SET-UP p.4 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) COMPONENTS · PLAYING THE GAME · PHASE 1: DEAL CARDS · PHASE 2: SELECT FOOD CARDS p.6 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) PHASE 3: PLAY CARDS · 1) Play a Trait · 2) Create a New Species · 3) Increase Body Size or Population p.7 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) EXTINCTION · END OF GAME SCORING · Scoring: · VARIANT: NO CLIMATE EVENTS · VARIANT: QUICK PLAY · 2 AND 6-PLAYER RULES · … p.11 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Evolution: Climate — Rulebook (corpus doc 568) PHASE 4: MODIFY ENVIRONMENT · 1) Adjust the Climate · 2) Trigger Climate Events · 3) Climate Population Loss p.8 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 83 ms · first delta 1592 ms · total 6746 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 6662 ms · gateway work 6746 ms · total 6746 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3049
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
1024
tok/sec
201.1 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.091 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 42s 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 9s 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 500), 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.