Fill it up with Stock Markets! Once you get a decent population civ-wide, raise your tax rates to the point that the population rate *just barely* continues to grow. Then, use the massive ecomomic weapon that this planet will become to rush-buy your way to galactic military domination!!!! Bwohahahahha!

I've seen folks post various theories about events and some of us are at least half-convinced that playstyle somehow affects which events you're likely to see, but there's also a pretty good case for 'random' being a very serious adjective.

Strato, is that the Tir-Quan building also on that planet? Talk about a prize conquest!

Taking the Tir-Quan is a shame? Silliness. That bonus pays back beaucoups in terms of invasion troops who survive and go right to work. And with 62 tiles, sheesh, you'd gripe about one not fitting into whatever monoculture you want to lay down?

But then I was inordinately fond of the Tir-Quan even before I read Diary of a Terran Soldier.

Yes, it certainly is the Tir-Quan training centre. Perhaps I am showing my noobishness here, but I always believed that it was a useful achievement to develop, but in this case, it was already built for me. 

So, what did I do? Turns out I got an event which increases tourist income 5 times the usual amount, so in effect, I was gushing cash, which mean research labs were laid down. As I played this game tonight, I screwed myself over pretty bad. Thalans won by tech victory, no early save to revert back to, and my own little Arcean empire, which had to fight adversity to get to where they were at lost out. I did get the planet up to 300 research points, and that isn't including a tech capital or omega research centre, just a whole lot of discovery spheres.

I'm annoyed because I should have just followed my intuition and maintained the attack rather than sitting by and researching to try and get some better starships happening. Utter failure.

Also, I think the luck is really screwed up in this game, because I have been getting a number of ranger class ships being discovered, so much so it is actually pretty annoying. They helped with the conquest of the Korath, but serve no real purpose now, except as target practice against the Thalan fleets, with their 300-400+ attack strength.

Yeah, I had the Torians sandwiched in between myself and the Thalans, and the Torians should have been removed, but the danger was the other races declaring war on me while I mop up the Torians. I built a starbase above them to extend my range, but too little too late in effect. The thing is though, with my espionage spending, it wouldn't have made much of a difference, I found out my worlds were fairly safe from attack because most of the opponents had only a small handful of attacking craft, and my soldiering was so high relatively speaking that attacks were of little consequence to my population on the planet.