Ruling — Age of Steam

← Age of Steam

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Age of Steambg-4098-en-1e

To play the game, follow these steps:

**Setup**

1. Lay out the game board designed for 3-6 players.[1]

2. Place the Turn Track marker in the 'start' circle on the Turn Track.[1]

3. Put all red, blue, purple, yellow, and black Goods cubes in the bag (white cubes are only for the Southern US expansion).[1]

4. Randomly draw one cube at a time from the bag and place them in the Goods display, filling the rows from left to right until 52 cubes are placed.[1]

5. Place the starting Goods cubes on the map (for the Rust Belt map: randomly draw three cubes for Pittsburgh, three for Wheeling, and two for all remaining Cities).[2]

6. Players choose a color and take 25 round wooden disks in that color (leaving 5 of each color aside for expansions).[2]

7. Each player places a disk on the Engine T rack in the '1 link' space.[2]

8. Each player places a disk on the Income T rack in the '0' space.[2]

9. Each player rolls 3 dice; the highest roller places a disk in '1st' place on the Player Order Track, the next highest in '2nd' place, and so on, until all players have a disk on the track.[2]

10. Each player places a disk on the first space (2 shares) of the Issued Shares Track and receives $10.[2]

11. Each player places a fifth disk near the Selected Actions display for use when choosing an Action.[2]

12. Each player keeps their remaining 2 and 0 disks as T rack Ownership Disks in front of them.[2]

**Sequence of Play**

The game begins with the "Issue Shares" phase.[2] The game ends when the last turn is completed (e.g., a 5-player game ends at the end of the seventh turn, or after the 8th complete turn if the turn marker is on the 4-player end space).[3][4]

1. **Issue Shares**: In Player Order, players may issue shares. When a player issues a share, they immediately receive $5 and advance their disk on the Issued Shares Track.[3]

2. **Determine Player Order**: Randomly determine the first player for the first turn; thereafter, turn order alternates between the two players.[4] The player going first must pay $5; if they decline or cannot pay, the other player may pay $5 to go first instead.[4] (Note: An auction for turn order is no longer used, though a "Turn Order" action exists that allows a player to be considered first in the next phase).[4][5]

3. **Select Actions**: Players select actions.[3]

4. **Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes**: As track is built, place the cube for that hex on top of the just-built track; these cubes may be delivered to a city even if the link is incomplete.[4]

5. **Move Goods**: In Player Order, players may each move one Goods cube, then complete a second round of moving one Goods cube each.[6] Goods must be moved along Completed Railroad Links to a City of the same color, and movement cannot exceed the number of links allowed by the player's Engine T rack disk.[6] Alternatively, a player may opt to move their disk on the Engine Track up one link.[6]

6. **Collect Income**: Players receive the income shown by their disk on the Income Track.[6]

7. **Pay Expenses**: Players must pay $1 for every share issued and $1 for every Link their locomotives can traverse.[7] If cash is insufficient, players must reduce their income by one for every dollar owed; if income falls below $0, the player is eliminated via insolvency.[7]

8. **Goods Growth**: (Note: The Goods Growth phase is skipped in this game).[4]

**Winning the Game**

After final scoring, the player with the most Victory Points wins.[3]

[1] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.2 · GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME

[2] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.3 · Map Setup · Player Setup

[3] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.4 · ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares

[4] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.11 · Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End

[5] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.4 · II. Determine Player Order

[6] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.9 · V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income

[7] RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook · p.9 · VII. P a y Expenses · IX. Goods Growth

🔧 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 96 ms · ask 6422 ms · total 13440 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 6919 ms · generation 6521 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 3, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Now place the starting Goods cubes on the map. NOTE: Setup will vary between maps. If you are not playing the Rust Belt map, check the setup rules for the map you have chosen (page 10). Randomly draw three Goods cubes from the bag and place them in Pittsburgh 10 . Randomly draw three Goods cubes fro", "headingPath": "Map Setup · Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "180 Track Ownership disks / Player disks (6 sets of 20 T rack Ownership disks, 5 Player disks, and 5 extra disks for use with expansions, in player colors blue, green, yellow, pink, gray, orange) 110 Goods cubes (20 red, 20 blue, 20 purple, 20 yellow, 16 black, 14 white) 1 Cloth Bag 3 Double-Sided G", "headingPath": "GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.04598, "snippet": "The game ends when the last turn is completed. The number of turns played depends upon the number of players and is denoted on the Turn Track. For example, a 5 player game ends at the end of the seventh turn. After final scoring, the player with the most Victory Points WINS the game. Issue Shares De", "headingPath": "ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045037, "snippet": "Issue Shares Determine Player Order Select Actions Build Track Move Goods Collect Income P a y Expenses Income Reduction Goods Growth Advance Turn Marker | Simple | $2, $3 in River, $4 in Mountains. | | Complex Coexist | $3, $4 in River, $5 in Mountains. | | Complex Crossing | $4, $5 in River, $6 in", "headingPath": "SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Placing Track · Replacing Track · Redirecting Track · COMPLEX CROSSING · COMPLEX COEXIST · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "This phase happens before the Issue Shares phase. The auction for turn order is no longer used. Instead, randomly determine the first player for the first turn; then turn order on later turns alternates between the two players. The player whose turn it is to go first each round must pay $5. If this ", "headingPath": "Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Seven special actions are listed on the Actions Display. Players select actions in Player Order by placing their disk on the corresponding space. Each action may be selected by only one player. Implemented during the Move Goods phase. This action allows this player to be the first player to move Goo", "headingPath": "III. SELECT ACTIONS · First Move · First Build · Engineer · Locomotive · Urbanization · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Slide the disks on the Player Order T rack upward just above the printed circles. Players now bid for the new Player Order beginning with the 1st player. The 1st player may bid $1 or more to stay in the bidding or they may drop out of the bidding by moving their disk to the last position on the trac", "headingPath": "II. Determine Player Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "In Player Order, players may each move one Goods cube, then complete a second round of moving one Goods cube each. If a player has chosen the First Move action, they may move a Goods cube before the 1st player in each of the 2 rounds instead of doing so in their usual turn order. Goods must be moved", "headingPath": "V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Map Setup · Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "II. Determine Player Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VII. P a y Expenses · IX. Goods Growth", "sharpsignalDocId": 308}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 308 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 308 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 0.88795 of 2847 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 14, 2026 20:27

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 rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Map Setup · Player Setup	p.3	0.048652 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.2	0.046642 (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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares	p.4	0.04598 (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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	SEQUENCE OF PLAY · Placing Track · Replacing Track · Redirecting Track · COMPLEX CROSSING · COMPLEX COEXIST · …	p.12	0.045037 (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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End	p.11	0.032787 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	III. SELECT ACTIONS · First Move · First Build · Engineer · Locomotive · Urbanization · …	p.5	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
#7	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	II. Determine Player Order	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
#8	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income	p.9	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

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 21 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 at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares	p.4	#3	0.04598 (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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Map Setup · Player Setup	p.3	#1	0.048652 (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 Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	GAME RULES	p.1	#12	0.013889 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End	p.11	#5	0.032787 (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 + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.2	#2	0.046642 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	VII. P a y Expenses · IX. Goods Growth	p.9	#10	0.014286 (below 0.016, the low end of the measured band — a weak fuse (that band was taken on two-arm asks; only its low end, one arm's #1 vote, carries over to a 3-arm one))	vector	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	II. Determine Player Order	p.4	#7	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income	p.9	#8	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	GAME PIECES · SETTING UP THE GAME	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Map Setup · Player Setup	p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	ENDING/WINNING THE GAME · SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. Issue Shares	p.4	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	Determine Player Order · Select Actions · Build Track and Move (Deliver) Cubes · Goods Growth · Game End	p.11	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	II. Determine Player Order	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	V. Move Goods · VI. Collect Income	p.9	no quote on the wire
[7]	RULEBOOK Age of Steam — Rulebook (corpus doc 308)	VII. P a y Expenses · IX. Goods Growth	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 96 ms · first delta 2122 ms · total 13440 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 6919 ms · retrieval 96 ms · ask 6422 ms · gateway work 6521 ms · total 13440 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 2875
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 879
tok/sec: 202.1 tok/sec — 879 output tokens in 4.349 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 43s 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: 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 236), 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.