Advice on Monarch

[SickCycle]

I just posted this on Beyond the Sword but no one is answering and I'm not sure what to do about it

Ok, I'm playing a Monarch/AggressiveAI/Big_Small map

I just took Khmers island just north of me he's basically touching the tip of the main landmass which I'm on, it's a decent sized island about 6 cities I took them all and vassalized him with his remaining few scattered around the outside rings on various islands.

The problem is it's about 1000AD, I'm leading in techs and I'm 2nd in Military but the Colony Maintenance went up to 60 gold a turn.. I cant afford 60 gold a turn, I had to drop my science slider down to 30%. I was already running my country off my conquest at around -20 a turn, now with the -60 from colony maintenance..

It's my first time really seeing colony maintenance in action and I have to say I'm terrified, thats from one average sized island.. What if I wanted to take another

Is there anyway to get around it besides colonizing or liberating? I was thinking of switching to Caste System and running mass Merchants?

It's my first Monarch game too and I'm completely destroying the AI Im not even breaking a sweat but I have no idea what to do about this maintenance?

Man.. It just went up again.. 125 gold a turn on city upkeep.

[Sisiutil]

I think that change was put in place to reduce the viability of having a huge empire sprawling multiple continents. It basically complicates the end-game rather than making it a non-contest.

I'm about to deal with a similar question in the current ALC, so maybe watch that space and I'll either find the right way to deal with it or muck it up completely.

[colony]

Courthouses will affect it, but apart from that I don't think there's much you can do about it. It increases very quickly past 3 or 4 medium sized cities. You could liberate the cities, but apart from that I don't think there is a way to reduce it.