r_rolo1
King of myself
Wrong. The maintenance costs code even favours big empires compared with say, 6 to 10 cities empires ( the infamous conqueror's plateau ). The issue is making the cities pay up their maintenance, a thing that, without some core techs and enough pop, might prove dificult ( but definitely not impossible ). As in the early game it is hard to have both a big pop and those core techs ( unless you're playing with advanced starts ), yes, expansion can result in some bad issues, because then any settled/ conquered city will be a big sunk cost. That is the reason why having the GLH might result in having a sustainable 15 city empire easily without CoL or Currency ( or even Alphabet ): because it reduces the sunk costs of every new coastal city ( in some cases it might even make every new coastal city a net profit from turn 0 of settling ... I've seen that happening ) ...
Basically the issue is not that the costs are high. The issue is that you don't have the money
... atleast you don't have the money to both pay up a high enough science slider and pay the maintenance fee. if you are willing to sacrifice the slider things are diferent OFC
doesn't > your maintenance (at say 40-50% slider), you are going to have difficulty expanding while teching at a reasonable pace. 
