I appreciate you not naming names Vid, but honestly I don't care if people know it was me you were referring to.
One thing you should understand is that even though Terra is empty, the alien planets are LOADED with colonists. I set them up that way. One planet I took had 300,000 colonists in the ore group. I've got nearly 1 Billion cols.
The product appearance on planets claimed by aliens has always been there, it's just that it only happens when the aliens hit "full strength."
Since a lot of the aliens in Monopoly hit the full strength level at around 10 days, after about 10 days, when they claim a planet, at externals that planet will fill with product. I've seen it in every version that I've played, going back a very long way.
Why you haven't seen it might simply be because the aliens in the games you were playing were set to go full strength in like 120 days.
Monopoly is an experiment. The concept was to have a game that was all about capping aliens and taking their planets. I thought that would be fun. Evidently not many feel that way because it's not being played at all wherever it's put up (so far).
The game should have been over within 10 days, the way it's set up, if people had played it. There's no way the aliens could have lasted against 10 or so players. Especially when some of the alien's ships are worth 100,000,000 in trade
It was a fun idea, and I know a few who had fun playing it, but so far the popular opinion is Monopoly is not worth playing.
We'll see what happens in the future.