Remember to upgrade your home planet and, especially later on, to build temple of Communion's to upgrade your income - the higher the allegiance, the more you get.

Each race has its own favored method of boosting resource and/or cash production. This favored method gets specific techs to boost the effectiveness of this method, and the method's building can be researched with fewer civilian research centers than the other races can do.

The TEC's specialty is trade. They get Trade ports earliest, at level 2. At levels 4-6-8 they can start boosting the amount of cash per freighter(and refinery ships as well).

The Advent's specialty is culture. Culture boosts both tax income and resource production simultaneously by 10% as well as having tactical effects. They get culture centers at level 2 and their bonuses increase spread rate (at levels 2-4-6), at at level 8 they can double the max allegiance boost you can get to your planets to 20%.

The Vasari's specialty is resource gathering. They get refineries(matter processors) at level 3, and their resource techs combine metal and crystal improvements, so you need 1/2 the research.

Each of the races are able to get the buildings for the specialties that they aren't specialized in, and they can research racially unique boosts to those paths, but they get the buildings later in the tree and the boosts aren't as spectacular for their non-favored path.

Nope. They still don't.

Doing some 2s with my advent partner last night we checked out this option; while it did not 'show' his resources income rate increase at all. He swears he noticed the crystal coming in faster.

Not sure how much it's worth but thats all I know about it thus far.