Uprising encourages a lot more combat participation imo. The base game combat rewards were often heavily tilted towards the 1st place winner. There were a lot of combat rounds where if you didn’t have a shot at 1st you’d probably be better off with just a token participation or just to not show up at all.

The spy mechanic is pretty nifty and adds a way you can maneuver around turn order screwage.

The spaces/cards have overall more card draw so deck building choices have more of an impact and lessens the chance you’ll be handcuffed by what spaces you can take on a given turn.

The flow of resources feels a bit more balanced to me. The base game I always felt I was often flooded with too many resources by the end. With Uprising the resources are pretty tight throughout the game and spending them feels a lot more impactful even towards the end of the game.

Also what’s a Dune game without Shai-Hulud? :>

Again this is just my opinion but my play experience with Uprising felt overall less frustrating than with the base game.