I'm thinking these are bugs, but I might be wrong. Please take a look.

[Kryndude]

Here, I have every possible treaties with the floating jellyfish guy for zero influence cost

Now I'm in federation with that guy but still no influence cost (At one point in the game it did cost me influence but then soon disappeared again)

you can see here that the 20% energy tax isn't implemented either.

This is another issue. I have no idea why all of a sudden my planet generates an unemployed specialist pop. I didn't meddle with the +/- thing but out of nowhere it does that. I'm guessing the ai messed up its pop relocation process and ended up like that.

This one's not a bug. I was just curious why he had liberation war policy when he's not pacifist. Are egalitarians also inclined towards defensive wars? I'm also egalitarian in this game and my factions don't seem to care about having aggressive war policy, why is he being Gandhi? I had to change my policy to recruit him.



For reference I'm playing on Le Guin v.2.2.3 (1960). Glavius mod on.

 

[Kryndude]

Also, according to the wiki if a member of a federation reaches superior or higher relative power to the president it take control, but as you can see despite that guy being superior I'm still in command. Anyone know why?

 

[Talanic]

You need to exceed them by something like 25%. Just superior isn't enough.

The influence and taxes are probably a glitch but the unemployed specialist probably lost a job to a new arrival who had relevant traits. The specialist will demote to worker in time.

 

[Gratak]

View attachment 439581

Also, according to the wiki if a member of a federation reaches superior or higher relative power to the president it take control, but as you can see despite that guy being superior I'm still in command. Anyone know why?

You need to exceed them by something like 25%. Just superior isn't enough.

The influence and taxes are probably a glitch but the unemployed specialist probably lost a job to a new arrival who had relevant traits. The specialist will demote to worker in time.

Pretty sure it's economic power that counts. Not military power. Which makes sense since the leader having access to the federation fleet would be off in military power: Either too low if the fleet does not count for him (it's more effective to put your resources into that fleet than in your own one), or way too high if it does count for him.

With regard to OPs other points:

There are quite a few ways to reduce diplo upkeep. You can get it to zero.

There are also other places to apply a energy tax beyond changing pop production (though I don't know it it actually works).

Unemployment happens regularly when some stupid pop shuffling is done. Worst case is upgrading of the colony shelter: Two admin jobs are lost and three new are created. Often leads to at least one unemployed since the game seems to promote some pops before assigning the unemployed administrators... Glavius version for the beta patch helps with this (though it has other issues)

I think that is just the AI personality. All pacifist personalities have this, but some other can too it seems.

 

[MechaThumper]

It's hard to tell since you can't see empire wide modifiers anymore anywhere to my knowledge but the federation upkeep should be included in the empire wide bonus. Check to see if you have any other modifiers to pop energy production and see if they net to 10% (30% less the 20% tax).