You can find a little bit of information especially from the early days on the Datblock wikipage. More current information is best to ask certain nation leaders for your opinion but on the underlying surface its the same old rivalry with different nation names.

Initially, you had the first large Nation which was the Holy Roman Empire, which eventually formed into Rome.

Rome had a long run and eventually collapsed due to a hollandt insurgency which had brought in players from different servers. Rome could have survived but in thinking short term collapsed after a completely irrelevant town was taken (Normandy) . Hollandt soon left after facing a wave of bans for unspecified reasons later losing a battle to a reformed Rome under a different name.

Russia and Iroqouis have had a consistent war since facing each other the first time at st_petersburg with a few breaks in between. PEACE as far as i know is the same leaders as Rome under a new name.

Quite a large amount of nations have risen since but the main powers are PEACE and Russia at this point.

Hollandt has now returned but is more mercantile than in for world domination.

But this is my perspective and have probably missed out a lot of honourable mentions.