Favourite Governments?

[George The Ork]

I've played a bit as almost all of the governments and I have to say that Meritocracy strikes me as my favourite. Good bonuses, fantastic cards and nice unit feats.

Autocracy seem like my most disliked as I only really like the assassinate leader card, the rest don't seem useful to me.

Democracy has some similar but weaker cards to merit, with some BOSS bonuses to PP generation (unlimited cabinet retreats!) and passive QOL bonuses.

Enforcement gives some nice bonuses to taxes and logistical points, and emergency taxes/efficiency drives can save your economy in a pinch!

Commerce is nice if you have enough spare pop to support a proper civilian economy, and which point you can use money to make all your problems go away! But can suffer if you don't have enough people/time to get it all going even with the private economy bonuses. Pop happiness bonuses are nice however!

Government helps you as the player just do more with it's bonuses, but only bureaucracy has cards that I really like.

I've not really tried Fist, but from the looks of it it might not have too much of real note to offer outside of a combat bonus, extra militia, and some nice posture cards.

Mind offers some nice research bonuses and some nice postures, but I can't honestly say much beyond that about it really. Tech is always nice for getting the stuff you need, sooner.

Hearts unit moral bonuses along with both Pop and Leader loyalty bonuses make it FAR easier to manage bad situations when you might otherwise spiral downwards. Leaders stay happy for long enough that even directly pissing them off hardly even affects them. Interesting cards and feats all around once again.

Merit and Heart seem like my favourite choices, although I can't honestly say for the 'economy' profiles as there are good reasons to go for any and all. What about all of you? How are your governments? I know that when events come up many of the meritocracy choices for unrest really suck which can make democracy bribery, or autocracy beat-downs really appealing so perhaps I'm not fully considering them into the equation.

Or hell, do you guys run very fluid governments or mixed governments to get the best of all worlds?

[CHOO CHOO]

Autocracy is nice because you can strengthen your profile simply by putting down riots, which usually becomes necessary at some point. But it lacks any useful passive effects, as opposed to democracy, which gives you various good management tools, and meritocracy, which is hard to build up without constant unrest but rewards you with extremely capable leaders if you get it high enough. I think democracy is the strongest overall, unless you can maintain meritocracy >= 90 and leverage the leader capability bonus.

Commerce gives you cash, some industry, and reduces the micromanagement needed to keep zones running smoothly. Also cash. So much cash. Government I wouldn't know about, on paper it seems fairly strong but history teaches us to stay far away from hammer and sickle. Enforcement isn't really all that strong unless you can't afford to build up logistics assets or you somehow struggle to recruit enough soldiers, but if you do need it it can save you. I think government is the strongest.

Heart, Mind and Fist are very straightforward. Heart solves any loyalty problems you might have had, Mind will let you pull ahead in the tech race, and fist lets you come out on top in combat. Mind is probably the strongest of the three, since better technology will eventually give you greater combat advantages than fist and you should be able to manage your loyalties without relying on heart.

Mixed governments are viable of course, since you can make strategic decisions without constantly keeping an eye on your regime profile. The price you pay is fewer passive bonuses from regime feats and possible relations problems with leaders who desire ideological purity.

My personal favorites are Meritocracy-Commerce-Heart and Meritocracy-Commerce-Fist. Neither is optimal, but in my opinion they're viable enough and I just like their flavor. Unrest is a problem though; the only thing you can really do about it early on is building lots of barracks and stationing large garrisons for passive unrest reduction. Preventing it comes down to anticipating individual causes of unrest and slowly growing leaders that can reliably succeed on rolls to contain unrest. Generally I'd say these regime builds rely on getting high meritocracy as quickly as possible so you can get those extremely capable leaders, possibly using the heart profile to keep everyone happy while you slowly throw the non-meritocrats out of your government. Commerce helps with pacifying zones, too. Once your leadership transformation is complete you won't need heart so you can aim for fist instead. It's overall a bit more micromanagement than I'd like, and you don't get the straightforward game-winning bonuses from something like Democracy-Government-Mind, but the end result is usable enough and it feels nice.

[maerchen]

You might want to read this: https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/tm.asp?m=4832915

I really like meritocracy - commerce - mind on medium to large maps and with research speed slow.

[George The Ork]

An interesting link! Seems like the interior council is very important for most of the government types. I always did like opening with it, just in case.

[maerchen]

Playing on hard difficulty, I found interior council first 80% of the time.

A detailed analysis when and why to found the others first can be read here in the last two chapters https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2314732568

[laagamer]

Honestly, while some are better than others, I think it really depends on a game by game situational basis.

What do you need?

[twan]

Best government is a balanced one for me as lots of early bonuses are invaluable, if it's harder to pull than to specialize.

For first trio I try to at least have the first feat in democracy and meritocracy before focusing on something. Having both the first political points bonus and the recruit talent card (+ diplo bonus to annex minors) is worth more than rushing high levels of meritocracy. And once you have them those bonuses are easy to keep as they only require to keep 30.
Then all options may be interesting, levelling meritocracy more (best choice if I don't take fist and need the combat roll bonus), continuing with democracy for the qol bonus (best choice if I failed to developp commerce or heart), or switching to autocracy for the powerful cards (only a good option on planets with high population as you spend your time killing your own citizens to level it).

For the second trio, I tend to always target a 2/2/2 (if I don't always manage to obtain it) as it's clearly better than trying for any higher bonuses. Having 50% tax bonus, 50% logistical, 40% private economy, 50% happiness, 40% production of both bp and ip at the same time is worth more than specializing in anything, especially as the third bonuses are all rather crappy (recruitment bonus is worthless if you make money, just give better sign up bonuses, same for worker happiness bonus, you can just pay them more ; and commerce bonus is overkill if you already have a strong economy).
Reaching and keeping the 2/2/2 is often hard to pull, as you always have factions that want you to level one thing very high, and as some situations generate repeated events pushing you in specialized directions (for example if you border nomads, you'll get tons of events with the only viable choice increasing enforcement, making unlikely to keep the 40 commerce you want). But it has become a bit easier with scrap generated cards giving policy bonuses (absolutely scrap as much you can, and keep in reserve cards giving policy bonuses to counter events pushing you in specialized directions).

For the third trio I tend to specialize more as the third and fourth bonuses are very interesting, giving the best postures (and you then need to stay specialized to avoid losing them in the middle of a war).
Still I tend to make a mix, developping one category to 1 before switching for the one I will level to high levels.
One of the best options is going for heart 1 for the troop morale bonus then concentrating on fist, as the morale bonus will make the glorious war posture even more overpowered.