Indies have been mostly absent from FFA

The top players are usually techer on all servers except FFA where some very high land countries are forced to go by other means

Reasons...

There is not a strong market for military in FFA, and Commies have to undergo three, possibly 4 public market transactions for stockpiling (sell military, buy food, sell food, buy military). This undoes all the benefit from the higher production rate. I never understood why a government that relied so much on the public market had the highest tax rate (effectively paying almost 20% more for food than demoes).

Most importantly, one cannot landtrade with Indy, since a large military means very high losses due to landtrading.

So my suggestion is either lower the military upkeep costs for indy or take away the tax rate.

Actually, Indies mostly have just 2 market transactions they have to do for stocking/destocking

Sell military, buy tech.
There's a little bit of sell military, buy food, sell food. But most of an indy's stocking time is spent buying tech.

One can landtrade with indy, the problem is not the military size (easily remedied by being 80% jets or 90% jets or however much is needed). The problem is that cashers and farmers can use the building costs bonus, but a landtrading indy needs to do the expenses bonus.

Just look at primary and alliance - the top indy players there know how to properly play an indy. Most people don't know how to properly play an indy. The people who do know how to play an indy don't play FFA, thats why Indies are absent from FFA. The quality of netters on FFA is extremely low, and Commie Indy is one of the more difficult netgaining strategies.

If we removed the build costs bonus, but kept the expenses bonus, that would help a lot in making indies better on FFA, and it would severely weaken landtrading. But it still wouldn't fix the severe lack of skill that plagues FFA netters.