Religious gives very nice shrines that make this trait virtually free (or give you an edge, if you do not want to pay for the trait by lowering some of your characteristics). You have the War Shrine, at +15% offence in your systems (enabling you to lower Aggressiveness a bit without getting trashed in the first offensive), the Time Shrine and its bonus to resource production, the Nature Shrine that might be useful to you, and the Fate Shrine that saves you the trouble of researching UPCs. It isn't worth 1500 points alone, but it isn't nothing either.
Temporal is another matter; their weapons aren't so great (unless you are fighting someone only using shields, and/or an Empire warranting the use of their Null Space weapon), but they have some interesting support facilities. One increases offence by 30% in a given system (nice if you are being attacked, or managed to keep a planet near that wormhole you plan to break through), and an UPC-like facility working twice as well. The space yards cost a lot of research, and require you to scrap your own space yards, and only then can you begin to build them (I can never recall if they need five or ten turns to be built). They may be worth the hassle if you have enough time, but you shouldn't bet on this in KOTH.
Be careful when using the Psychic trait: Computer I costs 100,000 points to research (nothing at all), and makes the Subverter fully useless, and contact will likely be made before you can do any significant damage with them (if you have them researched at all). Besides this, they have some decent weapons (which is rare enough to be mentioned) and can give improved training rates, but nothing to write home about for the price tag.
I will let the case of the OA for a defender of the Organic trait, as I would be hard pressed to say anything in its famour (well, besides saying it is virtually free, and has the highest hitpoints per kt rating). Some players did take it under other circumstances (such as a 2vs2), but you will have to ask them about the why. Crystaline doesn't seem too great in this kind of games however (like other traits, not enough time to do research).
The default settings is one normal planet and 20k starting resources, but you will find some players going for one good starting planet. Increasing the starting resources isn't too common however; I would say its only use is to make the initial theorical research much easier (and too easy even), as with only 20kt it is a bit harder to research the main ones (Construction, Chemistry, Physics and Military Science early on).
Oh, and 42 is the answer. What is the product of six and nine? 42 indeed!