Ruling — Twilight Imperium: Third Edition

← Twilight Imperium: Third Edition

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Twilight Imperium: Third Editionbg-12493-en-1e

To play, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Separate the 10 Home Systems from other hexagonal gameboard pieces.[1]

2. Randomize the Home Systems face down and have every player draw one at random to determine their race.[1]

3. Players take the Race Sheet, Control Markers, Trade Cards, and Command Counters for their race.[1]

4. Each player selects one of six available colors and takes the corresponding plastic units and Technology Deck.[1]

5. Designate a "common play area" on the table.[1]

6. Shuffle the Action Card deck and the Political Card deck and place them separately in the common play area.[1]

7. Place the Fighter and Ground Force Supplement Counters in the common play area.[1]

8. Each player places their Home System's Planet Cards face up in their play area.[1]

9. Place the remaining Planet Cards (neutral planets) in the common play area.[1]

10. Place all Trade Goods Counters in a single pile ("Trade Supply") in the common play area.[1]

11. Place the 8 Strategy Cards side by side in numerical order with their "active" side up in the common play area.[1]

12. Create the Objective Deck by separating Secret, Public Stage I, and Public Stage II cards, shuffling and dealing Secret cards to players, and assembling the Public Objective Deck.[2]

13. Place the Victory Point Track in the common play area and place one Control Marker for each player at "0".[1]

14. Create the galaxy by placing the Mecatol Rex system in the middle of the table, shuffling remaining systems, removing two, and dealing five face down to each player.[3]

15. Players, in order, place their Home Systems in a line extending from different sides of Mecatol Rex.[3]

16. Players build the galaxy by placing systems one at a time in rings around Mecatol Rex (first ring, then second, then third).[4]

The Strategy Phase

1. The player with the Speaker Token (the "Speaker") chooses the first Strategy Card from the common play area.[5]

2. Other players, in clockwise order from the Speaker, each select one remaining Strategy Card.[5]

3. The Speaker places a Bonus Counter on any two remaining unchosen Strategy Cards.[6]

4. If a player selects a card with Bonus Counters, they may immediately exchange each counter for a Trade Good or a Command Counter.[6]

5. The Strategy Phase ends after all players have chosen.[6]

The Action Phase

1. Players take turns in the order of play, with each player taking a single action.[6]

2. An active player must execute one of the following: Strategic Action, Tactical Action, Transfer Action, or Pass.[6]

3. During this phase, players may execute special abilities from Strategy Cards, produce units, conquer planets, or move fleets into battle.[6]

4. The phase continues until all players have passed.[6]

5. Play returns to the first player in the order of play after the last player has taken their turn.[6]

[1] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.6 · Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS

[2] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.7 · Preparing the Objective Cards

[3] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.8 · THE STRATEGY PHASE

[4] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.8 · Creating the Galaxy

[5] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.7 · THE STRATEGY PHASE

[6] RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook · p.9 · Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action

Answer in hand — your move.

🔧 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 185 ms · ask 6844 ms · total 7031 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 7031 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 6, "score": 0.048387, "snippet": "Before you start playing, follow the steps below: Separate the 10 Home Systems from the other hexagonal gameboard pieces. Randomize the Home Systems face down and allow every player to draw one at random. This process determines which race a player will control throughout the game. All players then ", "headingPath": "Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.047371, "snippet": "During every Strategy Phase, each player must choose one available Strategy Card from the common play area (The chosen Strategy Card grants its player a special ability during the upcoming Action Phase.) At the beginning of every Strategy Phase, there are 8 possible Strategy Cards (or \"strategies\") ", "headingPath": "THE STRATEGY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "every player will pick an available Strategy Card before the Action Phase begins. Note that being farther clockwise from the Speaker gives a player an increasingly limited choice of Strategy Cards (i.e., the player to the immediate right of the Speaker will only have three cards to choose from). Aft", "headingPath": "Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 23, "score": 0.046244, "snippet": "Aplayer may never have more than 7 Action Cards at any one time. If, after receiving additional cards, a player has more than 7 Action Cards in his hand, he must immediately choose and discard cards until he has 7. If a player at 7 cards is about to draw additional cards, he should draw and discard ", "headingPath": "THE ACTION CARDS · How to Play an Action Card · THE SABOTAGE ACTION CARD · \"PLAY AS AN ACTION\" · THE POLITICAL CARDS AND THE GALACTIC COUNCIL · The Political Agenda · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.044854, "snippet": "Each Strategy Card has an Initiative Number printed near its top. This number represents what place in the order of play its owner will be. Thus, the player who has the Initiative Strategy card is always first, followed by the player who controls the Diplomacy Strategy card, etc. The order of play, ", "headingPath": "ORDER OF PLAY · 3) PDS FIRE", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.044192, "snippet": "After the galaxy has been created, all players place their \"setup units\" (as indicated by their Race Sheets) on their Home Systems. If a Home System contains several planets, any Space Dock, Ground Forces, and PDS may be placed among them according to the player's wishes. All players then find and p", "headingPath": "REINFORCEMENTS · The Game Round", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "1) After all players have drawn their Home Systems, find the Mecatol Rex system and place it in the middle of the table. Then randomly determine one player to be 'first player.' Give the 'Speaker' Token to the first player. He then shuffles the remaining 32 systems, randomly removes two systems (by ", "headingPath": "THE STRATEGY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Aplayer must, at some point during the Action Phase, execute a Strategic Action (except for the player holding the Initiative Strategy Card, who has no Strategic Action). When a player chooses to take his Strategic Action, he first reads and then resolves the Primary Ability as printed on his Strate", "headingPath": "The Strategic Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Preparing the Objective Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE STRATEGY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Creating the Galaxy", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE STRATEGY PHASE", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action", "sharpsignalDocId": 351}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 351 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 351 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 0.90472 of 2372 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 23:41 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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS	p.6	0.048387 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	p.7	0.047371 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action	p.9	0.047123 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE ACTION CARDS · How to Play an Action Card · THE SABOTAGE ACTION CARD · "PLAY AS AN ACTION" · THE POLITICAL CARDS AND THE GALACTIC COUNCIL · The Political Agenda · …	p.23	0.046244 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	ORDER OF PLAY · 3) PDS FIRE	p.11	0.044854 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	REINFORCEMENTS · The Game Round	p.7	0.044192 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	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
#8	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	The Strategic Action	p.9	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

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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS	p.6	#1	0.048387 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	RULES OF PLAY	p.1	#16	0.024702 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action	p.9	#3	0.047123 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	p.7	#2	0.047371 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Preparing the Objective Cards	p.7	#9	0.02885 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Creating the Galaxy	p.8	#21	0.022436 (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
#7	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	p.8	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE ACTION CARDS · How to Play an Action Card · THE SABOTAGE ACTION CARD · "PLAY AS AN ACTION" · THE POLITICAL CARDS AND THE GALACTIC COUNCIL · The Political Agenda · …	p.23	#4	0.046244 (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 Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Game Setup · REINFORCEMENTS	p.6	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Preparing the Objective Cards	p.7	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	p.8	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Creating the Galaxy	p.8	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	THE STRATEGY PHASE	p.7	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Twilight Imperium: Third Edition — Rulebook (corpus doc 351)	Creating the Galaxy · A BONUS COUNTER · THE ACTION PHASE · The Player Action	p.9	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 185 ms · first delta 3643 ms · total 7031 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 185 ms · ask 6844 ms · gateway work 7031 ms · total 7031 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3286
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 674
tok/sec: 201.4 tok/sec — 674 output tokens in 3.347 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 39s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 8s 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 279), 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.