Favourite non-unique government forms?

[nobodyinparticular]

As the title says, what are some of your favourite non-unique government forms? Everyone knows the Tsardom and Mughal Diwan as being very powerful government forms that add a lot of oomph to their respective tags, but what about the not-so-special government forms shared amongst multiple tags?

Steppe Horde is an obvious choice, so I would like to nominate Iqta and the Indian Sultanate. The taxation policies are pretty good IMO - Lenient Taxation is often used for opening alliances, Land Acquisition is minor but still an extra 5% CCR to stack with other sources, and Efficient Tax Farming is really good early game, when taxes reign supreme, and you can get a lot of ducats from subjects. Going colonial as Andalusia lets you cash out thousands of ducats from this interaction.

 

[necro84]

Autonomous Swiss Cantons is my favorite theocracy. With Church and State later it allowes to have 3 free policies of each type. It requires swiss culture to pick but later it is possible to change it

 

[noldorin]

Pirate republic )

 

[AvengedK1ng]

Autonomous Swiss Cantons is my favorite theocracy. With Church and State later it allowes to have 3 free policies of each type. It requires swiss culture to pick but later it is possible to change it

Geneva and 3 leagues get it so still quite niche

 

[Terixis]

Does Feudal Theocracy count as unique? It's extremely limited in its distribution. If so then Indian Sultanate.

 

[necro84]

Geneva and 3 leagues get it so still quite niche

anyone can get it, just change culture and be theocracy or republic, you can change culture later. For any German or Italian nation it isn't a problem. It's available to more nations than Indian sultanate because it doesn't require certain religion

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

I dont really have a T1 form.

My favorite is statist vs monarchists. I am really unlucky with normal monarchs and this one allows me to select new rulers quickly by empowering the statists or keep one by empowering the monarchists. It seems to give pretty good stats most of the time as well.

 

[Nostalgium]

Easily Indian Sultanate. The massive tolerance of heathens plus solid Iqta mechanics, plus access to the Dhimmi estate by jumping through some hoops makes it an extremely powerful government form.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

• Horde - for obvious reasons. Good CB, great ability in razing which limits negative RNG, can't be regency-locked.
• Monastic order - can eventually get so much -WS cost vs other religions that it's possible to annex ~1000-1100 development per peace deal. No chance of regency blocking wars, though ruler RNG can be painful until you get later in the reform tree.
• States general - my go-to for generic monarchies, the monarch points are relatively stable and you can't get blocked from war
• Oligarchic republic - usually dumped in 2nd half of the game for monarchy/states general, but you can spam re-election quite a bit before then with 3 year cycles.

I actually dislike Iqta. If you're not save scumming, you're asking to get blocked out of declaring wars at bad times, and that's too great a price to pay. It gives nice benefits, but not worth that risk IMO. If you do save scum, that downside is negated.

 

[Banedon Runestar]

My favorite government form is Republic, simply because their mana generation ability is unmatched. Their Absolution cap is low, but since I’m not usually worried about a WC that’s not a big deal for me.

Get a young leader, re-elect him to 6/6/6, and then change via government reforms to concentrate power in the leader for +250 Gov capacity. As a bonus, you have no more elections, but your Republican tradition still climbs. You’ll usually save so much Rep from the elections you skip that you’ll be able to get a maxed out leader every 65-75 years.

Hello playing as tall as you want, almost as big as you want, and being 20+ years ahead of time in all tech categories.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

My favorite government form is Republic, simply because their mana generation ability is unmatched. Their Absolution cap is low, but since I’m not usually worried about a WC that’s not a big deal for me.

If you want to keep republic, you can get the best court & country outcome by swapping into noble elite (or anything else with +20 absolutism or more) and longer election cycle. Doing that will let you get the best court & country outcome if you have high % crown land, after which you can switch back. 200 reform progress is costly even for republics, but later reforms cost several times that anyway and republics get those faster than other gov't types.

I usually find that once running +5 advisers it's non-trivial to actually spend all of it expanding even when attempting WC. Better players than me could probably spend extra admin via faster conquest, but with states general + level 5 advisers you can have overage/take techs ahead and still one tag (which implies a LOT of development or ahead of years teching if you don't).

I have a soft spot for republics, because before queen consorts + states general government reform + absolutism in present form they were a reliable way to get both monarch points and not have awful long regency councils with minimal agency. The mechanics have changed such that true regency blocking war is incredibly rare for non-Iqtas now, and monarchies aren't straight up cancer to play but rather pretty solid. But republics are still cool.

 

[currylambchop]

Independent Daimyo is almost like another Prussian monarchy