Ruling — Ostia — RuleSage

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Ostiabg-347767-en-1e

Setup

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).[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.[1]

5. Place the four discovery tiles marked with a reward icon face up in each corresponding space on the main board.[1]

6. Shuffle the remaining discovery tiles and randomly place them face up in the corresponding space on the main board (8 tiles for 2-player, 12 for 3-player, and 16 for 4-player).[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 up in the corresponding space on the main board.[1]

9. Prepare 7 amphora tokens for each player and place them in the common supply.[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; draw the top four cards and place them face up to create the "Order Row".[1]

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

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

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

15. Place two value 1 resource cubes 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, placing ponta tokens in squares 3, 5, and 7 from the bottom and corbita 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; that player receives 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]

Gameplay

Players take turns in clockwise order, starting with the first player, until the end of the game is triggered.[3] On your turn, you must perform all three phases in order:

1. Selection Phase

* Choose one of the six sections on your Ostia Port board which contains at least one ship token (corbita or ponta) on the sea area.[3]

2. Production Phase

* Count the number of ship tokens on the sea area of the selected section, where each ponta token counts as two ship tokens.[4]

* Take as many resource cubes from the common supply as the total number of your ship tokens and place them on the resource area of the same section.[4]

* You receive the type of resource corresponding to the selected section.[4]

3. Action Phase

* (Note: The provided sources do not list all possible actions, only specific instructions for the Order action)

* Order Action:

1. Choose a card from the Order Row and pay the indicated amount of wheat (and any other indicated resources).[5]

2. Take the order card and place it in your hand.[5]

3. Take as many darker color amphora tokens as shown in the upper right corner of the card and place them on the amphora token space on your Ostia Port board; if you paid for additional resources, you also get the lighter color amph

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

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

[3] RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook · p.3 · Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase

[4] RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook · p.3 · 2. Production Phase · Resource area

[5] RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook · p.5 · C. Order

The table has its answer — dice up.

🔧 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 179 ms · ask 6570 ms · total 6751 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 6751 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.04918, "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": 3, "score": 0.048387, "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": 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": 2, "score": 0.03125, "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": 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": 5, "score": 0.030303, "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}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When you perform a move action, you can move your corbita tokens on the main board towards any of the destinations along the connected route. First, declare the number of steps to be moved. Then, pay as many permits as required corresponding to the number of steps. To move 1/2/3/4/5/6 steps, you mus", "headingPath": "A. Move · Movement Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "Each player then earns victory points from each of the following: Refer to the position of your reward cube on the reward track and score victory points from your building icons, ship icons and amphora tokens (see page 4 ). You gain victory points from the end-of-game effect in the destination tiles", "headingPath": "Final Score Calculation · ① Building icons, ship icons, and amphora tokens · ② Destination tiles · ③ Trading port tiles · ④ Set of icons · Reference", "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}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2. Production Phase · Resource area", "sharpsignalDocId": 1210}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "C. Order", "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 0.91803 of 3489 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 6, 2026 14:44 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	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase	p.3	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
#3	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
#4	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	B.Player Setup	p.2	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 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
#6	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	C. Order	p.5	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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	A. Move · Movement Rules	p.4	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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Final Score Calculation · ① Building icons, ship icons, and amphora tokens · ② Destination tiles · ③ Trading port tiles · ④ Set of icons · Reference	p.7	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 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)	Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase	p.3	#2	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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	B.Player Setup	p.2	#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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Final Score Calculation · ① Building icons, ship icons, and amphora tokens · ② Destination tiles · ③ Trading port tiles · ④ Set of icons · Reference	p.7	#8	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)	C. Order	p.5	#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
#5	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	End Game · Note: · Final Score Calculation	p.6	#11	0.014085 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	2. Production Phase · Resource area	p.3	#12	0.013889 (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 Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)		p.7	#10	0.014286 (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
#8	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	A.Main Board Setup	p.2	#1	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	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
[3]	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	Goal of the Game · Rewards and Victory Points · Gameplay · Turn Flow · 1. Selection Phase	p.3	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	2. Production Phase · Resource area	p.3	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Ostia — Rulebook (corpus doc 1210)	C. Order	p.5	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 179 ms · first delta 1390 ms · total 6751 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 179 ms · ask 6570 ms · gateway work 6751 ms · total 6751 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3786
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 1024
tok/sec: 195.8 tok/sec — 1024 output tokens in 5.229 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 30s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 24h, checked 3s 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 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.