Design Journal: long term RTS games

So after talking with my friend some more it seems like we are actually going to make this game a reality but instead of flash based like I tried to demonstrate before now we are going to d it web based and have it a long term game with many different people playing using PHP. My friend pointed me to a few interesting games that already function the way I would but without my unique idea for the religions. Some notable examples are Travian.com and Tribalwars.com with both feature elements that I would use for my concept. The next phase is to keep brainstorming our ideas till we formulate something solid that can be translated to digital playable form.