The two simplest and probably the best fixes I can suggest is this: Make cert gain bonuses be per continent instead of throughout the empire- so people will flock to continents with less people on them. Make resource gains empire-wide, so that people will actually care about what happens on other continents, and won't try to just go to continents they already dominate for more resources. These two things would probably completely fix the meta game, and make people care about it. Also, make the bonus for owning territory or a continent larger. If you gave the player a 50% bonus for owning the continent instead of 10%, you'll actually get people who care.
