Ruling — Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD

← Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 ADbg-164949-en-1e

To play the game, follow this sequence of play:

1. Complete all eight phases of your turn before proceeding to the next player.[1]

2. Upkeep: Remove all Quaestor markers in provinces you govern and Castra markers on armies you command.[1]

3. Crisis: Roll 2d6 on the Crisis Table and resolve the result.[1]

4. Take Actions: Play cards from your hand and spend influence points to perform any combination of actions in any order, provided you can afford the necessary influence points.[1] Actions include:

* Using influence points (Military/Red, Senate/Blue, or Populace/Yellow) generated by playing cards to perform actions.[2]

* Performing the Initiate Battle action by using influence points to choose an army to attack.[3]

* Performing the Place Governor action to replace a Neutral Governor or a Governor of another player with your own.[4][5][6]

* Performing the Train Legions action to flip a reduced-strength legion back to its full-strength side.[3]

* Using events from played cards at any applicable time during your turn.[2]

5. Support Check Phase: (Phase listed in sequence).[5]

6. Expand Pretender Empire Phase: (Phase listed in sequence).[5]

7. Gain Legacy Phase: (Phase listed in sequence).[5]

8. Buy/Trash Cards Phase: Use political points (generated by provinces you govern) to buy new cards from the supply or trash unwanted cards from your Discard Pile.[5][1]

* To buy a card, spend political points equal to the card's cost plus the number of cards already bought this turn.[1]

* A card's cost is its value if that value is less than or equal to the number of provinces you govern, or double its value if it is greater.[1]

* To trash a card from your Discard Pile, spend three political points.[1]

9. End of Turn Phase: (Phase listed in sequence).[5] Any unspent political points are lost at the end of your turn.[1]

[1] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.4 · 5.3 Buying/Trashing Cards · 6. Sequence of Play · 6.1 Upkeep · 6.2 Crisis · 6.3 Take Actions

[2] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.4 · 5. Cards · 5.1 Influence Points · 5.2 Events

[3] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.9 · 8.3 Retreat

[4] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.12 · 12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital

[5] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.14 · Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:

[6] RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook · p.15 · Take Actions Phase:

The sage rests. The game continues.

🔧 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 112 ms · ask 11777 ms · total 55222 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 43330 ms · generation 11892 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 12, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Pretender provinces (marked with a Seat of Power or Breakaway marker) are immune to the Place Governor action and reduce the support in Italia during the Support Check Phase (6.4). Once a player becomes a Pretender any province he governs with a support level of three or higher that is not already i", "headingPath": "12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.046676, "snippet": "Place the game board in the center of the table. Each player takes the twenty counters of one color (six Governors, six Generals, six Seat of Power/Breakaway, one Legacy, and one Emperor Turns) and a player mat. Place the Emperor Turns and Legacy counters in the zero space on the score track located", "headingPath": "3.1 Game Setup · 3.2 Player Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 15, "score": 0.046642, "snippet": "Wray plays a Red 3 (Flanking Maneuver) . He spends 1 Military influence to move his army from Macedonia to Thracia and then 1 Military influence to attack Jamey's army in the capital. Before the dice are rolled, Wray decides to use the Flanking Maneuver event to allow a re-roll of his dice, if neede", "headingPath": "Take Actions Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.046343, "snippet": "Combat .............................................................. 9 9. Crisis Checks ..................................................10 10. Historical Figures ..........................................11 11. Mobs ................................................................11 12. Pretender ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.045536, "snippet": "Jed plays a Blue 1 influence card to recruit his 1 cost Governor. He then plays two Blue 1 influence cards to roll 2d6, targeting Syria with a Place Governor action (the invasion of Galatia having changed his plans). The Neutral Governor is removed and replaced with Jed's Governor, reducing the supp", "headingPath": "Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.043636, "snippet": "Perform the following steps, in order: If you are a Pretender: Gain one legacy for each province you govern containing a Seat of Power or Breakaway marker if there are no other Pretenders. If you are the Emperor: Remove any Breakaway or Seat of Power markers in provinces you govern, as your claim ha", "headingPath": "6.6 Gain Legacy · 6.7 Buy/Trash Cards · 6.8 End of Turn", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 18, "score": 0.042838, "snippet": "Following up on this result, Jed plays a Red 2 (Castra) to place a Castra marker with his army in Asia and uses 1 Military influence to flip his reduced strength legion in Syria back to its full-strength side. He then plays Blue 1 to attempt a Place Governor action in Macedonia. But rolling only one", "headingPath": "Take Actions Phase · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.04207, "snippet": "The last round of the game is triggered when, at the end of his turn, a player is Emperor and has 60 or more legacy. The game will end when all players have taken the same number of turns. Or, if the Diocletian event is drawn, the game ends immediately. Players then receive bonus legacy based on the", "headingPath": "7.1 Game End · 7.2 Short Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.3 Buying/Trashing Cards · 6. Sequence of Play · 6.1 Upkeep · 6.2 Crisis · 6.3 Take Actions", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5. Cards · 5.1 Influence Points · 5.2 Events", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "8.3 Retreat", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 14, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Take Actions Phase:", "sharpsignalDocId": 1070}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1070 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1070 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 0.88633 of 1566 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:00 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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital	p.12	0.046898 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	3.1 Game Setup · 3.2 Player Setup	p.3	0.046676 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase:	p.15	0.046642 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)		p.1	0.046343 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:	p.14	0.045536 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	6.6 Gain Legacy · 6.7 Buy/Trash Cards · 6.8 End of Turn	p.8	0.043636 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:	p.18	0.042838 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	7.1 Game End · 7.2 Short Game	p.8	0.04207 (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 38 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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	3.1 Game Setup · 3.2 Player Setup	p.3	#2	0.046676 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital	p.12	#1	0.046898 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	8.3 Retreat	p.9	#19	0.025808 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	7.1 Game End · 7.2 Short Game	p.8	#8	0.04207 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:	p.14	#5	0.045536 (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
#6	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase:	p.15	#3	0.046642 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	5.3 Buying/Trashing Cards · 6. Sequence of Play · 6.1 Upkeep · 6.2 Crisis · 6.3 Take Actions	p.4	#15	0.026857 (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 Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	5. Cards · 5.1 Influence Points · 5.2 Events	p.4	#9	0.030118 (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

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	5.3 Buying/Trashing Cards · 6. Sequence of Play · 6.1 Upkeep · 6.2 Crisis · 6.3 Take Actions	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	5. Cards · 5.1 Influence Points · 5.2 Events	p.4	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	8.3 Retreat	p.9	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	12.1 Creation of a New Pretender · 13. Example of Play · 12.2 Occupation of a Pretender Provincial Capital	p.12	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase: · Support Check Phase: · Expand Pretender Empire Phase: · Gain Legacy Phase: · Buy/Trash Cards Phase: · End of Turn Phase:	p.14	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Time of Crisis: The Roman Empire in Turmoil, 235-284 AD — Rulebook (corpus doc 1070)	Take Actions Phase:	p.15	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 112 ms · first delta 3348 ms · total 55222 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 43330 ms · retrieval 112 ms · ask 11777 ms · gateway work 11892 ms · total 55222 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3785
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 465
tok/sec: 55.0 tok/sec — 465 output tokens in 8.452 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 6s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, checked 7s 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 1000), 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.