Hi!
I also play Cybernations (only for a few months though - but then, CN itself isn't particularly old). In the following post I'm assuming you've already made a nation at NS, right? Just asking because I couldn't find a nation named Queen Tiffany. The following is quite lengthy, and it only barely touches on the mystery that is NS, but it's an attempt to cram it in a nutshell.
The game mechanics of NationStates are a lot simpler than those of CN, leaving much more room for roleplaying and improvising. The game consists only of answering issues and - for members of the United Nations - of voting in UN resolutions.NS nations are grouped into "Regions" which have their own small "message boards" on the site. Regions can have anywhere from a single to several thousands of members. They can also have a "UN delegate", who is elected from the UN nations in the region. Each UN nation can vote for any number of other UN nations, and the UN nation with the most votes becomes delegates (the votes are recounted daily). These votes are called "endorsements"; a term you'll see flying around quite often.
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The North Pacific is one of five "Feeder" regions, named because newly registered nations are placed there ("feeding" other, player-created nations). While your location in CN is by choice, here you are dropped by random into one of these five regions. These are the North Pacific, the South Pacific, the East Pacific, the West Pacific, and the Pacific. By their nature, they are the five largest regions (because the bulk of players just registers and then hangs around there instead of moving).
Player-created regions rely on new members leaving these regions and joining theirs - that is why you will see the regional message board on NS filled with advertisements for other regions. In fact, the Feeder regions are the only place where such ads are allowed, so we more or less have to put up with them. There's one advantage though: Since we get a fifth of all new members by default, we are never in danger of dying out.
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There are many different ways to play this game. By posting on this forum, you are already beyond the basic part, which is just logging in every day and answering the issues and seeing your population grow.
Another part is the waging of "war". Since war isn't a part of NS, this is another bit that must be improvised. Nations can't wage war on another, but regions can: A group of UN nations moves into a region and concentrates all its endorsements on one among them, hoping to overwhelm the support for the native delegate, and taking the power of the delegacy. This is an "invasion" - there are many regions and alliances dedicated to invading regions ("invaders"), and many others dedicated to preventing just that ("defenders").
Yet another part is roleplaying on the forum. The NS forum is huge. At any point, there are several dozen "story" roleplays being played, which are really only loosely connected to the game itself. If you like writing stories, you might look into that. (I do, but I've never felt up to it - too hectic for me).
The part this forum is involved in is "government roleplaying". We form a virtual government for our region: We draft and ratify a constitution, elect delegates and ministers, send ambassadors and envoys to other regions, and do all other kinds of crazy stuff we imagine real-world governments do.
These parts aren't mutually exclusive, but you'd have to lead three lives to keep up with them all at the same time. The best idea is usually to pick one style of playing and more or less ignore the rest.