RuleSage cited table rulings
← Federation

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Federationbg-345868-en-1e

The game is played over 5 rounds.[1] Each round is divided into two main phases: the Ambassador Phase and the Executive Phase.[1]
**Ambassador Phase**
During this phase, players perform their actions 4 times per round in turn.[1] A player's turn consists of a mandatory phase and an optional phase:[1]
1. **Play 1 Ambassador token (mandatory):**
* Choose one unused Ambassador token and place it on an available Senate action space on either its Funding side or its Voting side.[2][1]
* If using an Alteration token, you may place it on your Ambassador token when you play it; the token's characteristics and potential bonus are replaced by those of the Alteration token for that round.[2][3]
* If played on the Funding side: You immediately receive the crystal bonus (if applicable) before performing the space's action.[1] If you use the Funding symbol, you immediately place 1 Special Mission token on the corresponding Special Mission of your player board, making it available.[2]
* If played on the Voting side: No immediate effect is triggered, but two effects are triggered during the Executive phase.[2] You may also place your Assistant die on the same space to increase your Voting power, provided the die is placed as part of the same action.[4][2]
* Perform the action of the space.[5][2] The three main types of action are: 1) Federated Planets, 2) Rooms of the Senate, and 3) Spy.[5]
2. **Perform an optional action:**
* Place 1 spaceship on an available Special Mission on your player board (if you have the required level of authority) and perform the Special Mission.[1]
**Executive Phase**
This phase occurs at the end of the round and is played in clockwise order, beginning with the player who holds the President of the Senate pawn.[1] During this phase, players receive income, fund Major Projects, and pass laws.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.7 · HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …
[2] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.8
[3] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.15 · 2 / BLUE LUNAR PLANET, 6MOON · FOCUS ON ALTERATION TOKENS · When can you play an Alteration token?
[4] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.23 · FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die?
[5] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook · p.8 · 1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory)

So says the rulebook. So plays 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 157 ms · ask 4203 ms · total 5691 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 1330 ms · generation 4361 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 7, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Choose a Start player using any method that is mutually agreeable to all players. The Start player is given the President of the Senate pawn to begin the game. Turn the Starting tiles facedown and mix them thoroughly. Next, randomly select as many tiles as there are players in the game plus one. Tur", "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "When playing a 3-player game, the rules are the same as with 4 players except for the following modifications: With 3 players, add the components marked with 2 and 3 Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding spaces. 1 / At the beginning of each round, reveal a Federated Planet Blocking tile and", "headingPath": "3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.047131, "snippet": "When playing a 2-player game, the rules are the same as with 4 players but with the following modifications: With 2 players, add the components marked with 2 Place each Major Project marker on the corresponding space on the Funding track. Place each Medal of Honor on the corresponding space. 1 / At ", "headingPath": "2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.045285, "snippet": "The players do not have an active Assistant die at the beginning of the game. They receive it the first time they perform an action that increases their Assistant die. The Assistant die is placed in the Assistant Die space on your player board when it is not being used with a Voting Ambassador. The ", "headingPath": "FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die?", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.044589, "snippet": "Perform the action of the space. It does not matter which side you chose when you placed your Ambassador token. There are 3 main types of action: 1) Federated Planets, 2) Rooms of the Senate, and 3) Spy. (see p.14).", "headingPath": "1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory)", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "For your first game, the Produc Megastructure tokens are pri 6 Place the resources next to the central board. Place the 6 Trade discs for each player on the yellow planet, Arratooine. 1 Sort the Alteration tokens by power, mix each set thoroughly, and then place 4 each facedown on the corresponding ", "headingPath": "SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "For each side of the Senate (left side vs. right side), add up the total number of votes, including the Ambassador tokens and Assistant dice (if any) for all players. The law with the most votes is passed. In case of a tie, the player with the President pawn chooses which of the 2 laws is passed. Th", "headingPath": "A / Determine which law is passed · B / Score prestige points · END OF THE ROUND", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.030018, "snippet": "Choosing and playing an Ambassador token in the Senate allows you to perform a Senate action. (see The Senate p.14) 1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory) / A B Federated Planet Action Spy Action Rooms of the Senate A. If your Ambassador token or Alteration token is played using its Fun", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2 / BLUE LUNAR PLANET, 6MOON · FOCUS ON ALTERATION TOKENS · When can you play an Alteration token?", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 23, "quote": null, "headingPath": "FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die?", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory)", "sharpsignalDocId": 698}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 698 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 698 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 0.91075 of 1535 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until
Nov 26, 2026 04:18 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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · … p.7 0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play p.26 0.04741 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game p.27 0.047131 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die? p.23 0.045285 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory) p.8 0.044589 (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)) 215
#6 RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) SETUP 4-PLAYER GAME CENTRAL BOARD p.4 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
#7 RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) A / Determine which law is passed · B / Score prestige points · END OF THE ROUND p.13 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
#8 RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) p.8 0.030018 (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 35 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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 3-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 3 players · B / Setup · C / How to play p.26 #2 0.04741 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory) p.8 #5 0.044589 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die? p.23 #4 0.045285 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) DEEP SPACE TILES p.31 #10 0.02879 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) p.8 #8 0.030018 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 2 / BLUE LUNAR PLANET, 6MOON · FOCUS ON ALTERATION TOKENS · When can you play an Alteration token? p.15 #11 0.027673 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 2-PLAYER GAME · A / Components for 2 players · B / Setup · C / How to play · D / End of the game p.27 #3 0.047131 (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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · … p.7 #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

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 Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) HOW TO PLAY · I / Ambassador Phase · II / Executive Phase · PLAYERS' TURN (1 or 2 successive actions) · A player's turn is divided into 2 successive phases. The first phase is mandatory; the second is optional: · FOCUS ON THE AMBASSADOR TOKEN · … p.7 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) p.8 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 2 / BLUE LUNAR PLANET, 6MOON · FOCUS ON ALTERATION TOKENS · When can you play an Alteration token? p.15 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) FOCUS ON THE ASSISTANT DIE · When can you play your Assistant die? p.23 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Federation — Rulebook (corpus doc 698) 1. PLAY 1 AMBASSADOR TOKEN (main action, mandatory) p.8 no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split
retrieval 157 ms · first delta 2157 ms · total 5691 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown
queued 1330 ms · retrieval 157 ms · ask 4203 ms · gateway work 4361 ms · total 5691 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3588
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
433
tok/sec
201.9 tok/sec — 433 output tokens in 2.145 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 53s 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 0s 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 631), 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.