Ruling — Struggle of Empires

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Struggle of Empiresbg-9625-en-1e

The game is played through several phases and rounds:

**Setup**

1. Place the game board and the Neutral Region Markers Display in the center of the table.[1]

2. Place the Gold coins and the Draw Bag of Unrest counters within reach of all players, excluding Value-5 Unrest counters which go in the General Supply.[1]

3. Arrange the tiles and Covert Action tokens on the game board Display as indicated.[1]

4. If playing with fewer than 7 players, remove certain tiles based on player count; in 2 or 3 player games, each player starts with 1 Improved Agriculture and 1 Reserves tile.[1]

5. Place the War marker on the (I) space of the War Track and the Game Phases marker in area (I.) of the game play track.[1]

6. Seat players and determine a start player, giving that player the Auction Gavel.[1]

7. Each player selects a Major Power and takes the corresponding player mat, military units (14 Army, 8 Navy, and 2 Fort), Control markers (20), Local Alliance markers (6), and individual Score, Population, and Grand Alliance markers.[2][3]

8. Players place their color-coded status markers: Alliance marker in area (II.) of the Game Play track, Population marker on the (5) space of the Population track, and Victory Point marker on the (0) space of the Victory Point track.[2][3]

9. Take 10 Gold from the General Supply.[2][3]

**Game Phases**

The Game Phases marker tracks the following:

* Phase I: Draw and Place Neutral Region markers (2nd & 3rd Wars Only).[1]

* Phase II: Determine Grand Alliances and Turn Order.[1]

* Phase III: Player Actions.[1]

* Phase IV: Income & Maintenance and Population Increase.[1]

* Phase V: Assess Control for Victory Points.[1]

* Phase VI: End of War.[1]

**Gameplay and Turns**

1. The number of rounds played is 6 rounds for 2, 3, or 4 players, and 5 rounds for 5, 6, or 7 players.[4]

2. Order of play each round is determined by the position of each player's Grand Alliance marker on the Grand Alliance display.[4]

3. On their turn, players may perform either 2 Regular actions or 1 Regular and 1 Special action.[4]

4. Players may also use as many available Free actions as they have (such as Taxation or those from Free action tiles).[4]

5. After all players complete their turns, the Game Phases marker advances 1 space and the next round begins with the first player in turn order.[4]

6. After the last round is completed, play progresses to Phase IV (Income, Maintenance, and Population Increase).[4]

**Actions**

* Build 1 Military Unit: You may place 1 Army, 1 Navy, or 1 Fort in your home country at the cost of 1 Population.[4] Once built, units may be moved according to movement rules.[4] You may also use this action to destroy and rebuild a unit, which costs 1 Population and 1 Unrest counter.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook · p.6

[2] RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook · p.6

[3] RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook · p.7 · PLAYER SETUP

[4] RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook · p.13 · III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT

🔧 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 89 ms · ask 6475 ms · total 6566 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6566 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Uses the Game Phases marker to track Phases of Play: Drawn randomly from the Draw bag based on the number of players. Using player Grand Alliance markers. Use the Auction Gavel to mark the next person that will start an Auction. After each player's turn, give the Wind Rose marker to the next Active ", "headingPath": "GAME PLAY TRACK · Phase I - Draw and Place Neutral Region markers (2 nd & 3 rd Wars Only). · Phase II - Determine Grand Alliances and Turn Order · Phase III - Player Actions · Phase IV - Income & Maintenance and Population Increase · Phase V - Assess Control for Victory Points · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "6 GAME PLAY TRACK Uses the Game Phases marker to track Phases of Play: Phase I - Draw and Place Neutral Region markers (2 nd & 3rd Wars Only). Drawn randomly from the Draw bag based on the number of players. Phase II - Determine Grand Alliances and Turn Order Using player Grand Alliance markers. Use", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "# With 2, 3, or 4 players: play 6 rounds. With 5, 6 or 7 players: play 5 rounds. Non-player Major Powers do not take actions. # Order of play for each Round is determined by the position of each player's Grand Alliance marker on the Grand Alliance display (1 st , 2 nd , 3 rd , etc.) # There are 3 ty", "headingPath": "III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.046671, "snippet": "In a 2 or 3 player game, each player will start with 1 Improved Agriculture and 1 Reserves tile designated by a green icon in the lower right corner of the tile. # Place the War mar ker on the (I) space of the War Track and the Game Phases marker in area (I.) of the game play track. PLAYER SETUP # S", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "Struggle of Empires is played in a series of 3 Wars, each comprised of the following phases: # Any Neutral Region markers from previous wars on the map are left in place. # Place new random Neutral Region markers from the Draw Bag on the map as follows: 7 Players: 10 Neutral Region markers (from the", "headingPath": "SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. DRAW AND PLACE NEUTRAL REGION MARKERS - 2nd & 3rd Wars only · II. DETERMINE GRAND ALLIANCES AND TURN ORDER", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045055, "snippet": "2 TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 OVERVIEW OF GAME PLAY 3 COMPONENTS 4 THE GAME B OARD 5 GAME MAP 5 GAME PLAY TRACK 6 GAME SETUP 6 PLAYER SETU P 6 GAME CONC EPTS 9 CONTROL MARKERS AND SCORING 9 POPULATION 9 UNREST 9 GOLD 10 TAXATION 10 NEGOTIATION 10 SEQUENCE OF PLAY 11 I. DRA W AND PLAC E NEUTRAL ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.044563, "snippet": "Struggle of Empires is set in the eighteenth century: an age of discovery and sail, a period of colonization and the beginnings of industrialization, and also a time of almost constant warfare in Europe and its far-flung colonies. You will assume the leadership of one of the seven European Major Pow", "headingPath": "INTRODUCTION · OVERVIEW OF GAME PLAY", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.042351, "snippet": "# Select a Major Power and take the player mat, military units (14 Army, 8 Navy, and 2 Fort), Control markers (20), Local Alliance markers (6), and the individual Score, Population and Grand Alliance makers in that Major Power's color. 10 # Place the appropriate status marker of your color in each o", "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "PLAYER SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT", "sharpsignalDocId": 664}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 664 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 664 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 0.88360 of 2268 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 15, 2026 13:52

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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	GAME PLAY TRACK · Phase I - Draw and Place Neutral Region markers (2 nd & 3 rd Wars Only). · Phase II - Determine Grand Alliances and Turn Order · Phase III - Player Actions · Phase IV - Income & Maintenance and Population Increase · Phase V - Assess Control for Victory Points · …	p.6	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	0.048387 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT	p.13	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
#4	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	0.046671 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	SEQUENCE OF PLAY · I. DRAW AND PLACE NEUTRAL REGION MARKERS - 2nd & 3rd Wars only · II. DETERMINE GRAND ALLIANCES AND TURN ORDER	p.11	0.045928 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.2	0.045055 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	INTRODUCTION · OVERVIEW OF GAME PLAY	p.3	0.044563 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	PLAYER SETUP	p.7	0.042351 (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 49 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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	#4	0.046671 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT	p.13	#3	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	PLAYER NEUTRAL REGION DISTRIBUTION · PLAYER DRAFT FOR INITIAL NEUTRAL REGION MARKERS	p.8	#11	0.027598 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	GAME PLAY TRACK · Phase I - Draw and Place Neutral Region markers (2 nd & 3 rd Wars Only). · Phase II - Determine Grand Alliances and Turn Order · Phase III - Player Actions · Phase IV - Income & Maintenance and Population Increase · Phase V - Assess Control for Victory Points · …	p.6	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	ORIGINAL RULES & OPEN UNREST VARIANTS	p.9	#22	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
#6	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	PLAYER SETUP	p.7	#8	0.042351 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	STRUGGLE OF EMPIRES STRATEGY GUIDE	p.28	#9	0.028006 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	#2	0.048387 (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 Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)		p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	PLAYER SETUP	p.7	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Struggle of Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 664)	III. PLAYER ACTIONS · REGULAR ACTIONS · BUILD 1 MILITARY UNIT	p.13	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 89 ms · first delta 3066 ms · total 6566 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 89 ms · ask 6475 ms · gateway work 6566 ms · total 6566 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3938
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 709
tok/sec: 205.2 tok/sec — 709 output tokens in 3.456 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 34s 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 597), 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.