[quote=@Polybius]
I think its pretty well known that excessive nation-sheet building before the RP begins is a bad way to start. Forget all the excessive history, detailed alien race bios etc. Tell us what the heck your nation is all about. What are the goals and aspirations of your nations leaders? What are they willing to do? Excessive lore-building and detailed alien histories are fine and dandy, but they bog down the meat of the RP. While I certainly enjoy the narrative-driven RP style that seems to dominate the NRP forums, at times I also want to feed my megalomania and control a nation, not tell three different stories over the course of a few months to figure out if my nation put troops on the border or not. I think what I'm getting at is I want my nation to have influence in the game world, and to interact meaningfully with NPC's, PC's and leave an impact. Hope this helps-
[/quote]

These are very good points to bring up, and I agree. Often, I join NRPs with the barest of nation descriptions, with the intent to show the other players what the history and culture are through interactions and short-but-sweet exposition. By keeping the history and culture in the nation sheet to the bare necessities, I have flexibility if I need to change details to better mesh with the other players. I also believe it helps maintain interest in other player-nations if you reveal the information slowly throughout interactions, rather than telling everyone through an info-dump at the start of the thread. 

Interacting with other players is definitely more important than building a civilization in a vacuum and then plopping it into a roleplay.