the recent topic by Pds314 had me thinking, while the current wealth system can work for small galaxies, having rich empires in larger ones is pretty much non-existent unless many of their stars are on a popular trade route.
what if the wealth within an empire (or maybe alliance if they're in one) got more evenly distributed over time? for example, an empire's stars with a good number of stars on a trade route would all gradually become richer due to constantly gaining more wealth.
i don't believe this should happen too quickly though, should probably be subtle in the speed. perhaps the smaller the empire (maybe compared to the other empires to compensate for different galaxy sizes?), the quicker the distribution occurs, but not by too large of a margin.
i think this would make some interesting side effects too, like an empire merging with a richer empire would have that wealth distributed after a while, and an empire taking over a star with a financial center would be more beneficial!