Campaign Manager

Eligible candidacies get a dedicated campaign page at /campaign/[id]. This is where your candidate's campaign lives: budget, upgrades, operations, activity log, endorsements, and manager assignments. It's separate from your character's profile and has its own action and money pools.

Eligibility: US president, senate, governor, house, and state senate races run the Campaign Manager, as do UK Commons races and Japanese House of Representatives, House of Councillors, and governor races. German and Irish races still use the lighter election-detail page until their list and STV systems are mapped onto per-candidate campaigns.

This page describes what the campaign page does and how to use it. For upgrade tables, maintenance math, and tactical priorities see Campaign Strategy.

Access tiers#

The campaign page shows different amounts of information depending on who's viewing:

Fog of war is automatic. Opponents can see your upgrade levels, but only through a ±3-level uncertainty band.

The sections#

Overview#

• Candidate name, party, office, election details.
• Current fundraising level and passive income/turn.
• Active upgrade tiers.
• Current endorsement count (NPP + player for presidential).
• Campaign funds balance and per-turn net income.
• Estimated vote share (live poll-style projection).

Budget#

• Income vs spending over time (chart).
• Per-turn net calculation.
• Category breakdown: which upgrade maintenance / party tax / ad spend is taking what percentage of your spend.
• Negative-funds warning if you've overspent.
• Auto-downgrade warning if projected maintenance > projected income.

Strategic Ops#

Four branch trees, each with its own card, replacing the old flat-level upgrade model:

• Fundraising: starter passive income, then branches (Grassroots, Bundlers, Direct Mail) that add more.
• Media Spending: starter passive Favorability gain, then Broadcast and Television branches that add more, plus a Rapid Response branch.
• Ground Game: starter turnout bonus in your race's competitive areas (swing states for president, swing counties for senate / gov, swing precincts for house / state senate), then Swing Canvassing, Get-Out-The-Vote, and Volunteer Corps branches. Ground Game now moves votes in every race type, not just the presidency.
• Opposition Research: starter drain to one target, then Dossier, Scandal Leak, and Counter-Intel branches that add or amplify drain. Retargetable.

Each card shows the starter node and its branches, next-branch cost (both money and campaign actions), and current per-turn effect.

General-phase cost multiplier: All upgrade costs are 1.5× higher once the election enters the general phase. Front-load upgrades in the primary.

Field offices#

The Field offices tab is where the campaign puts staff on the ground.

• United States: pick a county on the state map and open an office. The map shades each county by its partisan lean; switch to Opportunity to shade by what a new office there would add.
• An office raises your turnout in its county, weighted by how big the county is and how strong your side is there, and adds a smaller boost across the whole state. The statewide part has diminishing returns, so the tenth office in a state adds much less than the first.
• United Kingdom and Japan: offices work by region rather than county. Up to three per region, each adding a smaller turnout boost.
• Offices take three turns to reach full strength, so early ground beats late ground.
• Each office costs money to open (plus campaign actions) and upkeep every turn. If the war chest cannot cover upkeep, the newest offices close first.
• How many offices a campaign can hold depends on the race: a presidential campaign can run dozens, a House campaign only a handful.
• Office locations are public. Anyone viewing the campaign can see where it is organising.

County leans start from the real county results of your world's era: a 1991 world uses 1984 and 1988, a 1953 world uses 1948 and 1952, and a 2027 world uses 2020 and 2024 plus the 2025 governor races. As your world holds its own presidential elections, every county shifts with its state's swing from one election to the next, damped so one wild cycle cannot erase the era's map.

The ledger#

Two tabs at the foot of the campaign page, ten rows to a page.

Activity is a record of what the campaign has done, newest first:

• Upgrade purchases, with what they cost in funds and actions
• Auto-downgrades, with the reason
• Suspending the campaign to endorse someone else

A campaign keeps its whole run of these rather than only the most recent, so the pager reaches back to its first purchase.

Endorsements lists the players and politicians currently backing the campaign, and can be narrowed to either. The panel says "Politicians" where the rest of the wiki says NPPs; they are the same people. Withdrawn endorsements drop off the list. Rows carry no date: the records store no turn number.

Both tabs are visible only to the campaign's own side. Party and public viewers see the panel but not its contents.

Endorsements#

• List of NPPs and players who have endorsed the candidate.
• Contribution to campaign actions (via the baseline + floor(sqrt(endorsements) × 3) formula).

Player endorsements only count toward the action bonus in presidential races. NPP endorsements count in all races.

Campaign Managers#

The candidate (or an admin) appoints managers from the Campaign Managers panel on the campaign page: search for a character by name, add them, remove them, up to three. A manager must be in your country and cannot be a candidate managing their own campaign. A manager's owning player has:

• Read access to the full campaign page (same as the candidate).
• Ability to trigger upgrades, allocate campaign actions, and change opposition research targets.
• No power to withdraw the candidate or change the manager list.

This is designed for multi-player coordination: a campaign manager can run the operational details while the candidate focuses on character actions. Everyone else sees the panel read-only.

Campaign room briefing (owner-only)#

Presidential campaigns get a private briefing panel that turns the current race state into a plan. It only reads numbers the engine and tally already produced, so it never invents vote math. It is visible to the nominee and the campaign's managers only: a running mate, a party viewer and the public do not see it, because the coalition read is exactly the intelligence an opponent should not have. It has:

• Path to victory. In the primary, your delegate path: delegates won, the majority you need, how many remain, and the top delegate leaders in your party. In the general, your tipping-point path: the electoral votes you hold, the majority you need, and the 5 closest states by popular-vote margin, the ones that actually decide the race.
• Cash runway. How many turns your funds last at the current burn rate, or unbounded if you are net positive.
• Coalition weaknesses. Your weakest voter buckets, weakest first, so you know where your support is thin.
• Ops saturation and tradeoffs. How far you have invested each operations lever, and what the next upgrade tier would cost in funds and actions and what it does.

The Vote Factor Ledger tells you why you have the votes you have; the briefing tells you what to do about it.

Campaign actions (separate from character actions)#

Your campaign generates its own per-turn action pool:

• Baseline: the player's own base action rate (4 per turn from game config), so every campaign earns at least 4 actions a turn.
• Endorsement bonus: baseline + floor(sqrt(endorsements) × 3) campaign actions per turn. Governor and executive endorsements count at their own weight.
  • 0 endorsements → 4/turn
  • 4 endorsements → 10/turn
  • 9 endorsements → 13/turn
  • 16 endorsements → 16/turn
  • 25 endorsements → 19/turn

Campaign actions are consumed by upgrades only (not regular actions like Campaign or Fundraise).

Budget math#

Campaign funds flow:

+ Fundraising tier passive income       (each turn)
+ Donations (personal cash donations)
+ Party chair donations from treasury

− Ground Game maintenance (if purchased)
− Media Spending maintenance (if purchased)
− New upgrade purchases (when made)
− Ad campaigns (when initiated)

Net balance updates each turn. The Budget tab visualises this over time.

Insolvency and auto-downgrade#

If projected_funds (= funds + income) < maintenance:

1. The turn processor drops levels until maintenance is affordable.
2. Priority. The tier with the higher marginal (most recent level) maintenance drops first.
3. Tie-breaker. Media Spending drops before Ground Game.
4. Passive effects still fire this turn using pre-downgrade levels (one last gasp).
5. Maintenance is deducted using post-downgrade levels.
6. No refund. Money paid for the level is gone.
7. An activityHistory entry logs the downgrade with reason: "insolvency".

Existing negative funds are not healed: the campaign keeps the debt, but stops bleeding.

Fog of war details#

Opponent-visible upgrade levels are fuzzed each turn:

• Public: Random offset in ±3. If you're at level 5, public sees anywhere from 2 to 8.
• Party members: Random offset in ±1. If you're at level 5, party sees 4, 5, or 6.

Update frequency: every turn during Group 6 (campaign processing).

Your own display is always accurate.

Candidate-only operations#

Actions only the candidate (or an appointed manager) can perform:

• Purchase upgrades
• Change Opposition Research target (6-hour cooldown between retargets)
• Withdraw candidacy (manager cannot)
• Accept or reject donations via party chair (automatic acceptance)

Donations#

Anyone can donate:

• Player-to-candidate donations. Personal Cash on Hand converted to campaign funds at 100% (to the campaign, not to a character's Campaign Funds). All donations are logged publicly.
• Party-chair donations. National or regional chair can disburse from the party treasury to any candidate in their party.
• Party-treasurer donations. Treasurer has equivalent authority to chair for party-fund disbursements.

Donations show up in the Budget tab with attribution. They are kept in their own donation record, not in the ledger's Activity tab.

Strategic use of the campaign page#

In the build phase#

• Start the Fundraising tree early for the passive income boost. Primary-phase costs are lower than general-phase.

Entering a primary#

• Decide on initial strategy: ads-heavy (Media Spending tree), turnout-heavy (Ground Game tree), or damage-opponent (Opposition Research tree).
• Most candidates pick one emphasis plus Fundraising.

Early general#

• Push the Fundraising tree further if you can.
• Invest in Media or Ground Game branches depending on race.
• Start Opposition Research on the leading opponent.

Closing sprint (final 4 turns)#

• Everything doubles. Don't start new branches (expensive, no time for effect): run existing trees at full tilt.
• Use campaign actions from endorsement bonuses.
• Retarget Opposition Research at the leading opponent if your original target isn't the current frontrunner.

Common mistakes#

• Upgrading in general instead of primary. You pay more. Front-load.
• Buying high-maintenance branches you can't afford. Auto-downgrade kicks in, you lose the investment.
• Ignoring Opposition Research retarget cooldown. Plan retargets ahead of time.
• Not checking fog-adjusted opponent investment. A fogged opponent estimate could be well off. Don't over-react.
• Forgetting endorsement action bonuses. If you have 9 NPP endorsements, your campaign has 13 actions/turn, worth real upgrade velocity.

Related#

• Campaign Strategy: Upgrade tables, phase-by-phase allocation, all the numbers.
• Fundraising & Ads: Personal Campaign Funds and ad mechanics.
• Election Mechanics: Where campaign-page effects enter vote math.
• Political Parties: Party chair donations and treasury disbursement.
• NPPs Overview: Requesting NPP endorsements.