Gentes

No — you may not voluntarily pass; as long as you have at least one free space on your time track you must take a main action, and if no action tiles are available you must take the Tax Collector or become the New Starting Player until your time track is full (p.6).

Place the chosen action tile on the leftmost empty space of your time track and then place the required time tiles (single- or double-hourglass) on subsequent free spaces; once placed you may not flip or exchange those time tiles (p.6).

Yes — when you build a city you place a house on the matching site and then activate all of your cities in that region, including the newly built city, receiving each city's rewards (temple/oracle cubes, coins, or VPs) (p.8).

Yes — with the Scribe action you must choose either to take from the face‑up display or from the discard pile (not both); depending on the cost you paid you may take 1–3 from the display or 1–2 from the discard pile as allowed by the action cost (p.9).

During the heyday you may hold any number of cards, but at the decline phase you must place a time tile (an hourglass) for each card beyond three (p.9, p.11); at game end you may play cards from your hand that you meet the requirements for at half their listed points (rounded up), and for any remaining hand cards whose requirements you cannot meet you lose half their VP value (rounded up) (p.11).

You may satisfy missing person requirements by returning wooden cubes from your temple and/or oracle to the general stock (these are treated as 'virtual' persons to meet the card), but you do not record them on your population chart; for the 18‑people bonus the condition must be actually met at the end of the action on your population chart (p.9, p.10).