Ruling — Mare Nostrum: Empires

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Mare Nostrum: Empiresbg-174785-en-1e

To play, follow these phases and procedures:

Setup

1. For 3 or 4 player games, overlay the Babylonian and Egyptian Provinces with the 'Leader' and 'Resources & Wonders' boards for 3 players, or overlay the Babylonian Provinces with the Leader Board for 4 players.[1][2]

2. For your first few games, place 5 random Hero and Wonder tiles face up on the first 5 spaces and the Pyramids tile face up on its space, then place the rest face down.[2]

3. Place a Leader Track Marker of your color on each Leader Track.[1][2]

4. Assign initial Leader values to each Empire (Rome, Greece, Babylon, Egypt, or Carthage) based on the provided tracks.[1][2]

Phase 2: Trade Resources

1. The Trade Leader plays an Exchange Marker of their choice, using one of its two values to determine how many Resources (Commodities and/or Coins) each player must choose from their Resource Supply and place face down.[3]

2. The played Exchange Marker is placed on one of the three empty fields at the top of the Leader Board.[3]

3. Each player chooses the required number of Resources and places them face down.[3]

4. The players flip the resources face up and the Trade Leader claims one Resource from another player, then that player claims a Resource from another, and so on.[4][3]

Phase 3: Build

1. The Culture Leader selects an Active Player to build first, then selects subsequent players until everyone has had a turn.[4][5]

2. The Active Player builds items (Units, Buildings, Heroes, Wonders, or Provincial Control) in any order.[5]

3. To build, the player spends Resources using either a set of only Coins or a set of different Commodities with no duplicates.[4][5]

4. The player discards the Resources spent.[4][5]

5. At the end of the phase, players can keep up to two Coins for the next round, but all other unspent Resources must be discarded.[4]

Phase 4: Move and Battle

1. The Military Leader selects an Active Player to move and battle first, then selects subsequent players until everyone has had a turn.[4]

2. The Active Player decides whether to move any number of their Triremes.[4]

3. The Active Player may resolve Sea Battles if their Triremes occupy a Sea with opposing Triremes.[4]

4. The Active Player moves any number of their Legions (either to an adjacent Province or to an adjoining Province via a chain of Triremes).[6][4]

5. The Active Player must resolve Battles if their Legions occupy a Province with opposing Legions.[4]

Phase 5: Claim Leadership

1. All players simultaneously determine new Trade, Culture, and Military Leaders based on the adjustments to the Leader Tracks.[4]

[1] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.3 · /orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players

[2] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.3

[3] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.5 · 2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker

[4] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.4 · Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)

[5] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.6 · 3. Build Phase · ➢ Cleopatra may: · 1 Wonder can alter the storage rule: · 3.1 Build Rules

[6] RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook · p.7 · 4.1.2 Land Movement

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 165 ms · ask 4114 ms · total 4283 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 4283 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 4, "score": 0.04866, "snippet": "The Trade Leader plays an Exchange Marker of his choice, determining how many Resources (Commodities and/or Coins) each player must offer for trade. The Trade Leader now claims one Resource from those offered by another player. Then the player he took the Resource from claims a Resource from another", "headingPath": "Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.047643, "snippet": "Circe Legions placed on empty Caravan spaces collect their associated Resources. Hamilcar Doubles Pillage income (4.3.1) . Temple of Artemis Receives 1 extra Coin each round. The Colossus Receives 1 extra Commodity each round. A new Trade Leader takes possession of all 3 Exchange Markers . Each Exch", "headingPath": "2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "For 3 or 4 player games, you will use only part of the game board: 3 players: Overlay the Babylonian and Egyptian Provinces with the 'Leader' and 'Heroes & Wonders' boards. 4 players: Overlay the Babylonian Provinces with the Leader Board. All visible Provinces are playable. Below, the game map and ", "headingPath": "/orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "At the end of each player's Build Phase turn, the player adjusts his Trade, Culture, and Military Track levels to reflect the Buildings and/or Units he has gained (5.0) , plus any Hero & Wonder Leader Bonuses he gained. Example: The Greek player built a Trireme and a Legendary City. He increases his", "headingPath": "3.2 Adjust Leader Tracks · 4. Move &Battle Phase · 4.1 Movement · 4.1.1 Sea Movement", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Starting hero Phase 4: Move & Battle Active All of your Legions add +1 to each of their Battle Die rolls when you are the Player . Starting hero Phase 3: Build substitute 1 Coin for a Commodity in each set of Commodities, and/or substitute 1 Commodity for a Coin in each set of Coins. Starting hero P", "headingPath": "caesar · cleopatra · You may: · hammurabi · hannibal · pericles · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "ɰ -2- For your first few games: Place 5 random Hero and Wonder tiles face up on the first 5 spaces and the Pyramids tile face up on its space. The rest of the Hero and Wonder tiles are randomly placed face down on the remaining empty spaces. At the end of each Build Phase, turn over new Hero/Wonder ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The Heroes and Wonders powers always have priority over other game rules. Players may talk with each other and negotiate deals. But promises and deals may be broken at any time. Example: The Roman player promises the Greek player that he will not invade Dacia if the Greek player does not build a Tri", "headingPath": "7. Heroes and Wonders · 8. Diplomacy · Build · Q: Am I limited to how many Units I can build? · Move and Battle", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029643, "snippet": "➢ 23 tiles: 5 Starting Heroes, ( Caesar , Hannibal , Pericles , Cleopatra , and Hammurabi) , plus 12 additional Heroes, 5 Wonders, and the Pyramids. Legendary Commodities (13 - one of each Commodity type) 9 Land Battle Dice (beige) and 5 Sea Battle Dice (blue). 5 different colored Empire sets of min", "headingPath": "/orn.003Game Components · Commodities (13 types) and Coins · Caravan, Market, City & Temple · /orn.003Game overview · /orn.003Round Overview · Phase 1. Collect Resources (simultaneous)", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "/orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "3. Build Phase · ➢ Cleopatra may: · 1 Wonder can alter the storage rule: · 3.1 Build Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4.1.2 Land Movement", "sharpsignalDocId": 768}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 768 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 768 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 0.90331 of 2172 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 6, 2026 02:18 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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)	p.4	0.04866 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker	p.5	0.047643 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	/orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players	p.3	0.032258 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	3.2 Adjust Leader Tracks · 4. Move &Battle Phase · 4.1 Movement · 4.1.1 Sea Movement	p.7	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
#5	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	caesar · cleopatra · You may: · hammurabi · hannibal · pericles · …	p.11	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
#6	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)		p.3	0.030303 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	7. Heroes and Wonders · 8. Diplomacy · Build · Q: Am I limited to how many Units I can build? · Move and Battle	p.10	0.029851 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	/orn.003Game Components · Commodities (13 types) and Coins · Caravan, Market, City & Temple · /orn.003Game overview · /orn.003Round Overview · Phase 1. Collect Resources (simultaneous)	p.4	0.029643 (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 27 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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	7. Heroes and Wonders · 8. Diplomacy · Build · Q: Am I limited to how many Units I can build? · Move and Battle	p.10	#7	0.029851 (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
#2	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	3.1.1 Control	p.6	#16	0.013699 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	/orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players	p.3	#3	0.032258 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	4.1.2 Land Movement	p.7	#24	0.011905 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)	p.4	#1	0.04866 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	3. Build Phase · ➢ Cleopatra may: · 1 Wonder can alter the storage rule: · 3.1 Build Rules	p.6	#12	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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)		p.3	#6	0.030303 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker	p.5	#2	0.047643 (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 Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	/orn.003Game Setup For 3 or 4 players	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)		p.3	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	2 Heroes and 2 Wonders give additional Resources: · 2.1 Play an Exchange Marker	p.5	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	Phase 2. Trade Resources (beginning with the Trade Leader) · Phase 4. Move and Battle (in order determined by the Military Leader) · Phase 5. Claim Leadership (simultaneous)	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	3. Build Phase · ➢ Cleopatra may: · 1 Wonder can alter the storage rule: · 3.1 Build Rules	p.6	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Mare Nostrum: Empires — Rulebook (corpus doc 768)	4.1.2 Land Movement	p.7	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 165 ms · first delta 1023 ms · total 4283 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 165 ms · ask 4114 ms · gateway work 4283 ms · total 4283 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3824
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 637
tok/sec: 201.0 tok/sec — 637 output tokens in 3.169 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 33s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, 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 702), 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.