RuleSage cited table rulings
← Terraforming Mars

You asked

When does the game end?

Answered counted as answered
The game ends when the following conditions are met:
1. There is enough oxygen to breathe (14%), oceans enough to allow Earth-like weather (9), and the temperature is well above freezing (+8 ˚C).[1]
2. All three global parameters (ocean, temperature, and oxygen) have reached their goals.[2][3]
The game ends at the end of that generation, specifically after the production phase.[2][3] In solo games, the game ends after generation 14.[4]
[1] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.3 · GAME OVERVIEW
[2] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.12 · GAME END
[3] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.3 · GLOBAL PARAMETERS
[4] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME BOARD

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile
live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings
search 214 ms · ask 7406 ms · total 7634 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 7634 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 12, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "When all three global parameters (ocean, temperature, and oxygen) have reached their goals, the game ends at the end of that generation. After the production phase, players have one extra chance to convert plants into greenery tiles (in player order; this may also trigger other effects such as place", "headingPath": "GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031754, "snippet": "In Terraforming Mars, you control a corporation, and you buy and play cards describing different projects. The projects often directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process, but can also consist of business enterprises of different kinds. In order to win, you have to accumulate a good", "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030415, "snippet": "TR: Your TR at the end of the game is your basic score. Move your marker onward from this point as you add VPs from the rest of the scoring. Awards: Gives the leading player in that category 5 VPs and the runner-up 2 VPs (except in a 2-player game). Ties are friendly: Players at the same level get t", "headingPath": "Final scoring", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.029469, "snippet": "There is no requirement that must be met to fund an award. The first player to fund an award pays 8 M€ and places a player marker on it. The next player to fund an award pays 14 M€, the last pays 20 M€. Only three awards may be funded. Each award can only be funded once. In the final scoring, each a", "headingPath": "D) Fund an award", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029324, "snippet": "Temperature, oxygen, and ocean are called global parameters . Whenever you raise one of them, your terraform rating also increases by that much, giving you a higher income and score. When a global parameter has reached its goal, it can't be raised any further, and so does not increase your TR. You m", "headingPath": "GLOBAL PARAMETERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029083, "snippet": "Terraform rating (TR) track: All players start at 20. This is your basic income (see pages 6 and 8) and VPs. You increase it every time you terraform. Generation track: The generation marker measures time (rounds) and starts at 1, moving up on the TR track. Solo games start with a TR of 14, and end ", "headingPath": "GAME BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.028814, "snippet": "If you meet the criteria of a milestone, you may claim it by paying 8 M€ and placing your player marker on it. A milestone may only be claimed by one player, and only 3 of the 5 milestones may be claimed in total, so there is a race for these! Each claimed milestone is worth 5 VPs at the end of the ", "headingPath": "C) Claim a milestone", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.028778, "snippet": "Each player starts the game with a corporation card . During the game, players buy and play many project cards to get benefits of different kinds. The cards are divided into active cards (blue frame, see example), automated cards (green) and event cards (red), read more on page 10. Tag: Places the c", "headingPath": "CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME OVERVIEW", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GLOBAL PARAMETERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME BOARD", "sharpsignalDocId": 59}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it); rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base-rulebook boost: not recorded (this ruling predates it)
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)
debug row retained until
Oct 31, 2026 13:49

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. How much wider that pool was is set gateway-side and is NOT REPORTED for this ruling, and neither are the answerer's final rows — so rulesage has nothing of its own to show beside these.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. How many arms fused this ruling was NOT RECORDED (it predates the boost trail, ran on the path that stored none, or stored one that could not be read), and the ceiling depends on that count (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60): 2 arms top out at 0.03279; 3 arms top out at 0.04918. So a score above 0.03279 here is not an anomaly: it is arithmetic proof a boost arm voted, and the measured band 0.016–0.033 (taken on two-arm asks) is what does not apply. 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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME END p.12 0.032787 (at the 2-arm ceiling (0.03279) — the top of a 2-arm fuse; whether more arms ran here was never recorded) 300
#2 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME OVERVIEW p.3 0.031754 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#3 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) Final scoring p.12 0.030415 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) D) Fund an award p.11 0.029469 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GLOBAL PARAMETERS p.3 0.029324 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME BOARD p.4 0.029083 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) C) Claim a milestone p.10 0.028814 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) CARDS p.6 0.028778 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 300

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.

the passages the answerer read: NOT RECORDED for this ruling. Any of three things leaves this empty, and they are all different from the answerer having had nothing to read: this ask may never have reached a gateway at all; a multi-book ask keeps each book's own context on that book's own page rather than here; or the gateway build that answered may simply not report it. What this NEVER means is that the answerer read nothing — an answer was composed from passages either way, and their absence here is a gap in what we were told, not in what it read.

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 Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME OVERVIEW p.3 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME END p.12 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GLOBAL PARAMETERS p.3 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Terraforming Mars — Rulebook (corpus doc 59) GAME BOARD p.4 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 214 ms · first delta 6818 ms · total 7634 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 214 ms · ask 7406 ms · gateway work 7634 ms · total 7634 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2392
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
113
tok/sec
148.5 tok/sec — 113 output tokens in 0.761 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 4s ago)
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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 8), 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.