In my continual pursuit of more ways to kill time, I've been pointed at
Ikariam, which is a game based on a very stylized version of the Bronze Age Mediterranean. It's all real-time based; you make money and collect resources and do research based on actual time multiplied by the number of workers you put on each task. The graphics are awfully cute. Dunno yet how well I'm going to do, as I've been at this for maybe two hours...
links: digg this del.icio.us technorati reddit