Least used SE choice:

[MiriamFundament]

Rot in hell all ye wretched unbelievers, for Fundamentalism is the only way, and you ar tampering with the workings of an angry God...

That and You don't have any taxes in a fundamentalist government... you TITHE!

[Flubber]

I almost never go power unless I can eliminate the industry penalty part of it . . .

Police state-
Yang -- always
everyone else-- rarely

Fundy-- Sometimes but I am generally in Democracy

[Corellion]

I used police state in an OCC I played as Zaharov once (at least until I got the drone situation under control, and the efficiency penalty became of any hindrance... i.e. the tech rush at the end of the game). Other than that, never. Power doesn't fit with my builder style, and Fundy sucks (especially since 95% of the time I play either the Univesity or Consciousness).

Overall, Fundamentalism is least used (and not most under-used, as you question asks).

[Marid Audran]

Originally posted by MiriamFundament
Rot in hell all ye wretched unbelievers, for Fundamentalism is the only way, and you ar tampering with the workings of an angry God...

That and You don't have any taxes in a fundamentalist government... you TITHE!

The fundamentalism of Chiron is quite different from the fundamentalism of CivII past, my friend.

As an aside, as a way to beef up the feeble Cultists I gave them immunity to research penalty whilst running Fundy. It didn't make them a mega-faction by any means but at least the AI was less embarrassing handling them.

[HeymlicH]

for me it is close between fundy and FM. But I'm always playing without crawlers, so usually FM is available for me when I'm already green ... so I'd say fundy is the most useless.

Actually I think there is nothing wrong with fundy or police state. It's just that Demo is too good, compared to them.

[Adalbertus]

I never use Fundy. Police State regularly when playing Yang, otherwise never. I never used Power but considered it more often than Fundy. (I even don't use it when I get the Cloning Vats so that there is no negative effect to Power.) Efficiency, Economy, and Industry are just too important for a builder.

[Straybow]

There are SE choices called "Police State" and "Power" ?

Never heard of 'em.

[aaglo]

From those options: Fundamentalism.

From all options: Free market economy (I usually play as hive, and this is pretty useless for them)

[UnityScoutChopper]

I think all three of these choices share a common flaw: they offer short-term gain in return for long-term crippling... and to top things off, to be used effectively, they need to be planned for long-term themselves.

Police -- to get the full effect, you need enough drones to need extra police, and enough units to serve as those police, plus enough units, with sufficiently distributed support, for the support boost to be useful. When I'm expanding, the support boost is hard to use not only because I may not need that many units, but also because my support-needs curve is biased towards some bases (the core) than others. When I'm done expanding, I'll pass on the efficiency hit, thank you -- and use the science gained to build fewer units of higher quality.

Fundy - definitely the least awful of the three, as you can steal lost science, but not lost money or lost minerals. But still, you can't steal the lost food compared to democracy. To use this one, you need a lot of units... to build and support a lot of units, you need a lot of large bases... to build a lot of large bases, democracy is better.

Power... To make use of the support and morale boosts, you need a lot of units. To build a lot of units, you need a good Industry rating. Power REDUCES your industry rating. Since you are getting less cash and science than you would from Wealth or Knowledge, your unit quality might well also be quite lousy. If you build "too many units" deliberately with the intent of getting full use out of Power through a switch later on, then you are hurting until you make the switch. And once you've geared up this tactic and gone ahead and made the switch, you're constantly faced with the agonizing decision of switching out and nearly cracking under the support pressure, or staying in and watching e v e r y t h i n g y o u b u i l d c o m p l e t e v e e e e e r y s l o w l y. Power is agonizing, Power sucks. Yuck.

USC

[Mongoose]

USC - You can indeed steal lost money. Matter of fact, doing so is the least risky way I know (based on observation, not documentation) to increase the morale of your probe teams.

As to using the support beneift of Police State, your argument about fewer units of higher quality being superior fails in the face of the fact that formers' morale is irrelevant. For factions other then Hive, I use Police State sometimes in the early game for just that reason...so I can support at least double the number of formers I would otherwise. The biggest problem I find with Police State is that I rarely have the tech for it when I most want to use it...in the early turns when the extra support minerals represent a large percentage of total industrial output. Further, researching Doc:Loyalty takes you off the beeline for just about anything else.

As for Power, I rarely use it without the Vats and if I have the Vats, I prefer Thought Control for morale enhancement. I must say, though, that the actual effect of the Industry hit at that point is dependent on the mineral cost of the units you are building vs. the mineral output of the base building them. For example, if a base is producing 30 minerals/turn, a five row unit takes two turns to build at INDUSTRY = 0 or at INDUSTRY = -2.

The point is that each of these SE choices are the right ones to make in certain situations. I submit that if one has a deeply held aversion to any of them, his style of play has become too ingrained. That's a manageable flaw in SP mode. Against good opponents in multiplay, it's suicide.