Ruling — Catan — RuleSage

You asked

How does trading work?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catanbg-13-en-1e · Catan: Cities & Knightsbg-926-en-1e · Catan: Seafarersbg-325-en-1e

There are two different kinds of trade: Domestic trade and Maritime trade [1]. **Domestic Trade** * On your turn, you may trade resources with other players after rolling for resource production [2][3]. * You can announce which resources you need and what you are willing to trade for them, and other players can make proposals and counteroffers [4]. * You and the other players negotiate the terms of trades, such as which cards will be exchanged [2]. * You may trade as many times as you can using single or multiple cards [2]. * While it is your turn, you must be a part of all trades, and other players may not trade among themselves [2][4]. * You may trade with another player between your turns only if it is that player's turn and they elect to trade with you [3]. * You cannot give away cards or trade matching resources (e.g., trading 3 ore for 1 ore) [2][3]. * You may not trade development cards [3]. **Maritime Trade** * During your turn, you can always trade with the bank at a 4:1 ratio by putting 4 identical resource cards back in their stack and taking any 1 resource card of your choice [5]. This 4:1 trade is always possible even without a settlement on a harbor [5]. * If you have a settlement or city on a harbor, you can trade with the bank at a 3:1 ratio or, in certain harbors, at a 2:1 ratio (trading the specific resource type shown) [5]. * You may not trade with the bank during another player's turn [3]. **Additional Rules** * You may trade as long as you have resource cards [3]. * If you decide not to trade during your turn, no one can trade [3]. * In some scenarios, establishing a route between one of your buildings and a village on a small island establishes trade relations with that village, allowing players to receive cloth tokens from that village's supply when its number is rolled [6].

[1] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.11 · resourCe trade

[2] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.7 · domestiC trade

[3] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.14 · trade

[4] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.4 · a) Domestic Trade Y

[5] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.4 · b) Maritime Trade Y

[6] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.15 · VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 235 ms · ask 13066 ms · total 13311 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 13311 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 7, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "On your turn, you may trade resources with the other players (after rolling for resource production). You and the other players negotiate the terms of your trades-such as which cards will be exchanged. You may trade as many times as you can, using single or multiple cards. However, you cannot give a", "headingPath": "domestiC trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "On your turn, you can trade resource cards with any of the other players. You can announce which resources you need and what you are willing to trade for them. The other players can also make their own proposals and counteroffers. Important: Players may only trade with the player whose turn it is. T", "headingPath": "a) Domestic Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "After you roll for resource production, you may trade with other players (domestic trade Y ) or with the bank (maritime trade Y ). You may trade as long as you have resource cards. If you decide not to trade during your turn, no one can trade. You may trade with another player between your turns, bu", "headingPath": "trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "In the second phase of your turn, you may trade with the other players. The other players may not trade among themselves, only with the player whose turn it is. There are 2 different kinds of trade: Domestic trade Y and Maritime trade Y .", "headingPath": "resourCe trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Afterwards, you may trade freely (using either or both types of trades below) to gain needed resource cards:", "headingPath": "2. Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "On your turn, you can trade resources using maritime trade during the trade phase even without involving another player. The most basic (and unfavorable) exchange rate is 4:1. You may trade 4 identical resource cards to the supply in exchange for 1 resource card of your choice. You do not need a har", "headingPath": "maritime trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029631, "snippet": "You can also trade without the other players! During your turn, you can always trade at 4:1 by putting 4 identical resource cards back in their stack and taking any 1 resource card of your choice for it. If you have a settlement or city on a harbor Y , you can trade with the bank more favorably: at ", "headingPath": "b) Maritime Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.029199, "snippet": "The separation of the trade and build phases was introduced to make the sequence easier to learn for beginners. We recommend experienced players ignore this separation. After rolling for resource production, you can trade and build in any order (you can trade, build, trade again and build again, etc", "headingPath": "ComBined trade/Build phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "resourCe trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "domestiC trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "trade", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "a) Domestic Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "b) Maritime Trade Y", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 43 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 43 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)
debug row retained until: Nov 6, 2026 21:23

retrieval — what the search arm returned

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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	domestiC trade	p.7	0.032787 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	a) Domestic Trade Y	p.4	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
#3	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	trade	p.14	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
#4	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	resourCe trade	p.11	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))	238
#5	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	2. Trade Y	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))	108
#6	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	maritime trade	p.9	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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	b) Maritime Trade Y	p.4	0.029631 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	ComBined trade/Build phase	p.6	0.029199 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	resourCe trade	p.11	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	domestiC trade	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	trade	p.14	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	a) Domestic Trade Y	p.4	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43)	b) Maritime Trade Y	p.4	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216)	VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 235 ms · first delta 9897 ms · total 13311 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 235 ms · ask 13066 ms · gateway work 13311 ms · total 13311 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1981
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 459
tok/sec: 136.6 tok/sec — 459 output tokens in 3.360 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 47s 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 1), 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.