He he i must agree to a extend, but ive only tried a small galaxy with 3 players me and a AI vs another AI.

I also ended up with a maintance at 75% near the end. Now this is a small galaxy, ill go try a big one and see if it ajust the maintance.

But with a large galaxy i hope the maintance dont run as wild as it did in my last game since then no way will you be able to keep anything under control simply becouse you cant afford to have big forces around.

I built a fleet of one of each capital ship type, level 10 and by the end I had 73%. The trade stations didn't really help all that much. And I agree, a maintenance reducing tech would be lovely.

Culture gives income? Need to have a look at culture

If you have high culture on your own planet you receive a tax bonus and if you have culture on an enemy planet, you will be reducing his taxes. If you have ships around a ship with enemy culture, you will not repair as fast (again proportional to your culture). More culture features are yet to come.

EDIT: Culture REDUCES enemy taxes, does not STEAL enemy taxes. My bad

if you build a broadcast pod you will see its making a certain culture/second. Build 2x and you get 2x culture/second. but culture caps at 10% but it spreads to nearby planets slowly. If you research the culture techs it will spread more effecient.

But but, if your low on planets i doubt you will have the resources to build a large fleet anyhow.

ofc you can argue that the high upkeep helps keep big players in check. Since if you only have a few planets and small empiere, you could actualy end up making the same amount of credits and resources as a very big player becuouse he is proberly bogged down with alot of units. Trying to defend alot of fronts.

also ive noticed that if you expand too fast before upgrading ur planets, your upkeep% goes up much higher than if you balance the expansions with upgrading (thus higher populations in less planets)

This whole culture aspect of the game is nice... And I think the maintenance is just about right.

I want to know if its possible to reclaim buildings/turrets that you no longer want? I don't see a way to do it.

Ironically I've never looked at the center bottom of the screen, the rest is just sooo perty, lol... Thanks Frost!

If you have trouble with maintenance, start trading. I have a lot of trade going on in my current game and I can't spend all the money I'm making, even at 75% upkeep (trade seems to be unaffected by upkeep).

hmm, im just so cetain that i was out of money all the time in my last 75% game, and this was with ALOT of trade ships around, talk about a average of 8k gold laying around in trade ships all the time. Which i guess is quite a bit.

Ill give it another go and see how i feel about it.

If it is such that a big part of your income will end up coming from trade with other empieres due to upkeep being high on tax i think its a FANTASTIC idea. It will kinda force you into the whole diplomacy thing if you could get a good trade deal going with your neighbour, and at the same time you have to consider trade routes and who you make enemys with.
It will give big empieres a new angle. I love in GalCiv1+2 how trade was 80% if not more of your total income. It was a big part of the diplomacy just like in real life.
If its made so that trade in your own empiere will pay off ok, but that cross empiere trade will yield alot more money it will mean the world for the game in terms of getting the diplomacy part of the game used.
In most rts games the alliance options are often so limteted and not used. which is sad, the slow nature of the game ofc also helps.

But dont upkeep affect your mineral and crystal production or am i way of here? and is it only tax?