RuleSage cited table rulings
← Carcassonne

You asked

How do I set up the game?

Answered counted as answered
1. Return river tiles to the box.[1]
2. Place the starting tile (with a dark back) in the middle of the table.[1]
3. Shuffle the remaining land tiles and place them face down in several stacks within easy reach of all players.[1]
4. Place the scoreboard near the play area.[1]
5. Each player chooses a color and takes 7 meeples of that color to form their supply.[1]
6. Place your 8th meeple on the '0' space on the scoreboard.[1]
7. Return all unused colors of meeple to the box.[1]
8. For the first game, return the 5 abbots to the box.[1]
[1] RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook · p.2 · CONTENTS & SETUP
🔧 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 209 ms · ask 3859 ms · total 4081 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 4081 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Welcome to Carcassonne ! This rulebook will quickly guide you through the simple rules of this modern classic. After this brief introduction, you will be able to explain the rules to your fellow players and immediately start playing. We'll start with how to set up the game, and will explain a bit ab", "headingPath": "CONTENTS & SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.016129, "snippet": "Find a fun, interactive tutorial for Carcassonne at Dized! The tutorial will guide you step by step through your first game. Just visit the website below or download the Dized app to get started. Have fun playing Carcassonne! iOS · ANDROID · DIZED.COM", "headingPath": "No need to read the rules!", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.015873, "snippet": "That's all you need to know to start playing Carcassonne ! We've summarized the main points below, and explained a couple more details: You must place the tile you drew, making sure the landscape matches up. In the rare event that you cannot place the tile you drew in a way that continues the landsc", "headingPath": "3. Score points · Summary · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.015625, "snippet": "In Carcassonne , you place down land tiles to create long roads, build large cities, visit monasteries and cultivate the fertile land. While building, you place your meeple as travelers, knights, and monks, or later as farmers. This will earn you points. At the end of the game, players will resolve ", "headingPath": "OBJECT OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a traveler · Roads", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.015385, "snippet": "These are the most important concepts of Carcassonne . Now that you understand them, you can apply them to other features in the game. Place a meeple as a knight First, check whether there are any meeple anywhere in the city . If there aren't, you may place one of your meeple as a knight on one city", "headingPath": "3. Score points · Cities · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a monk", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.015152, "snippet": "Unfortunately, Carcassonne needs to end as well... but we still want to know who won! The game ends when all of the land tiles have been placed and a player is unable to draw and place a tile during their turn. When the game ends, resolve the fi nal scoring to determine the winner. During final scor", "headingPath": "GAME END AND FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.014925, "snippet": "The tile you have just drawn could complete the road on the bottom-left tile, but because there is already a meeple on that road, you would not be able to place a meeple on it. Instead, you place the tile so that it matches up with the landscape, but does not connect to that road. You would like to ", "headingPath": "Multiple Meeple on the Same Feature", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.014706, "snippet": "If you wish to extend your game experience, you can take a look at the strategy tips and expansions on the supplemental rule sheet. Have fun! © 2000, © 2023 Hans im Glück Verlags-GmbH / Birnauer Str. 15, 80809 Munich, Germany Hans im Glück and Z-Man Games are committed to diverse representation and ", "headingPath": "GAME END AND FINAL SCORING", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "CONTENTS & SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 123}]
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 13:58

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 Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) CONTENTS & SETUP p.2 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 Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) No need to read the rules! p.1 0.016129 (inside the measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 (measured on two-arm asks; this ruling's arm count was never recorded)) 251
#3 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) 3. Score points · Summary · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple p.5 0.015873 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#4 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) OBJECT OF THE GAME · GAMEPLAY · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a traveler · Roads p.3 0.015625 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#5 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) 3. Score points · Cities · 1. Place a land tile · 2. Place a meeple as a monk p.4 0.015385 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#6 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) GAME END AND FINAL SCORING p.6 0.015152 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#7 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) Multiple Meeple on the Same Feature p.5 0.014925 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and this ruling's arm count was never recorded) 300
#8 RULEBOOK Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) GAME END AND FINAL SCORING p.6 0.014706 (below the measured healthy band (< 0.016) — a weak fuse on a two-arm ask, and 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 Carcassonne — Rulebook (corpus doc 123) CONTENTS & SETUP p.2 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 209 ms · first delta 2916 ms · total 4081 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 209 ms · ask 3859 ms · gateway work 4081 ms · total 4081 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
3064
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
154
tok/sec
137.1 tok/sec — 154 output tokens in 1.123 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 2s 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
NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
set up

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 45), 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.