In the first RTH, most people took religious and I will take it again if its not Banned (and Tesco will promise not to ***** about it
). With the massive numbers of ships this kind of games will generate, keeping track of trained/untrained ships is a nightmare, the talisman makes this redundant. Anything that reduces micromanagement is good in these huge games. And then of course there is the Natureshrine. Getting those babies up early can really make a difference to resource generating.
Temporal is good too for the Shipyards (you get those for free on your starting planets) and the shield damaging weapons.
Organic for its cheap ships.
Crystalline for its Armor, Maintanance reduction facility and the Solar collector
Don't see much use for Psycic though (unless religious is Banned).
Anyway:
Here is some personal records from RTH1 which I will try to break
Resources: 35,4 Mill
Planets: 739 (of which 33 was Ringworlds)
Ships: 2584 (+ a bunch that was mothballed)
Bases: 1806 (Almost all shipyards)