Hmm... based on what you have in mind, what is the best board for Utopian Revolution? The worst? If my starting hands are 5/2 and UR is on the board without knowing what else is there, would you recommend that I spend $5 on it? Are there any kind of timing choices to make with UR? Is UR fine if played on its own?
Tactician is a $5 card which also has a heavy drawback on use, but the next turn bonus it gives is totally worth it. As a starting card, instead of spending multiple turns buying Silvers that eventually slown down your deck anyway, you are very likely to zip up to Gold, or maybe pick up two important cards at once instead of having enough on one turn and perhaps not enough on the next (Potion cards in particular...). UR though, eliminates my hand for $1 and 1VP, which doesn't give me much purchasing options. UR junks up the other players' decks in return, but they get a normal turn to buy something (that extra Copper might even help them buy a Gold). On my next turn, my reward for losing a normal turn is gaining a Duchy. Okay, so a common thing for Swindlers to do is to change whatever $5 cards they hit into Duchies. A card that's worth 3 points but is dead in hand is probably not worth whatever utility a good $5 card could've provided through the rest of the game. When you "win" with UR, you are putting junk in your deck.
On the other hand, if you can play URs consistently, I guess you could run down Duchies and Estates quickly, but doing so means you sacrifice a lot of normal turns to buy stuff like Silver. What's the 3rd pile that you would want to run down? Maybe you don't want to, perhaps generating VP and filling the other players' decks with Coppers to slow them down might be the most optimal use of UR, but that doesn't seem very entertaining.
Harlot, if it's going to provide 2VP and $1, could probably be fine at $3. I don't think it's better than Silver at that point but okay, I've been wrong before. At $3, I could buy two Harlots instead of two Silvers with a 4/3 start, but that is probably a very bad idea in most games. Mid to late game, I'm pretty much buying Harlots because they're a better return on VP compared to Estates (like Tunnels), but as they only provide as much money as Copper, I hope my deck's money'd up enough to take on a little dilution.