Newb Help- Colony Maintenance

To All/Any Friendlies out there...

I used to play GC 2 ages ago, so I've forgotten most tricks of the trade.

My problem is I can't remember if it is possible to eliminate the Colony Maintenance Cost of (27BC?) per colony.

I remember establishing multiple colonies and going bankrupt because of that minimum maintenance cost per planet.

Is there any way to "eliminate that base cost" or lower it? or is the answer to just build up the planets effectively to overcome the Maintenance Cost?

Much Tia for the patience and help for a re-newb to the game.

p.s. I tried searching on Colony, and Maintenance, but didn't get any hits. Did I search incorrectly? arggh!

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Philocthetes

Join Date 10/2003

+153

I have a vague recollection of something that gave you free maintenance on something like your first 10 colonies, but I think it was linked to alignment or civ choice.

The economics changed a fair bit across the various expansions and updates. The more recent versions taught me to leave new colonies alone until they grew enough people to start paying taxes instead of spending subsidies. But if and when you finally get to a large income (ideas of large vary, but I'm thinking around 1k upwards), rush-buying on new colonies can be useful, or even 'necessary' if you're trying to avoid the income penalties for having your treasury pass 10k and 20k.

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My problem is I can't remember if it is possible to eliminate the Colony Maintenance Cost of (27BC?) per colony.

I remember establishing multiple colonies and going bankrupt because of that minimum maintenance cost per planet.

Is there any way to "eliminate that base cost" or lower it? or is the answer to just build up the planets effectively to overcome the Maintenance Cost?

Maintenance is 12BC/colony in DL/DA, and 10BC/colony in TA. However, the maintenance on structures is counted as "colony maintenance", so it always seems like more than that.

The two ways around it are to 1) build the planets up economically or 2) let the population grow high enough that it outweighs the maintenance.

GW is correct in that if you choose Good when you research Xeno Ethics, you get the maintenance of your 5 most populous planets subtracted from your expenses, but as it's only the maintenance for the initial colony, and not any of the improvements you'd build on the planet to get things done, it's not really worth pursuing.

Also, yeah, the search is broken. You're better off using a "site:forums.galciv2.com <search string>" query, without quotes, in your favorite search engine.

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Thanks for the swift, accurate responses.

I just saw the 27bc cost, and saw red. Didn't realize it was an aggregate total.

Ok, I shall now conduct better planet management.

Nice community :>

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