Ruling — Space Empires 4X

← Space Empires 4X

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Space Empires 4Xbg-84419-en-1e

The sequence of play is as follows:

1. Determine first player by rolling a die (first turn only); player order proceeds clockwise around the map board.[1]

2. Movement Phase (4.0).[1][2]

3. Combat Phase (5.0).[1][2]

4. Exploration Phase (6.0).[1][2]

5. Turn Two: Same as turn one.[1][2]

6. Turn Three: Same as turn one.[1][2]

7. Economic Phase: All players conduct this phase simultaneously, not in player order.[1][2]

After the first three turns, Player Order is determined by bidding in the Economic Phase.[1]

During the Economic Phase, the following card play sequence occurs:

1. After drawing and looking at their new card, players may play one or more cards that are playable at the start of the Economic Phase, in reverse turn order.[3]

2. Once every player has drawn and played, each player gets one chance to play Cancel Cards in reverse turn order.[3]

In cases where several players can play cards for events, the sequence is determined by reverse turn order.[4] Once each player has had a chance to play cards for events, they each get one chance to discard and activate Cancel Cards, again in reverse turn order.[4] In cases where a card is played in response to a specific event, other players get one chance to use a Cancel Card in reverse turn order.[4]

In combat, if a card is played that affects an attack, it must be played when the attack is announced.[5] The defender can then play any cards that affect the defense.[5] Then Cancel Cards are used in reverse player order.[5]

The game continues until a winner is determined.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook · p.5 · 3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE

[2] RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook · p.47 · Sequence Of Play · Player 1:

[3] RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook · p.37 · 39.3 USING RESOURCE CARDS

[4] RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook · p.38 · 10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.

[5] RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook · p.38 · 10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.

Rule found, game on.

🔧 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 119 ms · ask 7279 ms · total 39363 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 31963 ms · generation 7400 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 38, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "When a card is played that can have multiple uses at the time it is played, it is not announced which use it is being played for until Cancel Cards are resolved. In cases where a card affects an attack, it must be played when the attack is announced. The defender can then play any cards that affect ", "headingPath": "10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045607, "snippet": "For the first turn of the game, players roll a die to determine first player; player order proceeds clockwise around the map board. After the first three turns (B, C, D, below), Player Order is determined by bidding in the Economic Phase (7.4). The Sequence of Play is as follows: Movement Phase (4.0", "headingPath": "3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 47, "score": 0.043622, "snippet": "Determine Player Order (First Turn Only) Movement Phase (4.0) Combat Phase (5.0) Exploration Phase (6.0) Players 2-4: Same as Player 1 Turn Two: (same as turn one) Turn Three: (same as turn one) Economic Phase: All players conduct this phase simultaneously, not in player order (7.0).", "headingPath": "Sequence Of Play · Player 1:", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 47, "score": 0.041539, "snippet": "Space Empires: All Good Things - Master Rule Book - Version 1.0 47 © 2024 GMT Games, LLC Movement Technology Chart Sequence Of Play A. Determine Player Order (First Turn Only) B. Turn One: Player 1: a. Movement Phase (4.0) b. Combat Phase (5.0) c. Exploration Phase (6.0) Players 2-4: Same as Player ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 42, "score": 0.040906, "snippet": "A game with Replicators will play very differently - That was the goal! Each player will have two forces pulling them in opposite directions: The non-Replicator player will want to hang back and hide their technology, knowing that showing technology to the Replicator merely makes the Replicator stro", "headingPath": "40.8 REPLICATORS STRATEGY", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.040603, "snippet": "Combat occurs during the Combat Phase whenever opposing units (enemies) are in the same hex. Combat is mandatory and takes place within a hex. The units which moved into the hex and initiated combat are the attackers, while the opposing units are referred to as the defenders. Both the attacking and ", "headingPath": "5.1 COMBAT PROCEDURE", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Player A rolls a die for each ship destroyed and needs to roll a 4 or lower on one of the dice to gain Experience (the CAs have a Hull Size of 2, doubled to 4). One is subtracted from the die roll because the ship destroyed is larger than the firing ship, and one is subtracted from the roll because ", "headingPath": "37.3 GAINING EXPERIENCE", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "This abstractly represents resources, supplies, intelligence, and capital spent to speed production schedules, etc. Players enter a number of CP as a bid on their Production Sheets. The highest bid will earn the privilege of determining the player order for the next turn. This bid is optional; playe", "headingPath": "7.4 BID TO DETERMINE PLAYER ORDER", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 47, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Sequence Of Play · Player 1:", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 37, "quote": null, "headingPath": "39.3 USING RESOURCE CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 38, "quote": null, "headingPath": "10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}, {"page": 38, "quote": null, "headingPath": "10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.", "sharpsignalDocId": 639}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 639 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 639 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 0.89166 of 1283 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row retained until: Nov 23, 2026 17:48 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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.	p.38	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
#2	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE	p.5	0.045607 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	Sequence Of Play · Player 1:	p.47	0.043622 (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))	284
#4	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)		p.47	0.041539 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	40.8 REPLICATORS STRATEGY	p.42	0.040906 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	5.1 COMBAT PROCEDURE	p.6	0.040603 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	37.3 GAINING EXPERIENCE	p.34	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
#8	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	7.4 BID TO DETERMINE PLAYER ORDER	p.10	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 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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE	p.5	#2	0.045607 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	39.3 USING RESOURCE CARDS	p.37	#9	0.029958 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.	p.38	#10	0.029727 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card. · 40.1 INTRODUCTION & GENERAL RULES	p.39	#11	0.028783 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	40.8 REPLICATORS STRATEGY	p.42	#5	0.040906 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	39.2 RESOURCE CARD MANAGEMENT	p.37	#44	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
#7	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	Sequence Of Play · Player 1:	p.47	#3	0.043622 (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 Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.	p.38	#1	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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	3.0 Sequence of Play · Player 1: · 4.1 MOVEMENT PROCEDURE	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	Sequence Of Play · Player 1:	p.47	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	39.3 USING RESOURCE CARDS	p.37	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.	p.38	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Space Empires 4X — Rulebook (corpus doc 639)	10 Draw 1 Alien Technology Card.	p.38	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 119 ms · first delta 4435 ms · total 39363 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 31963 ms · retrieval 119 ms · ask 7279 ms · gateway work 7400 ms · total 39363 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3165
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 386
tok/sec: 132.4 tok/sec — 386 output tokens in 2.916 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 0s 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 7s 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 572), 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.