Ruling — Maria — RuleSage

← Maria

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mariabg-40354-en-1e

The game is played in turns, with each turn consisting of five stages carried out in strict order:[1]

1. Major Powers conduct politics (advanced game only).[1]

2. Austria places its hussars.[1]

3. Action stage of Prussia and Saxony.[1]

4. Action stage of France and Bavaria.[1]

5. Action stage of Austria and Pragmatic Army.[1]

Every action stage is divided into five phases, which are carried out in the following strict order:[1]

1. Tactical cards.[1]

2. The active powers draw new Tactical Cards.[1]

3. Movement, which includes conquest of objectives, re-entry of supply trains, and checking the supply of every active general.[1]

4. Combat, where active generals must attack adjacent enemy generals and retroactive conquests are checked for.[1]

5. (The fifth phase is not explicitly named, but the sequence concludes with the completion of all stages).[1]

After all stages are completed, the turn track marker is advanced by one space, and the next turn starts.[1] After every 3 turns, the game is interrupted by winter, which is not a game turn.[1] During winter, generals who were formerly removed from the board may re-enter, troops can be recruited, and players do winter scoring (advanced game only).[1] After winter, normal game turns resume.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook · p.3 · 5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY

🔧 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 72 ms · ask 3986 ms · total 4060 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4060 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048652, "snippet": "Every general who is adjacent to an enemy general at the beginning of his power's combat phase must attack. This is true even if the generals are located on different maps. If more than one attack must be made, the attacking player chooses the order of resolution. An attack is resolved as a card gam", "headingPath": "11.1 Combat", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.047938, "snippet": "The game is played in turns. Each turn consists of 5 stages, which are carried out in strict order: Major Powers conduct politics (advanced game only). Austria places its hussars. Action stage of Prussia and Saxony. Action stage of France and Bavaria. Action stage of Austria and Pragmatic Army. The ", "headingPath": "5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "MARIA is designed to be a 3-player game. However, it can be played as a 2-player game with the following rules modi cations. However, the game does not have its full Machiavellian avour with only 2 players. For the introductory game with 2 players, all rules are valid, except: Player A plays France,", "headingPath": "24 The 2-PLAYER GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045724, "snippet": "MARIA is a game for 2 or 3 players based on the War of the Austrian Succession (1740 1748). The game can be played in 2 variants: the introductory game (9 turns to play, about 90 min., with simpli ed rules) or the advanced game (12 turns, 3 to 5 hours, with the full set of rules). Sections 1 to 13 g", "headingPath": "1 BASIC CONCEPT · 2 THE PLAYERS", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.04526, "snippet": "Players can decide randomly or by mutual agreement who is playing which role. Put the turn marker on the space 1 on the time track (see the top-right corner of the board). Divide one army sheet into four quarters. Give one quarter to each player. Set aside the fourth quarter (called Winter Scoring )", "headingPath": "4 HOWTOSTART", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.044388, "snippet": "The game board includes 2 maps: The Flanders map and the Bohemia map. Arectangular grid divides the maps into 44 sectors. Each sector is assigned one suit: hearts, diamonds, clubs, or spades. These suits affect the play of Tactical Cards in resolving combat. Home country. The home country of a power", "headingPath": "3.2 The game board and the political display", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "Every power has generals and supply trains, hereafter referred to as pieces . Austria also has 2 hussars. Hussars are never called pieces. Every general has a name and a rank number. Before playing the game for the rst time, stickers must be applied to the generals for each power (blue on blue, red ", "headingPath": "3.1 The playing pieces", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "During the War of the Austrian Succession, the political situation was very complex. Separate peace treaties, betrayals, and changes of alliance were common in the war. Further, Italy was an important theatre of operations, and Russia was an important factor. The expert game rules integrate all of t", "headingPath": "THE EXPERT GAME · 15 GENERAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 460}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 460 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 460 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 0.89782 of 1057 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 04:44

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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	11.1 Combat	p.6	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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.3	0.047938 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	24 The 2-PLAYER GAME	p.11	0.046898 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	1 BASIC CONCEPT · 2 THE PLAYERS	p.2	0.045724 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	4 HOWTOSTART	p.3	0.04526 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	3.2 The game board and the political display	p.2	0.044388 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	3.1 The playing pieces	p.2	0.044118 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	THE EXPERT GAME · 15 GENERAL RULES	p.8	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

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 43 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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	4 HOWTOSTART	p.3	#5	0.04526 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	1 BASIC CONCEPT · 2 THE PLAYERS	p.2	#4	0.045724 (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 Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	Special cases:	p.6	#12	0.026876 (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 re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	24 The 2-PLAYER GAME	p.11	#3	0.046898 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	6 STACKS AND TROOPS	p.3	#25	0.0125 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	3.1 The playing pieces	p.2	#7	0.044118 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.3	#2	0.047938 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	11.1 Combat	p.6	#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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Maria — Rulebook (corpus doc 460)	5 SEQUENCE OF PLAY	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 72 ms · first delta 2547 ms · total 4060 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 72 ms · ask 3986 ms · gateway work 4060 ms · total 4060 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3188
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 299
tok/sec: 203.8 tok/sec — 299 output tokens in 1.467 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 26s 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 390), 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.