
This will make a huge difference in the income of the early game. On turn 1 you can increase taxes to 4 with most races and to 5 on races with morale bonuses. If you are not playing them but they are in your game you can target them as most of their racial power is in the pops so conquering a couple of planets makes you pseudo Meklar. They use half the food and have high production so you can quickly build everything you want with them faster in comparison to other races.

Meklar is the best race for a human player IMO. I'll give you some of the tips I find helpful (I can win reliably in very hard still struggle with extreme). what you are doing to find out which actions are better.

My recommendation is to look at let's plays in YouTube and see what they do vs.
