Go ahead and sign up anyway. Some of the NEMOs were not able to join last night either. The game expands in circles so it is still possible that you may land close to the another NEMO. Even though we signed on en masse, we ended up strung over a good distance.
When you sign on, you can go to the diplomacy forum (within astrowars) and find the Galactic Nemos thread. In the first post (ignore the rest of it) you will find the url to connect with the secure NEMO website. From there you can request to join the NEMOs. We have some associations with other alliances. We may be able to get you hooked up with another alliance which is closer. Having allies makes your probability of success much higher.
Not signing in within the first few days also decreases the chance that you will be easy fodder for a large alliance (like us).
As of the last update a few hours ago, only 3136 players have logged on (last beta there were over 14,000!). These players are from all around the world (only 16.6% of the players are from the US; playing from at least 34 different countries).
Besides being a civilization-like game (belothsurf - I have not played the games you referred to), there is a lot of diplomacy and messaging back and forth with allies and dealing with attacks and expansion. There are a lot of educated people playing this game (e.g. I am only 1 of 3 family physicians involved with the NEMOs). Message as many people as you can communicate with.
When you start, change your science to social and invest most of your early production in factories and farms.
I'm just dreaming about beating your fanny in outter space!
