Democratic has elections every 10 years, mandates and +50% automatic resettlement chance
- Elections are sub optimal, you don't get to keep your good ruler, but if you end up with a bad one they can cycle out quickly
- Mandates are bad. The unity boost is weak, caps at the incredibly low value of 1000 and the tasks scale poorly
- The +50% automatic resettlement chance is decent, after 100 years. The first 100 years you shouldn't have any over population anyway
This means that early game you only get 1 benefit: a small boost to unity and late game you only get 1 benefit: slightly faster auto resettlement.
Democracy has access to some of the best civics too, like meritocracy.
Oligarchy has elections every 20 years, agendas and +15% faction influence
- Choosing a ruler every 20 years is expensive, BUT not necessary, you might find 4 good ruler options or 4 bad ones, either case just let it random
the fact that they only last 20 years also means that you're not necessarily stuck with a bad ruler for the long haul
You technically have emergency election but it's almost never worth doing
- Agendas are good, they give a flat bonus to something useful most of the time. It scales into end game just fine, some agendas are really strong
- The +15% faction influence is at most +0.375 influence per month. Nice, not amazing
Oligarchy has 2 big benefits both early and late game. It's much better than democracy in every single way.
Oligarchy has access to all of the best civics, meritocracy and slavers guild (yes you can combine them in oligarchy!)
Dictatorial has elections when the ruler dies, agendas and -10% sprawl penalty
- Choosing a ruler here is tricky, you need 200 influence to pick one and if you happen to not have that you may end up stuck with a bad ruler for a very long time. Just like in real life dictatorships lol.
It is technically cheaper than oligarchy I'd argue it's still worse, also the lack of emergency election hurts here
- Agendas are good, but once again you suffer from the same problem, agendas renew with ruler and if you end up with a not so useful one you're stuck with it.
Luckily almost all agendas are at least a little useful
- The -10% sprawl penalty gets a big fat ROFLMAO from me. If it was -10% sprawl it would be okay but the game makes it possible to have ZERO sprawl penalty through bureaucrats anyway, so if we do the math then -10% x 0 = 0. Wow this is literally trash
Dictatorial is bad, I'd say it's slightly better than democracy due to the fact that agendas are just better than everything democracy has to offer, lol.
Dictatorial gives access to some really bad civics like Philosopher King and some decent ones like Exalted Priesthood, but Oligarchy gets Exalted Priesthood too. Yikes
Imperial has no elections when the ruler dies, agendas and +1 edict capacity
- So if you though dictators were in a pickle because they only get ONE chance to choose a ruler imagine have NO CHANCE of choosing a ruler. It's basically dictatorship but without the option of choosing a ruler
You also get a preview of the heir so you can tell in advance if the next king is going to be a dud or not.
- Agendas are good, but now you have no way of choosing agendas so it's entirely random and long lasting, this makes imperial agendas worse than dictatorial agendas
- The +1 edict capacity is REALLY GOOD.
Imperial is like dictatorship but slightly worse. The +1 edict capacity is better than -10% sprawl penalty, but the lack of ruler choice makes the ruler and agendas inherently worse.
Imperial gets access to a few civics, some really bad like Feudal Society and some not so bad like Aristocratic Elite.
CONCLUSION
Overall I'd say that Oligarchy wins by a long mile
Second place is Dictatorship
Shared third place is Democracy and Imperial
Democracy could be fixed if
- Mandates were fixed (they need to scale, not be capped at some arbitrary number)
- They got a bonus that is useful early game (like a flat +20 admin cap, useful early game, later becomes meaningless while the +50% resettle becomes relevant)
Dictator could be fixed if
- Bureaucrats didn't exist, then the -10% penalty would be quite good actually (this would also solve many many other problems in the game, while simultaneously introduce no problems at all, the game would just be better without bureaucrats)
- They need emergency elections, dictatorships sometimes replace bad dictators with another dictator and the game should reflect that
Imperial could be fixed if
- They need a way of choosing a different heir. Maybe instead of only having 1 heir you have 4 possible heirs, you spend 200 influence to pick one at your leisure
