Core Systems
Time, money, and actions are the three resources that bind every decision in A House Divided. This page is the reference for how they flow.
Time: turns, days, and years#
- 1 turn = 1 real hour = 1 game week.
- 24 turns = 1 real day = 24 game weeks.
- 48 turns = 2 real days ≈ 1 game year (the game uses a compressed 48-week year that cleanly maps electoral cycles onto real-world time).
The turn processor fires once per hour, on the hour. Every turn advances the world: actions refresh, elections tick toward resolution, bills age, NPPs act, markets settle, and metrics update. There are no overnight breaks: the simulation is continuous and there are no resets.
Term cycles#
Term lengths below are stated in real time (hours/days you wait between elections), followed by the game-time equivalent. Only US values are listed here; non-US terms are covered in each country hub.
| Office | Term (real) | Term (game years) |
|---|---|---|
| US House | 4 real days | 2 game years |
| US Senate | 12 real days | 6 game years (3 staggered classes) |
| US Governor | varies by state | typically 4 game years |
| US President | 8 real days | 4 game years |
Staggering matters. Senate Class 1, 2, and 3 elections fire at different times so one-third of the Senate is up for election every ~4 real days. This keeps Senate activity continuous.
For UK MP and Prime Minister timing see United Kingdom. For the German Bundestag and Chancellor see Germany. For the Japanese Diet see Japan.
The action economy#
Actions are your activity budget. Everything you do (campaigning, voting, wiring money to an ally) costs actions.
Earning actions#
Each turn you receive:
- 4 base actions: everyone gets this.
- Office bonus: stacked on top of base:
- House / State Senate / Bundestag member / Sangiin member / MP: +1
- Senate / Vice President / state governor analogue: +2
- Governor: +2
- President: +4
- Central Bank Chair: +3 (stacks on any office bonus you also hold)
- Party bonus: a variable share of your party's action pool, allocated by Party Influence × platform-alignment closeness.
- Starting grant: a one-time 25 actions at character creation.
Actions accumulate up to a cap of 200. Above 100 you pay a −4 hoarding penalty per turn applied before the refresh. For characters with only the base 4 actions, this creates a soft cap around 100-104; office holders with higher refresh still grow toward the hard cap, just slowed by 4 per turn.
Spending actions#
Action costs for core activities (full list on Stats & Actions):
| Action | AP Cost | Fund Cost | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaign | 1-5 (tiered by PI) | Scaled by state GDP | +1 Political Influence |
| Fundraise | 3 | none | Earns ₳50k + ₳2k × donor level |
| Quick Poll | 2 | ₳25k | topline + best/worst 5 groups |
| Run Advertisements | 5-9 (tiered by favorability) | Scaled by state GDP | +1-3 Favorability (diminishing above 70%) |
| Full Demographic Poll | 6 | ₳75k | complete breakdown |
| Build Donor Network | 4-20 (tiered by level) | Scaled by state GDP | donor level +1 |
| Support | 6 | none | +1% target Favorability (±12 net swing cap per target per turn) |
| Attack | 6 | none | −1% target Favorability; +2% own Infamy (±12 net swing cap per target per turn) |
| Barnstorm | 5 | ₳100k | +1-2% target Political Influence |
| Presidential Travel | 3 to 10 | none | Sets travel state during the US general; +1%/turn Favorability while there |
Out-of-state multipliers (1.0× home / 1.25× neighbour / 1.5× non-neighbour) apply to interpersonal actions (Support, Attack, Barnstorm), not to Campaign or Advertise.
Money: two pools#
Two money pools, separate and non-convertible:
- Campaign Funds: Political war chest. Used for ads, polls, donor base, NPP influence, party taxes, and personal campaign donations.
- Cash on Hand: Personal liquid cash. Only used for wire transfers from the Portfolio page.
Fund generation per turn (Campaign Funds):
- Base rate: a small fixed amount per turn.
- Donor bonus: scaled by donor level and state population tier (small state +₳100/level, medium +₳200/level, large +₳400/level, mega +₳800/level).
- Office bonus: House +₳5k, State Senate +₳3k, Senate +₳15k, VP +₳25k, Governor +₳15k, President +₳50k.
Cash on Hand comes from passive income streams (corporation dividends, bond coupons, share sales) and a 50% slice of any Personal Campaign Donation you make (the other 50% moves to Campaign Funds).
The turn processing order (engineer's note)#
Each hour the processor runs roughly a dozen top-level adapters that together call over 100 phase steps, organized into 14 groups. Most phases within a group run in parallel; some groups (notably election resolution) are strictly sequential. You don't need to know the order to play well, but if you're wondering why your campaign action from 03:59 shows up "on the next turn," this is why.
| Group | What happens | Ordering |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Resources | Action refresh, fund generation, corporation production | Parallel |
| 1a. Finance | Bond coupons, NPP funds, commodity prices, portfolios | Sequential after corps |
| 2. Demographics | Turnout decay, GOTV, party org maintenance | Sequential |
| 3. Party elections | State/national/committee party races, cleanup | Parallel then cleanup |
| 4. NPP behavior | NPPs enter elections, vote on bills, back leadership | Sequential (shared context) |
| 5. Bills & cabinets | Bill lifecycle, cabinet nominations | Parallel |
| 6. Campaigns | Campaign-manager turn, NPP actions every 4 turns | Sequential |
| 7. Election resolution | Primary → accumulation → timer → snapshot → general → leadership vacate | Strict order |
| 8. UK government | PM formation, confidence motions | After elections |
| 9. Election coverage | Spawn next cycles, leadership elections, stale cleanup | Parallel |
| 10. Fiscal year | October processing (turn 40 of 48) | Conditional |
| 11. Effects & metrics | Policy effects, demographics, approval decay, unowned sector growth | Parallel |
| 12. National aggregation | National metrics, inflation, central bank chair | After state effects |
| 13. History | Metric/approval/interest-rate snapshots | Parallel |
| 14. Persistence | Increment turn, save log, emit SSE | Critical, not retryable |
Cabinet system (US and parliamentary executives)#
Presidents and Prime Ministers appoint cabinets. In the US:
- President nominates any character to one of 15 principal officer roles (Secretary of State, Treasury, Defense, Attorney General, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, Labor, HHS, HUD, Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs, Homeland Security).
- Senators vote For / Against / Abstain in a 24-hour window; simple majority confirms.
- Confirmed members appear on the cabinet page and gain whatever role-specific benefits exist.
- President can fire any confirmed member.
In parliamentary systems (UK / DE / JP) the executive composition follows the country's real-world conventions. See the country hubs.
Campaign manager system#
Every player candidacy has a dedicated Campaign page at /campaign/[id]:
- Owner view: Full management: budget, operations, manager assignment.
- Party view: Intelligence snapshot: strategy, polling, spending.
- Public view: Basic summary only.
The campaign manager page is where you spend a separate campaign budget on Fundraising, Ground Game, Media Spending, and Opposition Research: each is a branch tree, not a flat level ladder, so how you invest within a tree matters as much as how much. It's also where you track activity logs and view NPP endorsements. Details: Campaign Manager and Campaign Strategy.
Perpetual elections#
No seat sits vacant. When a House/Senate/Governor/Bundestag/Sangiin cycle resolves, the next cycle spawns immediately. Empty seats are filled by NPPs during their election window: they'll beat you if you don't contest.
Related#
- The Game Loop: A player's hour-by-hour rhythm.
- Stats & Actions: Full reference with formulas.
- Election Mechanics: How primaries and generals resolve.
- NPPs Overview: How autonomous politicians fit into the game.
- Cabinet: Presidential nominations and Senate confirmation.