RuleSage cited table rulings
← Catan

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Catanbg-13-en-1e · Catan: Cities & Knightsbg-926-en-1e · Catan: Seafarersbg-325-en-1e

Depending on the specific game variation being played, the setup is as follows:
Standard/Variable Setup (General)
1. Set up the frame for a 3- or 4-player game.[1]
2. Place sea hexes as shown on the map.[1]
3. Gather the land hexes and number discs and place them randomly in the four island areas, ensuring forests and pastures do not receive low value number discs (2, 3, 11, and 12).[1]
4. You may also randomize the ports.[1]
5. Shuffle the port tokens and place them on the port locations shown on the map.[1]
6. Place the robber on the hex with the number 12 disc and the pirate on the indicated location.[1]
Main Island/Unexplored Regions Variation
1. Set up the frame for a 3- or 4-player game.[2]
2. Place the 3 desert hexes as shown on the map.[2]
3. Gather the main island land hexes, number discs, and ports and place them randomly in the area shown on the map.[2]
4. Place the sea hexes within the frame.[2]
5. Gather the unexplored regions' hexes and number discs and place them randomly in the remaining spaces within the frame.[2]
6. Place the robber and the pirate as shown.[2]
7. Note: Do not place red number discs (6s and 8s) on adjacent hexes or on gold fields.[2]
Cloth Trade Variation
1. Set up the frame, the four small islands, and sea hexes as shown.[3]
2. Set up the villages by placing the number discs and cloth tokens as shown.[3]
3. Gather the land hexes and number discs for the large islands and place them randomly in the empty hex areas.[3]
4. Randomly place ports on the locations shown.[3]
5. Players choose which hex with a number 12 disc should start the game with the robber.[3]
6. Place the pirate on the indicated location.[3]
Fog Islands Variation
1. Set up the game as shown by the appropriate map.[4]
2. Leave the white spaces empty.[4]
3. Randomize the facedown hexes from the component list and place them in a facedown stack next to the board.[4]
4. Randomize the facedown number discs from the component list and place them in a facedown stack next to the board.[4]
5. Place the robber and the pirate on the indicated locations.[4]
Cities & Knights Setup
1. Assemble the frame as shown, using the sea frame 1-2 from Cities & Knights that shows the barbarian track.[5]
2. Sort the resource cards and commodity cards by type and place them in eight faceup stacks in the card trays.[5]
3. Sort the progress cards by type, then shuffle each stack.[5]
4. Place the three stacks face down in the remaining card tray.[5]
5. Place the VP tokens in a pile within easy reach.[5]
6. Place the 3 metropolises, the merchant piece, the 3 dice, and the Longest Route tile next to the game board.[5]
7. Place the barbarian ship on the starting space of the barbarian track.[5]
8. Place the robber next to the final space of the barbarian track.[5]
Standard Catan Setup (General)
1. Select a color and take 5 settlements, 4 cities, and 15 roads.[6]
2. Place 2 roads and 2 settlements on the game board.[6]
3. Place remaining settlements, roads, and cities in front of you.[6]
4. Take your color's building costs card.[6]
5. Place the 'Longest Road' and 'Largest Army' cards and the 2 dice beside the game board.[6]
6. Sort resource cards into 5 stacks and place them face up next to the game board.[6]
7. Shuffle the development cards and place them face down by the board.[6]
8. Receive resources for each terrain hex around your starting settlement marked with a white star.[6]
[1] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.7 · VARIABLE SETUP
[2] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.11 · VARIABLE SETUP · MAIN ISLAND · UNEXPLORED REGIONS
[3] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.15 · VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME
[4] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook · p.8 · THE FOG ISLANDS · FIXED SETUP
[5] RULEBOOK Catan: Cities & Knights — Rulebook · p.4 · Assemble the Frame · Place the Hexes and Number Discs · Place Remaining Components
[6] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook · p.3 · settinG up the Game

Rule found, game on.

Strategy guides → — community tips, kept separate from rulings

🔧 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 329 ms · ask 8821 ms · total 9152 ms
single-flight (PR-5)
queued 0 ms · generation 9152 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read
[{"page": 8, "score": 0.046402, "snippet": "Here is a summary of the the game sequence, plus some more specific entries where you can find details: Lay out the game board: Set-up, Variable Y Initial set-up: Set-up Phase Y Play The starting player begins the game. The other players follow in clockwise order. On your turn, you complete these 3 ", "headingPath": "Game play", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 2, "score": 0.045607, "snippet": "You can play the game Catan on a variable game board. For your first game, however, we suggest that you use the 'Starting Set-up for Beginners Y .' (See Illus. A on page 3.) This set-up is well-balanced for all players. Before your first game, you must remove the die-cut components from the cardboar", "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Beginners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.045445, "snippet": "Select a color and take your 5 settlements, 4 cities, and 15 roads (no more and no less!). Place your 2 roads and your 2 settlements on the game board. Place your remaining settlements, roads, and cities down in front of you. Note: If you are playing a 3-player game, nobody plays the red position in", "headingPath": "settinG up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.045016, "snippet": "Begin the 'set-up phase' after you build the game map (see Illustration N and Set-up, Variable Y ). Everyone chooses a color and takes the corresponding game pieces: 5 settlements; 4 cities;", "headingPath": "set-up phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.043886, "snippet": "If you want to use the starting set-up, lay out the board as shown in Illustration R (and the Game Overview): Assemble the frame exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place the terrain hexes exactly as shown in Illustration R. Place 2 settlements and 2 roads of each color as shown. If only 3 are playi", "headingPath": "startinG set-up for BeGinners", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.042144, "snippet": "It is more fun to play with a variable game board-with the game board laid out randomly. The board changes each game. If you would like to use the variable set-up, you can find the guidelines in the Almanac under Set-up, Variable Y . Also look for useful tips under Set-up Phase Y and Tactics Y .", "headingPath": "Starting Set-up for Experienced Players", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}, {"page": 20, "score": 0.030159, "snippet": "Gather the hexes listed and randomly place them face up within the frame. Players may take this opportunity to agree to shift the setup of the hexes if they would like to change the number or size of islands. Gather the number discs listed and randomly place them on the land hexes. If 2 red number d", "headingPath": "SETUP · ADDITIONAL RULES · WINNING THE GAME · FURTHER SETUP OPTIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.028814, "snippet": "Suggested Beginners' Map Set-up 15 roads; and 1 building costs card. Sort the resource cards into 5 stacks and place them face up beside the board. Shuffle the development cards Y and place them face down beside the resource cards. Place the 2 special cards and the dice beside the board. Place the r", "headingPath": "Illustration N", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show
[{"page": 7, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 11, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP · MAIN ISLAND · UNEXPLORED REGIONS", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 15, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 8, "quote": null, "headingPath": "THE FOG ISLANDS · FIXED SETUP", "sharpsignalDocId": 216}, {"page": 4, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Assemble the Frame · Place the Hexes and Number Discs · Place Remaining Components", "sharpsignalDocId": 217}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "settinG up the Game", "sharpsignalDocId": 43}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 43 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 43 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 0.88123 of 2829 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded
Sep 7, 2026 14:20 UTC

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 rankdocumentheadingpage fused RRF scoresnippet chars
#1 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Game play p.8 0.046402 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Beginners p.2 0.045607 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 0.045445 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) set-up phase p.12 0.045016 (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)) 190
#5 RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) startinG set-up for BeGinners p.13 0.043886 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Starting Set-up for Experienced Players p.3 0.042144 (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)) 296
#7 RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) SETUP · ADDITIONAL RULES · WINNING THE GAME · FURTHER SETUP OPTIONS p.20 0.030159 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) Illustration N p.12 0.028814 (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 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 — 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.

one thing that looks wrong and is not: a row a floor seated can carry a fused rank LARGER than the pool size above it. The floors draw from the whole fused list, not only from the passages the re-ranker scored — so a rank past the pool is a floor reaching down for something the re-ranker would never have seen, which is exactly what the floors are for.

read atdocumentheadingpage fused rankfused RRF scorecarried byhow it got its slot
#1 RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP p.7 #12 0.02758 (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
#2 RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP · MAIN ISLAND · UNEXPLORED REGIONS p.11 #13 0.02739 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME p.15 #9 0.028442 (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 Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 #3 0.045445 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) THE FOUR ISLANDS · FIXED SETUP p.6 #22 0.025182 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) THE FOG ISLANDS · FIXED SETUP p.8 #15 0.026547 (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 Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) SETUP · ADDITIONAL RULES · WINNING THE GAME · FURTHER SETUP OPTIONS p.20 #7 0.030159 (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 Catan: Cities & Knights — Rulebook (corpus doc 217) Assemble the Frame · Place the Hexes and Number Discs · Place Remaining Components p.4 #23 0.024451 (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 guaranteed a slot by the one-slot-per-book floor

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.

#documentheadingpagequote chars
[1] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP p.7 no quote on the wire
[2] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP · MAIN ISLAND · UNEXPLORED REGIONS p.11 no quote on the wire
[3] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) VARIABLE SETUP · CLOTH TRADE · SHIP MOVEMENT · PIRATE AND ROBBER · WINNING THE GAME p.15 no quote on the wire
[4] RULEBOOK Catan: Seafarers — Rulebook (corpus doc 216) THE FOG ISLANDS · FIXED SETUP p.8 no quote on the wire
[5] RULEBOOK Catan: Cities & Knights — Rulebook (corpus doc 217) Assemble the Frame · Place the Hexes and Number Discs · Place Remaining Components p.4 no quote on the wire
[6] RULEBOOK Catan — Rulebook (corpus doc 43) settinG up the Game p.3 no quote on the wire
timing split
retrieval 329 ms · first delta 4528 ms · total 9152 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 329 ms · ask 8821 ms · gateway work 9152 ms · total 9152 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
2330
tokens out (what the answerer generated)
923
tok/sec
202.7 tok/sec — 923 output tokens in 4.554 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child)
answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 49s 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.
outcome
ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
answered — no abstain rationale applies
decision
SERVED — setup-shaped and this game's approved setup checklist is offered above
pattern that matched
SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question)
setup

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 1), 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.