Every campaign has the same moment. Someone stands in front of a crumbling school and promises to rebuild every one in the country. Nobody in the crowd asks who pays. Nobody on the stage plans to answer. Major Projects is that moment, with a price tag attached to the country rather than to you.
The easy yes
Pledges, from Dispatch Nº 003, are promises the voters choose for you, and a broken one comes back to hurt the party. A Major Project is the opposite kind of promise. You pick it yourself, from a list of big, expensive, popular things, and it delivers itself. There is no liability waiting for you if you fail, because there is no way to fail. If you win, it happens.
That is the design intent, and we'll say it plainly: we want parties to take the easy dopamine of committing to things the country can't afford. Committing costs the party only political power. If it wins, the country pays, whether or not anyone later wants it to.
How it works
- You commit before an election. The project is tied to the country's next election. If several bodies vote that day, such as a presidency and a chamber, you choose which one counts. For an office you need your own candidate standing. Endorsing someone else's doesn't count.
- Winning means holding the office, or having strictly the most seats. A tie for first isn't a win. Lose, tie or get knocked out and the commitment simply lapses. No cost and no penalty, beyond the 50 PP you already spent.
- If you win, it's automatic. The project becomes its own line in the budget, paid in equal monthly instalments for its whole duration. There's no vote, and no government, legislature or rival can cancel it.
Who can commit, and when
Not just anyone. A party has to be established: founded at least a year ago, or currently in power. That keeps a throwaway party from making an enormous promise on day one. A party can have one commitment waiting at a time, and there's a 12-month cooldown after each one, so you can't carpet-bomb a country with promises.
The window opens 12 months before the next election and closes 10 days before it. Too early and you'd hold the boost for years. Too late and you'd be committing after seeing the polls. Commitments also can't be made while the country is under an IMF programme.
The boost
The moment you commit, voters who want more spending on that area become more likely to back you. It is a real boost, aimed at the people who want the thing, and it is meant to be bigger than the flat lift a pledge gives. Voters who don't care, or who would rather spend less, are left alone. There is no backlash for promising something they dislike.
The boost applies to every election held that day and shows up in the polls straight away. It disappears once the result is in, whoever wins.
A pledge is a debt you owe the voters. A Major Project is a debt the voters owe the bank.
What you can promise
There are thirteen projects at launch, one or more for each of the ten kinds of national infrastructure. Each costs a fixed share of annual GDP, between 2% and 5%, and runs for a fixed number of months. Here is a sample, with the dollar figures for a typical developed country of 60 million adults. The shares are the same everywhere, so a small economy pays a much smaller bill.
| Project | Builds | Total | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rebuild our crumbling schools | 🏫 Education estate | 3% of GDP (~$90bn) | 36 months |
| A new generation of hospitals | 🏥 Health estate | 4% of GDP (~$120bn) | 48 months |
| Build a nuclear power plant | ⚡ Energy network | 4% of GDP (~$120bn) | 60 months |
| Build a high-speed rail line | 🚆 Rail network | 5% of GDP (~$150bn) | 60 months |
| Renew the national housing stock | 🏘️ Housing stock | 5% of GDP (~$150bn) | 48 months |
| Rearm the nation | 🎖️ Military readiness | 3% of GDP (~$90bn) | 24 months |
The rest are the cheaper and quicker versions: world-class universities, renewed rail, wind and solar, a new airport, motorways, flood defences and new prisons. The money goes into the matching asset as capital investment, so the project really does raise it. And each one appeals to the voters who want more spending on its budget line. Flood defences speak to the environment-minded. Rearmament speaks to the hawks.
The bill
A single project runs to roughly 0.7% to 1.5% of GDP a year, which is a noticeable share of a government's spending. It comes out of the treasury every month, so it widens the deficit and adds to the debt. We chose the sizes so that a single project won't bring in the IMF, but two or three running at once is a real fiscal shock. So is any project that tips a country into a worse credit rating, because interest is charged on the whole debt. Two rival parties who both win and both commit means two bills. Nobody can say no to either.
The only exits
Once a project is under way, only two things stop it:
- The sponsor disbands. Whether the party is wound up by its members or by inactivity, the project halts from the next month. Nothing is refunded. If you regret winning, that is a drastic way out, and you should know it's there.
- The country enters an IMF programme. Every project in the country, waiting or under way, is cancelled, with no extra blame on anyone.
There is no withdrawing a commitment, no editing it, and no cap on how many a country accumulates. We deliberately haven't added friction beyond the 50 PP, the cooldown, the one-at-a-time rule and the window. The consequences of promising too much are the friction.
What to watch for
The temptation is obvious, and so is the trap. If you're in opposition and out of reach of power, it's close to free votes. If you're favourite to win, you're promising your own government a bill it can't refuse. A young party that needs the boost badly might sign a promise it will spend its first term paying for. And every rival who sees you commit has to decide whether to out-bid you.
The rules above are the design, and the sizes and the boost will get tuned against the polls once players start using it. We'll say what changed when we change it. The full rules are in the wiki under Major Projects.