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

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

You asked

How do I take my turn?

Answered counted as answered

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

A single game turn follows this sequence:

1. Both players receive reinforcements and place them according to the rules.[1] The Allied player places reinforcements first, receiving delayed reinforcements from the previous turn due to War In Europe effects, or placing current reinforcements in the delay box.[1] The Japanese player places reinforcements second, and these are never delayed or diverted.[1]

2. Both players may receive replacements, with the Allied player using replacements first, to flip reduced units to full strength or resurrect units eliminated in combat.[1]

3. The Allied player conducts submarine warfare and Strategic Bombing.[1]

4. Players are dealt a variable number of Strategy cards from the top of their respective decks.[1][2] The Japanese player receives 4 to 7 cards, depending on the outcome of Strategic warfare.[1] The Allied player receives 4 to 7 cards, depending on the game turn, War in Europe, and whether certain Allied nations have surrendered.[1]

5. The players determine who goes first: the player with fewer Strategy cards may play a Future Offensives card as an EC Offensive to go first; otherwise, the player with the most Strategy cards goes first.[1] In specific cases for 1941 and 1942, the Japanese player must go first.[1]

6. During the Offensives Segment, players alternate being the Offensives player.[3] The current Offensives player must perform one of the following: play a Strategy card as an OC or EC to conduct an offensive (moving and attacking units) or implement an event;[3] use a pass if they have any;[3] designate a card as a Future Offensive card;[3] or discard a Strategy card.[4][3] The opposing player acts as the Reaction player and may play Reaction cards and possibly activate and move units in reaction to the offensive.[3] This segment ends when both players have played all Strategy cards in their hands.[4][3]

7. During the Political Phase, players determine the status of each nation to see if they surrender.[2]

8. The turn ends with the determination of the supply status of units and whether they feel the effects of attrition.[2] All ground and air units determine their supply state; if out of supply, they are flipped from full strength to reduced strength, and units already on their reduced side may be eliminated.[3]

9. If it is the last turn of a scenario, victory is determined; otherwise, the game turn marker is advanced and a new game turn begins.[3][2]

[1] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.6 · 4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment

[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.6 · 4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase

[4] RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook · p.6 · 5.0 Strategy Cards

The book has spoken.

🔧 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 221 ms · ask 8525 ms · total 8750 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 0 ms · generation 8750 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 5, "score": 0.045805, "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": 6, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "Players alternate being the Offensives player, playing Strategy cards, either as OCs or ECs to conduct Offensives (the moving of units on the map and the resolution of resulting combats) or implement other game functions through events. The current offensives player must play a Strategy card as OC o", "headingPath": "4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 9, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "HQs cannot move per se, but they can be voluntarily withdrawn from the map as the complete play for any OC. Nothing can stop the voluntary withdrawal of an HQ and the HQ does not need be in supply. The withdrawn HQ is placed on the game turn record track for re-entry on the next game turn. An HQ on ", "headingPath": "6.13 Voluntary HQ Withdrawal Repositioning · 6.14 Involuntary HQ Repositioning · 6.15 Early HQ Return", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 34, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "Historical Variant: for the game turn 2 hand of cards, use 17.25 D and F. See 16.0. Here are there starting locations for the game markers: US Political Will Marker: begins in the Zero box on the US Po -litical Will track. China Marker: begins in the Stable Front Box on the China track. Japanese Div", "headingPath": "17.12 Game Turns 2 to 12 · 17.13 Winning the Game · 17.14 Track Marker Starting Locations · 17.2 1942", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "If an opposing ground unit ends its Offensive move in an unoccupied Reaction player controlled city, Resource hex, port, or airfield hex that is within range of a Reaction HQ and in a Reaction aircraft Zone Of Influence (whether neutralized or not), the Reaction player may attempt a Special Reaction", "headingPath": "7.27 Special Reaction (SR) Move", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "Each player has a deck of unique Strategy cards. A player can only draw and play Strategy cards from their own deck, although some cards allow you to force the other player to discard from their hand. Each turn a player draws a hand of 4 to 7 Strategy cards. Players alternate playing strategy cards ", "headingPath": "5.0 Strategy Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 41, "score": 0.030303, "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}, {"page": 13, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "When an Offensive is declared, players conduct the following steps in sequence. Step 1. The Offensives player activates supplied units within ac -tivation range of an eligible HQ (7.21). Any Offensives bonuses from the EC card that apply prior to movement are implemented (including receiving any rei", "headingPath": "7.2 Offensives Sequence", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment", "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": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase", "sharpsignalDocId": 828}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "5.0 Strategy Cards", "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 0.92638 of 2051 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Sep 20, 2026 06:25 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)	2.3 Playing Other Scenario Than The Full Campaign · 3.0 General Course Of Play	p.5	0.045805 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase	p.6	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
#3	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	6.13 Voluntary HQ Withdrawal Repositioning · 6.14 Involuntary HQ Repositioning · 6.15 Early HQ Return	p.9	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
#4	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	17.12 Game Turns 2 to 12 · 17.13 Winning the Game · 17.14 Track Marker Starting Locations · 17.2 1942	p.34	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
#5	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	7.27 Special Reaction (SR) Move	p.14	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
#6	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.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))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.41	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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	7.2 Offensives Sequence	p.13	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

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)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.6	#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
#2	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment	p.6	#36	0.012195 (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
#3	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.42	#10	0.026862 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase	p.6	#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))	vector + 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.38	#66	0.008547 (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 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	#55	0.009615 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)		p.45	#37	0.012048 (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 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	#1	0.045805 (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 Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	4.0 Sequence of Play · 4.11 Reinforcement Segment · 4.12 Replacement Segment · 4.13 Strategic Warfare Segment · 4.14 Deal Strategy Cards Segment · 4.21 Initiative Segment	p.6	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)	4.22 Offensives Segment · 4.31 National Status Segment · 4.32 US Political Will Segment · 4.4 The Attrition Phase · 4.5 The End of Turn Phase	p.6	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Empire of the Sun: The Pacific War 1941-1945 — Rulebook (corpus doc 828)	5.0 Strategy Cards	p.6	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 221 ms · first delta 5840 ms · total 8750 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 221 ms · ask 8525 ms · gateway work 8750 ms · total 8750 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 5481
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 535
tok/sec: 192.7 tok/sec — 535 output tokens in 2.777 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 21s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 23h, 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 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.