The changes in the first solution sound good, not so much the next 2. I love being able to attack anyone, anywhere, and anytime. Not be going "well, is he in my attack range...?"
The main problem is, that your solution won't really fix the problem. For example, you say too many people are on black. Why? because RE is on black! It has 480 nations in that alliance alone. So whichever sphere the major 3 (RE, Frostbite, MHA) choose, will have a higher number of nations than the rest of the spheres.