Ruling — Imperium: Horizons

← Imperium: Horizons

You asked

How do I setup Imperium Horizons?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Imperium: Horizonsbg-367518-en-1e

To setup Imperium: Horizons, follow these steps:

**Player Setup and General Instructions**

1. Select a civilisation deck.[1]

2. Perform the Player setup sequence.[1]

3. Perform the Commons setup.[1]

**Commons Setup**

1. Place the remaining $\text{gold}$, $\text{food}$, $\text{science}$, $\text{culture}$, $\text{trade}$, and $\text{influence}$ tokens on the table in a Supply, easily accessible to all players.[2]

2. Place the Market board in the middle of the table, easily accessible to all players; for a normal game, place it so the side without icons is showing (if playing with Trade Routes, place it so the side with the $\text{trade}$ icon is showing).[2]

3. Select a set of Commons cards (all cards without a Nation colour).[2] If using Horizons Commons cards, include either the $\text{trade-friendly}$ or $\text{trade route}$ cards, but not both.[3] If playing with Trade Routes, you must use the cards with the $\text{trade}$ icon in the Horizons Commons deck and remove all cards with the $\text{trade}$ icon from the deck.[2]

4. Sort all Commons cards by their banner colour.[2] If using nations and commons cards from different boxes, replace any $\text{trade-friendly}$ cards that share a name with a player's chosen nation with a random $\text{trade-friendly}$ card from a different set of commons cards (if the replacement card also has a name conflict or is a 3+ or 4 for low player counts, draw another).[2]

5. Adjust for player count: remove all 4-player Commons cards if playing with three players; remove all 3+ and 4-player Commons cards if playing with two players.[2]

6. Place all $\text{trade-friendly}$ cards face up below the $\text{trade}$ icon on the Market board to create the Unrest pile, including any cards set aside during player setup.[2] Leave space to the right of this pile for the Exile pile.[2]

7. Place the $\text{King of Kings}$ card with the $\text{king}$ side showing above the $\text{trade}$ icon on the Market board.[2]

8. Shuffle the remaining Fame cards into a face-down deck and place it on top of the $\text{King of Kings}$ card, perpendicular to it (if playing with Trade Routes, shuffle the $\text{Welcoming}$ card into this Fame deck).[2]

9. If using the "Lowered Aggression" variant, find all remaining Commons cards with a $\text{trade-friendly}$ icon and put them aside; after the Market is set up, shuffle these back into the Main deck.[4]

**Trade Routes Expansion Setup (if applicable)**

1. Give each player a Merchants $\text{trade-friendly}$ card, starting with the Merchants side face up in the Player area.[5]

2. Give each player an additional $\text{trade}$ token and 1 $\text{goods}$ instead of the $\text{food}$.[5]

3. Add the Welcoming Trade Route to the Fame deck before selecting the correct number of cards.[5]

4. Remove all cards with the $\text{trade}$ icon from the Commons cards used.[5]

5. Shuffle the $\text{goods}$ cards (removing any 3+ or 4 cards if necessary) and add them to the Main deck and Small decks as described in the Commons setup.[5]

**Nation-Specific Setup Changes**

* **Atlanteans:** Choose a $\text{development}$ to Develop (without paying cost), then choose one $\text{trade-friendly}$ card to remove from the game.[6]

* **Arthurians:** Choose an impending Quest, Garrison it under King Arthur’s Court, and add the top $\text{trade-friendly}$ card to your starting deck.[6]

* **Inuit:** Remove all starting Resources ($\text{gold}$, $\text{food}$, $\text{science}$, $\text{culture}$); choose a Winter ($\text{science}$) card and a Summer ($\text{culture}$) card and put both in your Discard pile.[6]

* **Martians:** Remove 4 of your starting $\text{influence}$.[6]

* **Polynesians:** Gain one of the cards added to your Discard pile as mana (chosen randomly).[6]

**Solo/Practice Mode Setup**

* **Practice Mode (2-player setup):** Perform Player and 2-player Commons setup normally; Exile the top 15 cards of the Main deck; place 12 $\text{influence}$ tokens next to the Market.[4]

* **Solo Bot Setup:**

[1] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.5

[2] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.13

[3] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.5

[4] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.24

[5] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.26

[6] RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook · p.25

🔧 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 314 ms · ask 24216 ms · total 24543 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 24543 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "5 Using this Rulebook Imperium is a game meant to be played many times. It has a large number of possible game combinations available in each box (especially Horizons) and it can be daunting to learn the rules while also choosing between so many options and reading so many exceptions to the rules. T", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "The Practice Mode can also be used later, to familiarise yourself with a civilisation you have never played before. The Classics and Legends boxes each come with a set of Commons cards. Horizons has its own set of new Commons cards, some of which have or icons. The icon indicates which cards should ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 25, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "25 Short Variant If you want to reduce the playing time of Imperium, then the following variant will cut the duration of the game by about 15 minutes per player. This is not suitable for the Utopians nor the Cultists and there are special rules for the Atlanteans, Arthurians, Inuit, Martians, and th", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "4 Introduction Formidable adversaries are arrayed against you. Opportunities waiting to be uncovered. Your people stand ready. History beckons. Welcome to Imperium: Horizons. In your hands lies the destiny of one of the most storied peoples of history. As new opportunities open up, you must explore ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "A Game by Nigel Buckle and D vid Turczi Illustrated by Mihajlo 'the Mico' Dimitrievski", "headingPath": "Imperium Horizons", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "6 Core ConceptS Imperium is a complex game, but it is built up from a collection of less complex core concepts. Understanding these core concepts will not only help you learn and teach the game, but it also will provide you with a solid foundation for understanding how the more complex civilisations", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 26, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "1 VP per 10 Wagadou 3WAG1A/23 Passive: when you would place 1 on a card in the market, instead place 1 . Solstice: gain 2 . For each you have in play, gain 1 additional . VP 1 VP per 3 in play, except T ang 3TAN1A/27 Passive: when you would place 1 on a card in the market, instead place 1 . Exhaust:", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Contents Introduction ...........4 Using this Rulebook 5 FOR OWNERS OF IMPERIUM: CLASSICS AND IMPERIUM: LEGENDS .......................5 REPLACEMENT CARDS .............................5 Core Concepts .........6 CONCEPT 1: DECK CYCLING ....................6 CONCEPT 2: RESOURCES ......................", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 24, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 26, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}, {"page": 25, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 771}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 771 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 771 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 8, 2026 05:46

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. 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. 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 Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.5	0.047123 (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 Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.25	0.032258 (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 Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	Imperium Horizons	p.1	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))	86
#6	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.6	0.030303 (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 Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.26	0.029851 (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 Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)		p.3	0.029412 (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.

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.

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.13	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.24	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.26	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Imperium: Horizons — Rulebook (corpus doc 771)	p.25	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 314 ms · first delta 17169 ms · total 24543 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 314 ms · ask 24216 ms · gateway work 24543 ms · total 24543 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4546
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 140.3 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 7.298 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s 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.

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: 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): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 705), 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.