I'm making an futuristic/modern MMO-ish turn-based strategy game on my EC2 micro server.

Need some ideas.

MMO-ish as in 32 logged in at once, but more registered.

Are there any more details you could give? Have you thought of anything yourself yet that we could build off of?

You're kind of leaving us shooting in the dark with basic things like genre and setting.

Okay, it's based on my Corporation-States idea.

http://www.gamedev.net/topic/625528-corporation-states/

But instead of being real-time I want to make it turn-based and use a statistical method instead to simulate units going about their business.

You keep using that word MMO, but I'm not sure you know what it means.

The simplest solution I can think of, is to make the networking entirely http based. That way you can code the account system in php connected to a MySQL db or whatever server side language you prefer. And for a turn based muiltiplayer game with no more than 32 players at a time, you could just as well code the game logic in php.

That way every player just needs to connect to the server every second to check for updates.

Your updates could contain some json or xml with info on the recent moves/actions and maybe the entire game state, just to verify the synchronization. The update should also let everyone know whose turn it is.

This is no an optimized approach, since every player connects to the server even if there are no new updates. You could write the server using simple tcp sockets for better performance, but I don't think you'll gain anything from that on a 32 players tbs. Any ways code the account/login system in php or other server side language.

Hope this helps