LUCK is one of the best ways to win the game. Get yourself +50 LUCK and you're the one to get the Rangers. The first Ranger you get is this superpowered ship that devastates everything. All you need is that ranger and a fleet of transports. Go, go, go.
You also get follow-on rangers but they're second-class compared to that first ranger.
As a result of this "you will win" approach, I no longer set myself up with +50 luck.
Enhanced creativity, however, is one of my favorite uses of my 10 specialization points. I like to get my tehcnologies early. This is great for something like Planetary Conquest. That is, I set my military on 99% and my research on 1% so that Planetary Conequest should take something like 200 turns. While I'm pushing out ships at 99% military, eventually my creativity hands me a nice tech like Planetary Conquest (sometimes I sit on another high-cost tech). Assuming I was sitting on Planetary Conquest, I then swtich to production of transport. Soon, I'm ready for "phase 1 empire expansion".
["phase 2" will require consolidatoin of new planets to keep my economy in shape followed by increased drive speeds and possibly a corridor layout of starbases with +1 speed techs so that I can get to the planets that are part of "phase 2"]