Maintainance costs are fairly small compared with (factory/lab) worker costs,  especially early in the game.  Asteroid mining bases don't seem to need workers,  and production bonus tiles don't need extra workers.

  It does need experience to know how to time the early game economy and military.  And diplomacy.

@Zarnick: Maintenance costs are 20-30% of the total cost of your production, and that assumes you ae producing at 100%. Also remember that maintenance costs have to be paid even when you're not producing anything. So I wouldn't disregard them.

@LTJim: Good questions. I'm only at my second try of the all-labs strategy. I'm currently playing the DL version only, because I wanted to play the campaign based on the original rules. My first try (Achilles Heel) had me crash the economy at -600bc per turn after only 6 months of game time. And that was in spite of my reading about exactly that problem in one of the AARs

The lower social production output is a severe handicap. The campaign helped in that it let me start with several allies that were happy to trade techs right from the start. Also the starting budget was much higher than normal, so I could afford buying a few colonists and labs as well. This let me start at 100% research right from the start, and get the Research Center tech within just a few weeks. And that is the lab type I stuck with right to the end.

As for order of lab types: I rushed to Research Center so that I didn't need to build many lower level (basic lab and xeno lab) versions. Discovery Spheres would have been nice, but most of my planets still had free tiles to build on at the end of the game, so I saw no point in upgrading any further.

As a rule of thumb I try to avoid intermediate building types as much as possible. For labs I rush to Research Center and then build those. For facs I rush to Manufacturing Centers with at most one intermediate phase. For econ I rush to Trade Centers, and when I get the time to research banks, I immediately go for Stock Markets. This lets me build most stuff with only one intermediate step, avoiding unnecessary upgrade costs.

One big drawback of all-labs is that you can only build either buildings or ships via focus, not both. That and the lowered production output from focus can be problematic. I did counter the lack of ships by trading some against tech. That let me take care of soft targets such as Dread Lord transports without having to build ships myself. It was also a good alternative for tech trading when some of my allies ran out of cash

Personally I like all-labs because I'm heavily research focused anyway and rarely build ships beyond colonists. But economy is big problem, and you need to take care of that right from the start. In my current game I immediately rushed Habitat Improvement after Research Center and then built Aphrodisiacum while my colonists did their work. Then I had 7 planets at 100% approval with a very frisky pop growth, greatly improving my tax income. I still had to stop production for a few weeks, but only because my allies were out of cash and my survey ship hadn't turned up a single BC anomaly until then.

While playing the campaign may be not that representative, my general tactic of rushing Aphrodisiac worked very well. The only problem I see for normal game is that you can't afford rush-buying stuff, and you can't afford waiting to build stuff via focus either. It also takes too long to build any super project in the early phase - it was a pain to wait for the better part of a game year for that Aphrodisiac to finish, even though I sacrificed a tile on what was supposed to become my tech capitol.

Therefore I am now working on an "all-switch" strategy: Basically I'd start the first few turns "normally" (i. e. shifting sliders for the first few turns to whatever makes most sense at that point), then go all facs, building basic factories on any free tile, a starport, and a farm. The goal in that phase is to get a decent number of productive planets with full or near-full infrastructure, and build Aphrodisiac ASAP.

Research will be focused on Propulsion until Impulse Drives for speeding up colonizers, then rush to Habitat Improvement. I might pick up some of those +production techs on the way as well. Next I'm gonna unlock Advanced markets while building Aphrodisiac, so I can take advantage of the soon to be boosted tax-population.    Then it's Research Centers in preparation for the next phase.

Then I'll start building Research Centers - on free tiles where possible, or right over initial facs where not. Once my potential output from labs surpasses my industrial output I switch to 100% Research and build over all remaining facs.

I'm still considering details, such as whether or not I can afford to rush-build anything at the start, but, in an effort to build up as much infrastructure as possible I expect the balance to drop very fast to unmaintainable levels, so I'll better preserve the initial treasury for as long as possible. Also, for large maps there is the question of how to build up new planets after switching to research: it will take a lot longer, so my initial planets will have to make do with respect to building up economy and specifically ships. For that reason I should spread my initial colonies in all directions, and as far as reasonably possible. I can spread my colonies back inward later.

Back to my original topic: I realize I need a lot of economy buildings, but since I figured I'll need less for all-fac, I expect I won't crash the economy quite as fast as with an all-labs approach right from turn 1. Also I'll actually have the social production levels to build markets early, even before they're actually needed, and I can still continue building colonizers and other ships as required. I'll have to make sure the economy is in a good shape before switching, then it shouldn't be difficult to keep it that way.

At least that is the theory.   I'll give it a try in the next mission and see how it works.

P.S.: I should mention that I'm still in mission 6. The Yor and Drengin are gone - it took all of one 1 torpedo boat and a small fleet of transporters to mop them up due to my vastly superior tech (and their failed attempts at invading the Iconians didn't help either). I've destroyed only two Dread Lord Fighters yet (with that same torpedo boat), causing them to switch from shields (up to +59 beam defense!) to point defense (only +22 that I've seen). However, after stealing HD Spike Drivers II I'm now building even stronger fleets of tiny mass driver ships designed to take out the frigates. It's only just autumn in year 4, and I'm already running out of useful techs to research, after maxing out two out of 3 ship defense branches, hulls, the tech and econ branch, terraforming and all branches related to soldiering. With AntiMatter Torp III and the recently captured HD-Spike 2 I have sufficient offense too. With 18 planets, my RP production sits at about 1600/turn after focus, and more than half comes from just one planet.

In the meantime the Dreadlords annoy the hell out of everyone for swarming the galaxy, and taking me so much time just for evasive maneuvres, but they consistently fail at invading my planets with less than 3 transports in succession. It's almost a pity they're that bad because it deprives me of the only way (for now) to steal more of their tech!  

Just started my first game on TA: Medium galaxy, Terrans, Painful, disabled Super Abilities and all victory conditions (including ascension) so I can get accustomed to the new and improved (TM) game mechanics without being distracted by new features too much.

With 7 major and maxed (I think 8-9) minor Civs the map is quite crowded.

Early colonization ended with only 4 planets for me, but all (except earth) were 11+. I went all facs from the start and when my planet infrastructure was built up, I switched to all-labs. Tech trading and anomalies kept my economy afloat (barely, but still ...). Now I'm researching so fast I'm doing 70% of the total research.

1.5 years into the game I've colonized an extreme PQ 30 world and 3 more extreme PQ 11+ worlds. Also, Mars was colonized by the Drath and flipped to my side. So I now have 9 Planets to work with. Still less than some of the other AIs though.

Very few armed ships so far, and now that the anomalies are all gone I managed to reduce my deficit to only about 100bc/turn. Taxes are at 69% with approval at 51%.

Production levels are low, mostly at 7-16 units, except my tech capital at 25. However, I only use Xeno Labs so far, so there is definitely room for improvement. Anyway, I plan to switch back to all-facs by about end of the year, at which point I should have all relevant techs for mid-game early warfare. If nothing else, I need to switch back just to be able to build infrastructure on that PQ 30 planet...

P.S.: Chosen abilities were Econ 30%, Morale 10%, Luck 25%, Sensors +4 and I believe the rest went into soldiering. I went wiith Universalists for the nice mix of luck, pop growth and econ.

At first I didn't really feel comfortable, sitting in one corner with majors on three sides. I normally prefer to extend for some time and build up before I'm ready to deal with others. But so far I appear to be doing well. So well in fact that I consider restarting at a higher diff  .

Yes, just today I read a thread with lots of tricks. That was mentioned as well. Someone even suggested to gift said AI with ships that are standing right next to the starbase to make sure it gets taken out right away 

There are a few other things that I learned I can improve, such as buying empty hulls, then upgrading them to the full ship, for up to 20% total cost reduction. Or moving a Cargo hull packed with engines to a far-away planet, then upgrade with a colony module (which adds 1m people, apparently) Food for thought

Also I neglected to take a closer look at the new tech tree and started researching the wrong ones. I think it would be good to get sensors asap and build more survey ships. That way I wouldn't need to sell pretty much every tech I have to just about anyone.

To make sure the AI ships can attack the intended starbase, you sometimes have to build an econ starbase and gift it to them at the same time as you gift the ships; the times I've had the AI not attack the starbase were when it was distant from their territory and therefore probably the ships were out of range.  

I use econ starbases because any starbase will do and I'm trying not to tick off the target race.