so I found this game, that has empire building, diplomacy, war and economy, potentially a lot more fun than CN although it's a little new and only a few hundred playing it so far. their biggest alliances have about 20 people, so if it's right for you we could get in on the ground floor and make a big impact.
http://invasion3042.com/their wiki needs work (
http://www.invasion3042.com/wiki/, not the one that comes up if you google them) but I've already learned a lot, the players in this game are very active even for a small community compared to CN, and they're helpful, I ask questions in their main irc all the time and have already talked to several faction leaders.
it's not a browser game, it's a client game, but it plays kinda like a browser game, although when you get to actual combat it's hexes and turnbased.
the great thing is you can let other people in your faction fight your battles for you if you aren't into that part of the game.
this is important because instead of 'update' they have daychanges, which happen roughly every 2.4 hours. that said it still takes months to really build up your empire. this includes building up farms, basic factories which let you build more buildings, houses to hold people (which automatically fill them ), commercial buildings to make money faster, buildings to mine minerals, buildings to make parts, buildings to make mechs/vehs and train infantry, science buildings, other buildings etc. and they're still building the game up. it is based on battletech but they dont have everything in BT coded in yet (like no air units yet)
the property you occupy are planets. there are 10 sectors per planet. your empire can have a total of 4 sectors. each sector has 4 zones and those are where you build your various buildings and store all the things you build.. and there's a 5th zone, the landing zone, where enemies must land and beat you before they can fight your other zones. you can share a planet with other empires (but not share a sector) and I think you can't have more than one sector on a planet.
factions: there are a set amount of factions in the game and they are prenamed, based on the game fiction. but earlier they were allowing custom factions, so that might happen again. a lot depends on how many people want something, and you can write a help ticket to petition for things. I had a problem with my client not working properly and once I ticketed the problem it was fixed in a few hours. the guy who owns and codes the game (well there's a few of them) is regularly in the main irc channel. so it's really accessable.
there are war/peace/neutral statuses between factions and you can't run a military operation unless you're at war with someone. as for politics well they haven't developed their politics like the community of CN has, yet. from what I'm told the faction leader (which is an in-game position, unlike it is in our alliance) often steps down if someone asks to be in the position, there's a lot of turnover, and of course if that doesn't happen the members can just write tickets to have the guy removed. in the game there's a few gov positions; the way I see it the RIA could function as a governing party, we already have our own internal governing system, although I dont know how many of our gov members will get on this boat. but if we needed to we could stick together in a faction and vote out a bad leader even if we can't just make our own faction. and in fact there are factions with no members yet so there's that too.
as for planets, there's.. looks like more than a hundred, and they can add more but they don't need them yet. travel between planets happens via jumproutes, so there is strategic value in what gives access to what and military ops can jump a max of 3 afaik
there's hundreds of vehicles/mecha to choose from and there's more they can add if they want, it's still growing, it's great. and how it takes shape is heavily influenced by the players. there's a way to jumpstart things and get extra resources etc. if you donate but you dont have to. there's even bonuses for working on the wiki
you can only have one empire. so RIA you can be a trading empire, making money, a research empire, a production empire mining resources or building parts or units, a war empire fighting expansively or protecting the other faction members, or any combination of the above. best of all we can do it together
-reaches out hand-
so come with me. there are lulz to be made.