Ruling — Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945

← Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945bg-11825-en-1e

The general course of play follows this sequence:

1. Each turn begins with each player bringing in reinforcement units and repairing units with replacements.[1]

2. The Allied player conducts Strategic Warfare, which includes resolving submarine warfare and strategic bombing.[1]

3. The players enter the Offensives Phase, where opponents alternate playing a strategy card to conduct an offensive or implement an event.[1][2] During their turn, a player must play a Strategy card, play one of a limited number of passes, or discard a Strategy card.[2]

4. When both players have exhausted all cards in their hand, the game turn enters the Political Phase.[1]

5. During the Political Phase, players determine the status of each nation represented in the game to see if they surrender.[1]

6. The game turn ends with a determination of the supply status of units on the board and whether they will or will not feel the effects of attrition.[1]

7. If it is not the last turn of a scenario, another game turn begins; if it is the last turn, victory is determined.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.5 · 2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play

[2] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.6 · 5.0 Strategy Cards

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 211 ms · ask 7090 ms · total 7302 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7302 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "Each scenario, other than the Full Campaign Scenario, has an initial setup for all units listed. If a unit is to be set up at reduced strength it is so indicated, otherwise the unit begins at full strength. The game turn of entry for units that would enter the game beyond the start of a particular s", "headingPath": "2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044764, "snippet": "Players alternate being the Offensives player, playing Strategy cards, either as OCs or ECs to conduct Offensives (the moving of units on the map and the resolution of resulting combats) or implement other game functions through events. The current offensives player must play a Strategy card as OC o", "headingPath": "4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 55, "score": 0.044118, "snippet": "No matter what happens, your first session’s strategy will disappoint you, so gain skill from the experience. Third, I specifically designed the South Pacific sce- nario (included in the 4th and this printing) to solve this conundrum. My advice is set up the South Pacific scenario that comes with it", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.043752, "snippet": "Each player has a deck of unique Strategy cards. A player can only draw and play Strategy cards from their own deck, although some cards allow you to force the other player to discard from their hand. Each turn a player draws a hand of 4 to 7 Strategy cards. Players alternate playing strategy cards ", "headingPath": "5.0 Strategy Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 33, "score": 0.042735, "snippet": "Changes in national status that alter the control of a group of hexes count for the Allies toward achieving their goal. Although the full campaign scenario is designed for the ultimate EOTS playing experience, it will often be a bit lengthy for the time constraints of a tournament situation. The yea", "headingPath": "16.47 Progress of the War · 16.48 Tournament Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 33, "score": 0.042534, "snippet": "Players bid US Political Will boxes to determine which side they will play. After the pieces are set up, both players write down on a piece of paper a number of US Political Will boxes that they are bidding to play a particular side. A player can choose either side and can bid any number of US Polit", "headingPath": "B. Campaign Game Bidding · 17.0 Scenarios", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.040829, "snippet": "The following sequence represents all of the portions of a single game turn. It is repeated in the indicated order for each game turn until the game ends. Both players receiver their reinforcements and place them according to rules 10.1 (Reinforcements). The Allied player places his reinforcements f", "headingPath": "4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.04072, "snippet": "Range: Range is the distance between two hexes. When counting range do not include the starting hex the HQ or combat unit occupies, but include the destination hex in the calculation. Removed From Play Pile: These are cards that once played will not return to play during the current game. Rounding: ", "headingPath": "1.3 Glossary", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.0 Strategy Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 828 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 828 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 0.93213 of 884 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 22, 2026 16:52 UTC

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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	0.045445 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase	p.6	0.044764 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.55	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
#4	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.6	0.043752 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	16.47 Progress of the War · 16.48 Tournament Play	p.33	0.042735 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	B. Campaign Game Bidding · 17.0 Scenarios	p.33	0.042534 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment	p.6	0.040829 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	1.3 Glossary	p.5	0.04072 (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 80 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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	A. Non-Campaign Scenario Bidding	p.33	#11	0.029644 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.56	#22	0.021988 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	1.3 Glossary	p.5	#8	0.04072 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.45	#21	0.022548 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	#1	0.045445 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.56	#15	0.025063 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup	p.5	#9	0.030679 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.6	#4	0.043752 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 211 ms · first delta 5428 ms · total 7302 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 211 ms · ask 7090 ms · gateway work 7302 ms · total 7302 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 5450
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 231
tok/sec: 129.3 tok/sec — 231 output tokens in 1.787 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s ago)
gateway schema (read from the running child): schema head 0042_definer_search_path (live revision not readable by this principal)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 60h, checked 9s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
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 763), 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.