Ruling — The Colonists

← The Colonists

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: The Colonistsbg-192836-en-1e

The game is played over one or more Eras.[1] The course of play is as follows:

**Setup and Starting the Game**

1. Determine a starting player.[2][3]

2. If starting in a later Era, lay out all necessary components, including Colonies.[2]

3. Set up the game board by laying out the Places of all Eras prior to the Era you want to start in, following the same procedure as the setup of Era I.[2] Before laying out the next Era's Places, perform the first step of that Era's card.[2]

4. If starting in a later Era, each player receives 1 random permanent Improvement from each skipped Era (placed face up) and 2 random Improvements from the last skipped Era into their hand.[2]

5. Decide which Buildings, Embassies, and goods you want to start with, using available Dollars to purchase them (up to the last skipped Era).[2]

6. Place Buildings and Storage Facilities at the edge of the playing area up to the last Era being played.[4]

7. Place necessary goods at the edge of the playing and leave unused goods in the box.[4]

8. Place 2 Farms on available Building spots on your Community board and place 1 Farmer in each.[4]

9. Fill Basic Storage with a combination of Wood and Clay, place 1 Food in your Warehouse, and 6 Tools in your Toolbox.[4]

10. Before your first turn, place your Steward on a Market of your choice (this initial placement does not count as a turn).[5]

**Course of Play**

1. At the start of each Era, make preparations as described on the corresponding Era card.[1]

2. Each Era consists of 5 Years.[1]

3. Each Year consists of 2 Half-Years (Summer and Winter).[5]

4. At the start of each Half-Year, move the Round indicator to the appropriate space on the Round card.[5]

5. In each Half-Year, each player takes 3 consecutive turns in clockwise order; a player must complete all three turns before the next player begins.[1][5]

6. Each turn begins by moving your Steward from one Place to another and carrying out the action of the target Place.[5]

7. At the start of each Year, turn over the topmost Market card and place it face up on top of the pile (returning the previous Year's Market card to the box if necessary).[6]

8. Turn over three Places from the top of the draw pile and place them face up next to the pile (skip this step in the fifth Year of an Era if the pile is empty).[6]

9. At the end of each Year, generate goods and distribute Workers.[1]

10. You may also have to sustain your Workers depending on the number of Eras played.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.6 · Notes: · Course of Play

[2] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.23

[3] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.5

[4] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.4 · 1. Buildings, Storage Facilities, and Goods

[5] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.7 · The Half-Years · Your Turn

[6] RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook · p.6 · Start of a Year

That's the page. Back to the table.

🔧 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 84 ms · ask 5736 ms · total 8748 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 2926 ms · generation 5822 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.047183, "snippet": "The game is played over one or more Eras At the start of each Era, you have to make some preparations, as described on the corresponding Era card . Then you play 5 Years , each consisting of 2 Half-Years (i.e. Rounds) . In each Half-Year, each player takes 3 turns next Year. Also, you may have to su", "headingPath": "Notes: · Course of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.045133, "snippet": "As the starting player, you go first and, at the end of every Year, you may add the new Places to the game board. The starting player is indicated by the starting player marker. The starting player does not change automatically. To become starting player, you must either move to the Head Official or", "headingPath": "Starting Player · End of a Year · 1. New Starting Player · 2. Adding New Places (not in the 5th Year of an Era)", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.044408, "snippet": "23 Starting in a later Era You do not have to start this game in Era I necessarily. You can start in any Era, if you like (even in Era IV). If you start in another Era but Era I, there are some changes to the setup of the game. Lay out all the components that you need (including the Colonies). Then ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "7 Special Ambassadors : You only need the Special Ambassadors if you are playing at least through Era II with the following Colonies in play: Alchemist Colony “Alchemist” Special Ambassador Altruist Colony “Altruist” Special Ambassador Laborer Colony “Laborer“ Special Ambassador 3. Starting Player R", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044002, "snippet": "Now 2 Half-Years are played: a Summer and a Winter Half-Year . Move the Round indicator to the appropriate space of the Round card at the start of each Half-Year. Beginning with the starting player and in clockwise order, each player takes 3 consecutive turns (see 'Your Turn' in the following sectio", "headingPath": "The Half-Years · Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.042671, "snippet": "At the start of a new Era, place the current Era card to the left of the Round card. Return the Era card of the previous Era to the game box. The Era card tells you which preparations have to be made for the upcoming Era: First, a new game element is introduced: In Era I , this is the second Market ", "headingPath": "Start of an Era", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "There are only two ways to place the very first Place: it must go into one of the two 'indentations' of the first Market (see the illustration). The orientation of the Place tiles does not matter at all. You may leave 'holes' in the game board, as long as you follow the placement rules. You may 'plu", "headingPath": "Notes:", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "At the start of each Year, turn over the topmost Market card and place it face up on top of the pile. Before you do, return the Market card of the previous Year to the game box (if necessary) -it is no longer needed. The Market card indicates which actions can be taken at the Markets (see page 7) . ", "headingPath": "Start of a Year", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Notes: · Course of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. Buildings, Storage Facilities, and Goods", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "The Half-Years · Your Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Start of a Year", "sharpsignalDocId": 682}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 682 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 682 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 0.90648 of 2021 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 25, 2026 20:49 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 The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Notes: · Course of Play	p.6	0.047183 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Starting Player · End of a Year · 1. New Starting Player · 2. Adding New Places (not in the 5th Year of an Era)	p.20	0.045133 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.23	0.044408 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.5	0.044118 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	The Half-Years · Your Turn	p.7	0.044002 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Start of an Era	p.6	0.042671 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Notes:	p.5	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
#8	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Start of a Year	p.6	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 55 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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Notes: · Course of Play	p.6	#1	0.047183 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.23	#3	0.044408 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Start of a Year	p.6	#8	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 The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.5	#4	0.044118 (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 The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Phase 4: Sustenance Phase · Phase 5: Production Phase · Saving the Game	p.24	#11	0.029514 (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
#6	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Improvements and Hand Cards	p.16	#13	0.028543 (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
#7	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	1. Buildings, Storage Facilities, and Goods	p.4	#10	0.029644 (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
#8	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	The Half-Years · Your Turn	p.7	#5	0.044002 (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 Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Notes: · Course of Play	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.23	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)		p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	1. Buildings, Storage Facilities, and Goods	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	The Half-Years · Your Turn	p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK The Colonists — Rulebook (corpus doc 682)	Start of a Year	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 84 ms · first delta 2650 ms · total 8748 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 2926 ms · retrieval 84 ms · ask 5736 ms · gateway work 5822 ms · total 8748 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3489
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 619
tok/sec: 199.6 tok/sec — 619 output tokens in 3.101 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 16s 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 4s 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 615), 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.