As the map begins to fill up with nations, I thought it would be a good idea to talk about small nations and their place in the server.

You aren't safe as a one man nation.

This server is different than other servers, like CivEx or Realms. You aren't safe as a one man nation. You haven't been raided yet. In game, everything is 100% handled by the players. No one has to respect your claim. The only one stopping other people from knocking down your sandcastles is you. If you're a single person, you literally shouldn't even call yourself a nation. You aren't a nation. You're not going to be able to build cities by yourself. You're not going to be able to fight wars yourself. You might not even be able to stop a single raider even if you catch them. If someone destroys all your stuff, what are you going to do? Whine about it on the subreddit? Literally a single person -- not even a nation -- could pearl you, and your entire the nation could be essentially unable to play on the normal world and be entirely imprisoned to the aether. One single person could literally remove you from the server. Someone who joins the server with a friend or two can almost certainly be able to conquer you with very little effort.

Posting claims early can be bad.

Posting claims so early for such a small group really only puts a target on your back. It lets potential raiders or aggressors know where all your valuables are. If you make unreasonable landclaims, it will only server to make a poor first impression and lose respect of a lot of people on the server. Your legitimacy is actually important. If you don't have any lore, any background, any members, any builds, any valuables, any experience, no one will give a shit about you or your claim. Especially not if it is unreasonably large.

Other challenges for one man nations.

Besides the fact that a 'one man nation' isn't really a nation, and probably can't even defend itself against other one man nations, let alone any other nation or any other group, one man nations have other problems. It's hard to do anything. You need multiple people to go all over the map and collect materials. You need multiple people to work on a sanctuary or build a city.

You can just recruit people right? Wrong. It's extremely hard to recruit people as a one man nation. You might be able to invite some friends to come play, but new players on the server will care about your one man nation the same as everyone else -- very little. Even if they want to join a one man nation, you won't be unique. One man nations are like a dead, beaten horse. There are probably more than 20 of them to choose from, all offering probably some of the same variant of democracy or monarchy, some with lore, some not, and probably and assortment of builds ranging from dirt shacks to ugly cobblestone boxes. Why should anyone join your nation over the other 20 similar ones? Or for that matter, why should anyone want to join one of the 20 one man nations when there are other nations that can offer more support, a more social environment, actual safety and security for your valuables and builds, from raiders, bandits, and conquering nations?

Why one man nations still exist.

The main reason that most one man nations exist still is that cannons have not been added to the server yet. You basically can't destroy emerald reinforced chests or break sanctuaries without a cannon. Add to that the fact that any one man nation would give in or be pearled if another nation cared enough to take some of their claim, and you have our current situation.

Conclusion

It's in the best interest of small nations (which should really be called individuals or city-states, to be more representative as nation is a misleading term) to look into being peacefully incorporated in a larger nation. It's equally in the best interest of larger nations to incorporate other nations into them so they can be more prosperous and have larger militaries and workforces.

It's also in the best interest for new players to do the same -- join existing, and preferably, nations with a decent amount of people already. You wouldn't want to join a nation where if one or two people go inactive, half the population stops existing, right? As a new player you are essentially equivalent to a one man nation.

Nations ranked by categories.

In addition, I ranked nations in various categories, and compared their score to the size of their land claims. Here's how 20 or so nations match up in the six categories: Legitimacy, Infrastructure, Leadership Experience, Wealth, Military Power, and Population. It isn't perfect, and is mostly by what I know as a longtime player and my research on the subreddit.

To put it in perspective, you probably shouldn't even post claims until you can score higher than 15, and aren't really more than a city-state until you have a score higher than 25.

EDIT: Reddit formatting is bad. Here is the chart in spreadsheet form