Ruling — Ostia — RuleSage

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ostiabg-347767-en-1e

1. Place the main board in the center of the table.[1]

2. Place an equal amount of building tiles as the number of players in each building space on the main board (respectively besides each trading port) and return any unused tokens to the box.[1]

3. Shuffle all initial trading port tiles and randomly place them face up in the corresponding space on the main board.[1]

4. Shuffle all trading port tiles and randomly place them face up in the corresponding space on the main board, returning any unused tiles to the box.[1]

5. Place the four discovery tiles marked with a reward icon face up in each corresponding space on the main board (spaces which fit a single circular token).[1]

6. Shuffle the remaining discovery tiles and randomly place them face up in the corresponding space on the main board; use 8 tiles for 2-player games, 12 tiles for 3-player games, and 16 tiles for 4-player games, returning unused tiles to the box if playing with 3 players or less.[1]

7. Shuffle the transit tiles and randomly place them face up in the corresponding space on the main board.[1]

8. Shuffle the destination tiles and randomly place them face upon the corresponding space on the main board.[1]

9. Prepare 7 amphora tokens for each player and place them in the 'common supply' near the game board; put excess tokens back in the box.[1]

10. Divide all resource cubes into value 1 (small) and value 3 (big) and place them in the common supply.[1]

11. Shuffle all order cards and place them in a face down pile beside the main board, then draw the top four cards and place them face up next to the pile to create the "Order Row".[1]

12. Each player chooses one color and takes one Ostia Port board, one construction/shipbuilding track board, 14 corbita tokens, 3 ponta tokens, 7 construction discs, and 1 reward cube of that color, returning unused colors to the box.[2]

13. Place one corbita token in each of the six sections of the hexagon on the Ostia Port board.[2]

14. Each player takes one random initial placement card, places one additional corbita token in each of the three sea areas indicated on the card, and returns the cards to the box.[2]

15. Place two value 1 (small) resource cubes from the common supply in each of the 5 resource areas (permit, wood, wheat, stone, gold).[2]

16. Place one construction disc in each square in the construction track.[2]

17. Place one ship token in each square in the shipbuilding track, using ponta ship tokens in squares 3, 5, and 7 from the bottom and corbita ship tokens in the other squares as indicated by the icons.[2]

18. Take a corbita ship token from the bottom square of the shipbuilding track and place it at the Ostia starting box on the left side of the main board.[2]

19. Place the reward cubes in the square marked 0 on the reward track on the right side of the main board.[2]

20. Choose a starting player randomly and give them the first player token.[2]

21. In counter-clockwise order, starting with the player to the right of the first player, each player takes a construction disc from the bottom square of their construction track and places it on an initial trading port tile on the main board where no other construction discs have been placed.[2]

22. Each player takes a building token from the building space on that initial trading port tile and places it in the initial building spot on their Ostia Port board.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook · p.2 · A.Main Board Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook · p.2 · B.Player Setup

Settled. Play 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 150 ms · ask 5027 ms · total 5181 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 5181 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.047712, "snippet": "① Place the main board in the center of the table. ② Place an equal amount of building tiles as the number of players in each building space on the main board (respectively besides each trading port). Return any unused tokens back to the box. ③ Shuffle all initial trading port tiles and randomly pla", "headingPath": "A.Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.04741, "snippet": "⑫ Each player chooses one color. Take one Ostia Port board , one construction/shipbuilding track board , 14 corbita tokens , 3 ponta tokens , 7 construction discs and 1 reward cube , all corresponding to their player color. Return all unused colors back to the box. ⑬ The hexagon on the Ostia Port bo", "headingPath": "B.Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.045928, "snippet": "The end game is triggered when one or more of the following conditions are met ・ Any player's reward cube reaches the 12th square of the reward track . ・ 3 or more corbita tokens from any one player reaches the destination tile . ・ All corbita and ponta tokens are removed from any player's shipbuild", "headingPath": "End Game · Note: · Final Score Calculation", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "When you perform a build action, you can establish a base for yourself in the initial trading port tile or trading port tile on the main board and place building tokens on the Ostia Port board. You can remove construction discs starting from the bottom most available disc on the construction track b", "headingPath": "D. Build", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Aim to get the most victory points at the end of the game. Before we go to the explanation of how to play the game, let's learn about the relationship between rewards and victory points. The table on the right side of the main board tracks player's rewards. You have many opportunities to earn reward", "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Take all the ship tokens from the sea area of the section you selected in '1. Selection Phase'. Place those ship tokens one by one on each sea area starting from the section adjacent (in a clockwise direction) to the original section until all ship tokens have been placed. ・ If you take 7 or more sh", "headingPath": "3. Action Phase · Note: · Actions and sections", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.030478, "snippet": "| Transits | Effects | | | Gain 2 gold when you stopped at this tile | | | Gain 2 stones when you stopped at this tile | | | Gain 2 wheats when you stopped at this tile | | | Gain 2 woods when you stopped at this tile | | Discoveries | Total | Icons | Gain | | | 6 | Exotic Animal | 2 gold | | | 6 | ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "The order action allows you to supply food to the citizens and nobles, earning victory points and resources. When you do this order action, take the steps below. ① Choose a card from the Order Row near the main board, and pay the amount of wheat indicated in the upper left corner. Depending on the c", "headingPath": "C. Order", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "A.Main Board Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "B.Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1210 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1210 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 0.92360 of 2788 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Oct 15, 2026 21:01 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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	A.Main Board Setup	p.2	0.047712 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	B.Player Setup	p.2	0.04741 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	End Game · Note: · Final Score Calculation	p.6	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
#4	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	D. Build	p.5	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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase	p.3	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
#6	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	3. Action Phase · Note: · Actions and sections	p.4	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
#7	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)		p.1	0.030478 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	C. Order	p.5	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

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 18 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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	A.Main Board Setup	p.2	#1	0.047712 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase	p.3	#5	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
#3	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	2. Production Phase · Resource area	p.3	#10	0.029412 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	D. Build · E. Trade · F. Administration · ① Optional Action Step · ② Administration Action Step · Free Action	p.6	#13	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
#5	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	C. Order	p.5	#8	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
#6	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	End Game · Note: · Final Score Calculation	p.6	#3	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))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)		p.7	#12	0.029274 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	B.Player Setup	p.2	#2	0.04741 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	A.Main Board Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	B.Player Setup	p.2	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 150 ms · first delta 1073 ms · total 5181 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 150 ms · ask 5027 ms · gateway work 5181 ms · total 5181 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3711
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 813
tok/sec: 201.1 tok/sec — 813 output tokens in 4.042 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 45s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 2h, 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1140), 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.