Ruling — Three Kingdoms Redux

← Three Kingdoms Redux

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Three Kingdoms Reduxbg-145371-en-1e

To play Three Kingdoms Redux, follow these steps:

Setup

1. Each player selects one of the states of Wei, Wu, or Shu.[1]

2. Place the game board face up on a flat surface.[1]

3. Place the round marker on the '1' space of the round track.[1]

4. Place a Wei, Wu, and Shu state marker on the '1', 'lar', and '3' space of the bid order track respectively.[1]

5. Randomly select one side of a criterion marker (administration or combat) and place it on the 'control Han emperor' action space, then place the other marker with the opposite side face up on the 'win popular support' action space.[1]

6. Place a border location token with the 0 VP side face up on each of the 15 border location spaces.[1]

7. Place one of each Wei, Wu, and Shu state marker on the 0 VP space of the military VP track and the Governor space of the rank track.[1]

8. Each player places 5 farm tokens and 5 marketplace tokens (undeveloped side face up) on their state's farm and marketplace development spaces.[1]

9. Place each state's tribe marker on its corresponding tribal relations track: Wei (Xiong Nu) at 5, Wu (Shan Yue) at 6, and Shu (Nan Man) at 7.[1]

10. The Shu player collects and holds the alliance token.[1]

11. Set the Han emperor token aside.[1]

Gameplay

1. The game is played over a number of rounds, up to a maximum of 12.[2]

2. Players bid for various actions with their general tokens.[2]

3. The highest bidder of each action space obtains the right to carry out the actions.[2]

4. During the Resolution Phase of each round, players determine the bidding order for the following round and take the actions they won.[3]

5. After all players have assigned their generals or passed, winners of each action space are determined by comparing bids.[3]

6. Players with losing bids must return their losing bid general tokens, along with any assigned army units, bid tokens, and the Han emperor token (if applicable), to their respective supplies.[3]

7. Players with losing bids must also return any popular support tokens placed with the corresponding general tokens from those action spaces to the general supply.[3]

8. Players with winning bids leave their winning bid general tokens, army units, bid tokens, Han emperor token, and/or popular support tokens on the action spaces for now.[3]

9. The alliance token remains on the game board regardless of the bid result for the alliance action space.[3]

Winning the Game

1. The winner is the player with the most victory points (VPs) at the end of the game.[2]

[1] RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook · p.4 · GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …

[2] RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook · p.2 · TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL

[3] RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook · p.10 · RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS

Settled. Play on.

🔧 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 94 ms · ask 5704 ms · total 15459 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 9659 ms · generation 5800 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 2, "score": 0.048139, "snippet": "Throughout this rulebook, you will see boxes similar to this. These boxes contain examples and items you should take note of during gameplay. You may also refer to the following links for further information that will aid i n your initial plays: Compendium and Session Report of a full gameplay: http", "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 27, "score": 0.047123, "snippet": "I ncrease a general's bid by 1 (returned to the general supply during Resolution Phase). Pay for part of construction costs of a state enhancement card. Retain in players' supply for final scoring in the Civil Harmony category. We recommend that players start with the Beginners' Tutorial for your in", "headingPath": "Popular Support Tokens: · BEGINNERS' TUTORIAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 4, "score": 0.045002, "snippet": "Each player selects one of the states of Wei, Wu and Shu to play. Place the game board face up on a flat surface. Round Track A Place the round marker on the '1' space of the round track. Bid Order Track and Action Order Track B Place a Wei, Wu and Shu state marker on the '1', '2' and '3' space of t", "headingPath": "GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Theseactionsallowplayerstoimproveyourstate’sdomesticdevelopment,gain militarystrength,constructstateenhancements,increasepopularitywithyour people,improverelationshipwithyourbordertribesandgainpromotiontothe nexthigherrank. Theactionsavailabletoeachplayerare: • developyourstate’sfarmormarketplace, •", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 11, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "Suppose that both Wei and Shu have 0 military VPs instead. In this case, they enter the second tiebreaker, which follows the order of Wei, Wu and Shu. This implies that Wei will be first and Shu be second in turn order, since Wu is already occupying third. Thus, Wu and Shu will be in alliance next r", "headingPath": "2) DETERMINE TURN ORDER FOR NEXT ROUND · 3) TAKE ACTIONS · Develop Farm or Harvest", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "During the Resolution Phase of each round, players determine the bidding order for the following round and take the actions they won. Carry out the following in the order of presentation: After all players have assigned their generals or passed, determine the winners of each action space by comparin", "headingPath": "RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "| Round | Wei 魏 | Wu 吳 | Shu 蜀 | | 3 | Draw 3, select 1 | Draw 4, select 2 | Draw 4, select 2 | | 5 | Draw 3, select 1 | Draw 3, select 1 | Draw 4, select 2 | | 9 | Draw 3, select 1 | Draw 3, select 1 | Draw 3, select 1 | The number of general cards to draw is always two more than the number of gene", "headingPath": "1) RECRUIT GENERALS (ROUNDS 3, 5 AND 9) · 2) SELECT ALLIANCE ACTION SPACE", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 22, "score": 0.029643, "snippet": "The following is round 1 of an actual play, extracted from one of our playtests. Combat for 'control Han emperor' action space, administration for 'win popular support' action space Wei o Square-pallet Chain Pumps (Unification) o Stable (Unification) o Weapon Trading Post (Unification) o Tax Modific", "headingPath": "EXAMPLE PLAY (ONE ROUND) · Criterion Markers · I nitial Dealt State Enhancement Cards · I nitial Recruitment", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}, {"page": 10, "quote": null, "headingPath": "RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS", "sharpsignalDocId": 1235}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 1235 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 1235 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 0.89957 of 2071 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 7, 2026 03:10 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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL	p.2	0.048139 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	Popular Support Tokens: · BEGINNERS' TUTORIAL	p.27	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
#3	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …	p.4	0.045002 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)		p.2	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
#5	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	2) DETERMINE TURN ORDER FOR NEXT ROUND · 3) TAKE ACTIONS · Develop Farm or Harvest	p.11	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
#6	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS	p.10	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
#7	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	1) RECRUIT GENERALS (ROUNDS 3, 5 AND 9) · 2) SELECT ALLIANCE ACTION SPACE	p.7	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
#8	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	EXAMPLE PLAY (ONE ROUND) · Criterion Markers · I nitial Dealt State Enhancement Cards · I nitial Recruitment	p.22	0.029643 (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 49 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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL	p.2	#1	0.048139 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	Popular Support Tokens: · BEGINNERS' TUTORIAL	p.27	#2	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
#3	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	Develop Marketplace or Collect Tax · Trade Rice and/or Weapons	p.12	#14	0.014493 (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
#4	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	I mprove Tribal Relations	p.16	#28	0.011494 (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
#5	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS	p.10	#6	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))	vector + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	Battle	p.15	#18	0.013699 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	State Enhancements · Resources	p.25	#10	0.028039 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …	p.4	#3	0.045002 (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 Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	GAME COMPONENTS · Game Board · Criterion Marker Spaces C · Example: Criterion Markers Placement · Border Location Spaces · Military VP and Rank Track · …	p.4	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	TABLE OF CONTENTS · GAME OVERVIEW & GOAL	p.2	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Three Kingdoms Redux — Rulebook (corpus doc 1235)	RESOLUTION PHASE · 1) REMOVE TOKENS	p.10	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 94 ms · first delta 2531 ms · total 15459 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 9659 ms · retrieval 94 ms · ask 5704 ms · gateway work 5800 ms · total 15459 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 3097
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 624
tok/sec: 197.2 tok/sec — 624 output tokens in 3.165 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 54s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 4s 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 1165), 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.