Why can't I view my money and all that other stuff without logging into the country?

I would guess with one country they assume you don't need it. And 1a gives extra turns for time out of game FFA doesn't

Because you only need to manage 1 country on this server and not 16.

Slagpit went off on a crazy design tangent for FFA after playing it for a few rounds to make it more approachable for non-hardcore players. I also wrote a country recording script thing to complement his awesome work.... I'm not sure if that was ever implemented on production though.

The overall idea was to reduce the labourious tasks of running the countries (startups + logging in just to know what they have on hand to know how to play them) so players could focus on strategy with more complete information.

Isn't there like some start up not type thing in FFA?

yes there is 100 turns auto start up to be chosen if wants/needs.

i made suggestion to get control panel added to 1a too (would make selling/buying stuffs easier) but it got rejected.