Ruling — Imperial Settlers

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Imperial Settlersbg-154203-en-1e

The game consists of 5 rounds, each divided into four phases:[1]

1. **Lookout phase**: Players acquire new cards.[1] Each player draws the top card from their own Faction deck and adds it to their hand.[1] Players then draw from the Common deck a number of cards equal to the number of players plus 1 and place them face-up in the center.[1] Starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise, each player selects 1 card from the revealed set.[1] The remaining card is discarded.[1]

2. **Production phase**: Players receive Resources, Workers, Raze tokens, etc., produced by their faction.[1] During this phase, each Faction gains 1 Defense token.[2]

3. **Action phase**: This is the main phase where players take actions one at a time, starting with the First player and continuing clockwise.[2] A player can take any available action or pass.[2] There is no limit to the number, type, or order of actions a player may take, provided they take them one at a time.[2] The phase continues until all players have passed.[2] Available actions include:

* **Build a Location**: A player chooses a card from their hand and pays the building cost using Goods from their personal supply.[3] They then place the card in their Empire following the Location placement order.[3] To build a Common Location, a player discards certain resources like Wood and/or Stone.[3] To build a Faction Location, a player may need to have another Location already built and may need to discard a previously built Location or Foundation.[3]

* **Raze**: (Details not provided in sources).

* **Make a Deal**: (Details not provided in sources).

* **Activate an Action Location**: A player chooses an Action Location in their Empire and pays the required Goods, placing them on the card.[4] They then use the card's action.[4] An Action Location may only be used once per round unless otherwise stated.[4]

* **Spend 2 Workers to get 1 Resource or 1 card from the deck (Faction or Common)**: A player discards 2 Workers to take 1 Resource of a chosen type (Wood, Stone, or Food) from the general supply or to draw 1 card from either the Faction or Common deck.[5][4] A player can discard multiple pairs of Workers to perform this action multiple times in one action.[5]

* **Defense**: At any moment during their turn, a player may place a Defense token on a Common Location in their Empire to increase the number of Raze tokens required for an enemy to raze it.[2]

Once a player passes in the Action phase, they cannot perform additional actions in the current round and cannot be targeted by the actions of other players.[2]

4. **Cleanup phase**: Players discard all non-stored Resources, Workers, and tokens (such as Defense tokens and Goods used to activate Action Locations).[2] Cards in hand are never discarded.[2] The First player token is passed to the next player clockwise, and the round marker is moved to the next space on the Round track.[2] In the final round, the Cleanup phase is skipped.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook · p.6 · Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:

[2] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook · p.7 · ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE

[3] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook · p.8 · BUILD A LOCATION · IN ORDER TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS

[4] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook · p.10 · ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS

[5] RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook · p.10 · IN ORDER TO PERFORM THIS ACTION A PLAYER HAS TO: · GENERAL RULES

🔧 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 93 ms · ask 5590 ms · total 5684 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5684 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.048916, "snippet": "Note: Before the first game, cards should be unpacked and sorted according to their type - separate Common cards and cards of each Faction into individual stacks. After the game we recommend to keep each type of cards separately to speed-up the setup for future games. The following rules refer to a ", "headingPath": "LOCATION PLACEMENT ORDER · Now you're ready to begin the game!", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "In the solo game, you play against a virtual player. Does not choose a Faction. Does not receive any Goods. Does not take a Faction board. Does not place a Faction marker on the Score Board. Your goal in a solo game is to build more Faction Locations in your Empire than the virtual player collects c", "headingPath": "PEACEFUL VARIANT · The virtual player: · GOAL · SETUP · ATTACK CARDS · ROUND ORDER · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048131, "snippet": "The game consists of 5 rounds, each divided into the following four phases: Lookout phase 1. Players acquire new cards. Players receive Resources, Workers, Raze tokens, etc. produced by their faction. The main phase of the round. Players use their cards, Resources, Workers, etc. to take actions to e", "headingPath": "Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.045228, "snippet": "This action allows you to use the ability of an Action Location in your Empire. A Player can only use this action if he has any Action Locations in his Empire. Such Locations allow a player to exchange Workers and/or Resources for cards, other Resources, Victory Points, etc. Choose the Action Locati", "headingPath": "ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.043935, "snippet": "After the 5th round, count all the cards in the Collection pile of the virtual player. If the virtual player has more or just as many cards in his Collection pile as you have Locations built in your empire, you lose. On the other hand, if you have more Locations, you win and you should count the VP ", "headingPath": "GAME END", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.043301, "snippet": "The goal of the game is to have the most Victory Points, earned by expanding your empire and hindering your opponents. During the game, players can gain Victory Points (VP) in various ways: from deals they make, from actions they take, and from Location features. The Locations that become part of a ", "headingPath": "GOAL OF THE GAME · SKIP THE TEXT WATCH THE TUTORIAL!", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "This is the main phase of the game in which players take their actions to build and/or raze Locations, make Deals, use Action Locations and exchange Workers for Resources. Starting with the First player and continuing clockwise, each player performs one action at a time. The Player can take any avai", "headingPath": "ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "After the Cleanup phase comes the Virtual player attack phase: Take the virtual player's Location and set it aside on a Collection pile. The cards in the Collection pile will be counted at the end of the game and their number compared with the number of Faction Locations in your Empire to determine ", "headingPath": "Virtual player attack phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "BUILD A LOCATION · IN ORDER TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "IN ORDER TO PERFORM THIS ACTION A PLAYER HAS TO: · GENERAL RULES", "sharpsignalDocId": 469}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 469 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 469 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 0.90927 of 2480 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 09:28

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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	LOCATION PLACEMENT ORDER · Now you're ready to begin the game!	p.5	0.048916 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	PEACEFUL VARIANT · The virtual player: · GOAL · SETUP · ATTACK CARDS · ROUND ORDER · …	p.13	0.048139 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:	p.6	0.048131 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS	p.10	0.045228 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	GAME END	p.14	0.043935 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	GOAL OF THE GAME · SKIP THE TEXT WATCH THE TUTORIAL!	p.1	0.043301 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	Virtual player attack phase	p.13	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))	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 29 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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	BUILD A LOCATION · IN ORDER TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS	p.8	#12	0.028612 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	PEACEFUL VARIANT · The virtual player: · GOAL · SETUP · ATTACK CARDS · ROUND ORDER · …	p.13	#2	0.048139 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	IN ORDER TO PERFORM THIS ACTION A PLAYER HAS TO: · GENERAL RULES	p.10	#20	0.014493 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE	p.7	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:	p.6	#3	0.048131 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS	p.10	#4	0.045228 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ADVANCED LOOKOUT PHASE · RULES FOR BUILDING A FACTION DECK · Example of the Lookout Phase in a 3-player game	p.12	#10	0.028778 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	LOCATION PLACEMENT ORDER · Now you're ready to begin the game!	p.5	#1	0.048916 (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 Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	Now you're ready to begin the game! · Production phase · Action phase · Cleanup phase · LOOKOUT PHASE · To execute the Lookout phase, follow these steps:	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTION PHASE · Available actions: · Defense tokens · CLEANUP PHASE	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	BUILD A LOCATION · IN ORDER TO BUILD A LOCATION A PLAYER HAS TO: · BUILDING COSTS	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	ACTIVATE AN ACTION LOCATION · IN ORDER TO ACTIVATE A LOCATION, A PLAYER HAS TO: · Examples of using an Action Location · SPEND WORKERS TO GET RESOURCES OR DRAW CARDS	p.10	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Imperial Settlers — Rulebook (corpus doc 469)	IN ORDER TO PERFORM THIS ACTION A PLAYER HAS TO: · GENERAL RULES	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 93 ms · first delta 2255 ms · total 5684 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 93 ms · ask 5590 ms · gateway work 5684 ms · total 5684 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3975
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 690
tok/sec: 204.9 tok/sec — 690 output tokens in 3.368 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 56s 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 399), 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.