Are there and good guides and/or tips related to playing as the UE? Currently, I'm having trouble playing them effectively. The tax bonus to production is great, but it seems as though raising taxes is just too detrimental in almost all regards, especially expansion. This race sort of goes against my normal play-style of maximizing happiness and lowering taxes. (This isn't a question of race balance, but how to play using the current game balance)

They're just weaker. Ignore the production bonus at high taxes and play as you would play any other race.

You can't really use the higher taxes until later on. During the mid-game, if you prioritized building improvements that increase happiness, or in the late game. Even then I've found it best to hover at around 65% taxes, and let the Dust come rolling in. Until then my taxes tend to be fairly low, but a notch or two above the lowest I can go and not lose Dust.



Until you get to that point, it's a slower faction. Build planetary exploits according to the planet type (perhaps with a bias towards food production if a system is particularly hurting). Once the system turns into a colony and pop is maxed out, I spec any Terran/Ocean planets into Dust exploits, and keep other planets exploiting their natural bonus. You have to be careful with how quickly you expand, to not invoke too much of an expansionist penalty.



I've always thought the UE pays off in the end, though, when I can start insta-buying five Dreads at a time, or every improvement for a system at once. The trick is just making sure you get there.

Yeah it seems like a ramp up.



After turn 200 or so, if you've min/maxed your systems decently, you should have 60-70%tax rate and steady happiness. The UE racial bonus to industry is really there, it seems, to allow you to optimize your planets for dust production rather than industry (which most other races tend toward), so that mid-lategame you have a more balanced empire with a huge amount of dust.



They're underpowered at the moment, I think. They need a few more smaller racial bonuses, maybe moving some of the trading technologies to much earlier in the tree, perhaps. But their strategy seems to be slow and steady. Don't expand like a madman as you would with Cravers or something, keep your empire local and very efficient and by the lategame you can simply buy your way to victory with insane levels of dust production.

Their descriptor nominates them as a "colonial" power, but there is no bonus towards colonization. Possibly because they are all taken by races.....



Maybe their colonies could get a bonus depending on how far from the capital?