Ruling — Fall of Rome

You asked

Before anyone takes a turn, how is everything laid out on the table?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Fall of Romebg-260428-en-1e

1. Separate Player cards by type (City, Event, Revolt) [1]. 2. Set aside Revolt cards [1]. 3. Randomly add a number of Event cards to the City cards based on the number of players [1]. 4. Shuffle these cards and deal a number of them faceup to each player to form starting hands [1]. 5. If playing with the Vestalis role, shuffle and stack the remaining Event cards facedown to form an Event deck; otherwise, return the remaining Event cards to the box [1]. 6. Choose the game's difficulty level by using 5, 6, or 7 Revolt cards (Introductory, Standard, or Heroic) and return any remaining Revolt cards to the box [1]. 7. Divide the remaining Player cards into facedown piles, as equal in size as you can, so that the number of piles matches the number of Revolt cards chosen [1]. 8. Shuffle 1 Revolt card into each pile facedown [1]. 9. Stack these piles to form the Player deck, placing smaller piles on the bottom [1]. 10. Place the Player deck facedown on the board in the Player deck space [1]. 11. Each player keeps their Player cards and Role card faceup on the table [1]. 12. Each player chooses one of their City cards and places their pawn and 2 legions from the supply in the matching city (if a player does not have a City card, they may place their pawn and legions in any city on the board) [1].

[1] RULEBOOK Fall of Rome — Rulebook · p.3 · Resolve Initial Invasion · Prepare Player Components 3 · Prepare Player Deck · Begin Play

🔧 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 242 ms · ask 8039 ms · total 8290 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8290 ms
retrieval refs (raw): [{"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "During any turn, any player may play an Event card. Playing an Event card is not an action. Th e player who plays the Event card decides how to use it. Many Event cards present a standard option as well as a more powerful 'corrupt' option that causes decline. If you choose to do the standard option,", "headingPath": "EVENT CARDS", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "When playing Pandemic: Fall of Rome as a single player, you assume the burden of Emperor and command 3 different roles. Set up the game as normal, with the following changes: { Remove the Mercator Role card and the 'Do ut des' Event card from the game. Th ey are not used in the Solitaire challenge. ", "headingPath": "SOLITAIRE CHALLENGE · Setup · Play · Treasury · Plot", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Place your cards faceup in front of you, for all players to see. Only City and Event cards count toward your hand limit. Your Role and Reference cards and any Revolt cards you draw are not part of your hand. Note that an icon on each City card shows how many City cards of that color are in the Playe", "headingPath": "PLAYER CARDS · GAME END · GAME END EXAMPLE", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "Each player turn is divided into 3 steps: Do 4 Actions Draw 2 Player Cards (and resolve Revolts) Invade Cities A ft er doing the Invade Cities step, your turn ends. Th e player on your le ft takes the next turn. Players should freely give each other advice, letting everyone offer opinions and ideas.", "headingPath": "PLAY · DO 4 ACTIONS · March · Sail · Fortify · Recruit Army", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Regina Foederata @ Setup: Stack all unused Event cards facedown to form an Event deck. @ At any time, discard a City card matching a color of your city to draw 1 card from your Event deck. @ During the Draw 2 Player Cards step, you may draw 3 Player cards; put 1 of them back on top of the deck. Remo", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "49 Barbarian Cards 7 Reference Cards 100 Barbarian Cubes (20 Anglo-Saxons/Franks, 22 Vandals, 20 Huns, 24 Visigoths, 14 Ostrogoths) 3 Battle Dice 16 Legions 1 Board Give 1 Reference card and 1 random Role card with its matching pawn (top le ft of the Role card) to each player. Return the remaining R", "headingPath": "Resolve Initial Invasion · Prepare Player Components 3 · Prepare Player Deck · Begin Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "If you would add a fourth barbarian of the same color to a city, the city is sacked instead. Move the Decline marker down 1 space on the Decline track. If there is a fort in the city, return it to the supply, then add 1 barbarian from that tribe to each adjacent city (including those outside of the ", "headingPath": "Sacking Cities · SACKING EXAMPLE · TURN END", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "{ Setup: Stack all unused Event cards facedown to form an Event deck. { At any time, discard a City card matching a color of your city to draw 1 card from your Event deck. { During the Draw 2 Player Cards step, you may draw 3 Player cards; put 1 of them back on top of the deck. Remove 1 legion from ", "headingPath": "Vestalis · CREDITS", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}]
citations (raw): [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Resolve Initial Invasion · Prepare Player Components 3 · Prepare Player Deck · Begin Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 483}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 483 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 483 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 7, 2026 05:54

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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	EVENT CARDS	p.8	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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	SOLITAIRE CHALLENGE · Setup · Play · Treasury · Plot	p.10	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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	PLAYER CARDS · GAME END · GAME END EXAMPLE	p.9	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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	PLAY · DO 4 ACTIONS · March · Sail · Fortify · Recruit Army	p.4	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
#5	RULEBOOK Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)		p.12	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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	Resolve Initial Invasion · Prepare Player Components 3 · Prepare Player Deck · Begin Play	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 Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	Sacking Cities · SACKING EXAMPLE · TURN END	p.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))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	Vestalis · CREDITS	p.12	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))	300

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Fall of Rome — Rulebook (corpus doc 483)	Resolve Initial Invasion · Prepare Player Components 3 · Prepare Player Deck · Begin Play	p.3	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 242 ms · first delta 5800 ms · total 8290 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 242 ms · ask 8039 ms · gateway work 8290 ms · total 8290 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4463
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 331
tok/sec: 137.2 tok/sec — 331 output tokens in 2.413 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 52s 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 414), 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.