Ruling — Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945

← Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945

You asked

How do I setup the game?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945bg-11825-en-1e

Setup varies depending on the chosen scenario.[1]

General Setup Instructions

1. Segregate counters into a set that have hex setup locations and those that have a game turn of entry.[2]

2. Take the units with hex setups and place them on the map where indicated.[2]

3. For any given scenario, once the initial setup is accomplished, the units enter play according to the portion of the full campaign game that you are playing.[1]

Scenario-Specific Setup

* Full Campaign Scenario: All units that set up at the beginning of game turn 1 (December 1941) have their hex location written on the counter.[1] If the front of the counter has a white triangle in the upper right corner, that unit begins play on its reduced side, where the setup information is located.[1] Units with a turn number instead of a hex setup location are reinforcement units.[1] Units with a star instead of a number enter through the play of a specific strategy card event.[1]

* Other Scenarios: Each scenario has an initial setup for all listed units.[2] If a unit is to be set up at reduced strength, it is so indicated; otherwise, the unit begins at full strength.[2]

* 1943 Scenario: This scenario begins on game turn 5 at the beginning of the Offensives Phase.[3] There are no Reinforcement, Replacement, or Strategic Warfare Segments conducted for game turn 5.[3] Place all Allied units in the hexes indicated.[3]

* 1944 Scenario: This scenario begins on game turn 8 at the beginning of the Offensives Phase.[4] There are no Reinforcement, Replacement, or Strategic Warfare Segments conducted for game turn 8.[4] Set up the units and markers for both sides as described.[4]

* South Pacific Mini Scenario: Use the South Pacific mini-Map instead of the Main map.[5] To play this scenario, create two decks of 24 cards from the provided list.[5]

* Japanese Setup: All other ports, airbases, and resource hexes on the map begin the game under Japanese control (e.g., Solomon Islands and New Guinea ports/airbases/resource hexes, excluding Port Moresby and Gili-Gili).[5]

[1] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.5 · 2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup

[2] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.5 · 2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play

[3] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.36 · 17.3 1943 · 17.31 Allied Setup: · US Units · Commonwealth Units · Dutch Units

[4] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.38

[5] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.41

Question closed. Friendships intact.

🔧 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 241 ms · ask 9191 ms · total 9438 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 9438 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.04918, "snippet": "Empire of the Sun has a wide variety of scenarios to play based on the duration of the gaming experience you are seeking. Consequently setup varies depending upon the chosen scenario starting point. The counters are configured around the full Campaign Scenario. All other scenarios are a subset of th", "headingPath": "2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 33, "score": 0.046898, "snippet": "Players bid US Political Will boxes to determine which side they will play. After the pieces are set up, both players write down on a piece of paper a number of US Political Will boxes that they are bidding to play a particular side. A player can choose either side and can bid any number of US Polit", "headingPath": "B. Campaign Game Bidding · 17.0 Scenarios", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.046751, "snippet": "Each scenario, other than the Full Campaign Scenario, has an initial setup for all units listed. If a unit is to be set up at reduced strength it is so indicated, otherwise the unit begins at full strength. The game turn of entry for units that would enter the game beyond the start of a particular s", "headingPath": "2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Set up all game turn 1 Allied units in their starting locations with the exceptions of the following units that are permanently removed from play (these are the units that were destroyed during game turn 1) and the other listed units that have alternate setup locations and are reduced or improved in", "headingPath": "17.21 Allied Setup: · Eliminated at start Allied units: · Repositioned, Altered, or Replaced Allied Units:", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 55, "score": 0.045009, "snippet": "No matter what happens, your first session’s strategy will disappoint you, so gain skill from the experience. Third, I specifically designed the South Pacific sce- nario (included in the 4th and this printing) to solve this conundrum. My advice is set up the South Pacific scenario that comes with it", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 41, "score": 0.043511, "snippet": "Japan: All other ports, airbases and resource hexes on the map begin the game under Japanese control. (Example: All Solomon Islands and New Guinea ports, airbases and resource hex except for Port Moresby and Gili-Gili.) 17.10.1 Allied Set Up Scenario Hex Setup/Game Turn of Entry Numbers in brackets ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 1, "score": 0.043496, "snippet": "Introduction ......................................................... 2 Setting Up The Game .......................................... General Course Of Play ....................................... Sequence Of Play ................................................ Strategy Cards ....................", "headingPath": "Table of Contents", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 41, "score": 0.041479, "snippet": "41 Empire of the Sun © 2025 GMT Games, LLC Overview This scenario is four game turns long (game turns 3, 4, 5, and 6) and begins on game turn 3 at the beginning of the Offensives Phase with the US having the option to use their Future Offensive card to pre-empt the Japanese going first. There is no ", "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 36, "quote": null, "headingPath": "17.3 1943 · 17.31 Allied Setup: · US Units · Commonwealth Units · Dutch Units", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 38, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 41, "quote": null, "headingPath": "", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 828 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 828 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 0.90086 of 1735 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 20, 2026 06:24 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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup	p.5	0.04918 (at the 3-arm ceiling (0.04918) — every arm ranked it #1)	300
#2	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	B. Campaign Game Bidding · 17.0 Scenarios	p.33	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
#3	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	0.046751 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	17.21 Allied Setup: · Eliminated at start Allied units: · Repositioned, Altered, or Replaced Allied Units:	p.34	0.046635 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.55	0.045009 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.41	0.043511 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	Table of Contents	p.1	0.043496 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.41	0.041479 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup	p.5	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	#3	0.046751 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	17.21 Allied Setup: · Eliminated at start Allied units: · Repositioned, Altered, or Replaced Allied Units:	p.34	#4	0.046635 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	Table of Contents	p.1	#7	0.043496 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.46	#14	0.025 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.41	#6	0.043511 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.38	#12	0.02619 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	17.3 1943 · 17.31 Allied Setup: · US Units · Commonwealth Units · Dutch Units	p.36	#9	0.027826 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.0 Setting Up The Game · 2.1 Scenarios · 2.2 Full Campaign Setup	p.5	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	17.3 1943 · 17.31 Allied Setup: · US Units · Commonwealth Units · Dutch Units	p.36	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.38	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.41	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 241 ms · first delta 6759 ms · total 9438 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 241 ms · ask 9191 ms · gateway work 9438 ms · total 9438 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 4447
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 501
tok/sec: 194.1 tok/sec — 501 output tokens in 2.581 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 44s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 0s 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: NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
pattern that matched: SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
matched words (in the normalized question): setup

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 763), 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.