Even at peak hours there are generally around 100 or so players online, and between 0 - 3 games getting started. If it takes 5 minutes to find a game that you want, it will take 10 more to fill it up, then maybe 10 more after that to choose teams using the super-slow pug method. I've had days when I spend 45 minutes or an hour trying to join games that end up not starting, and ultimately fail. In short, it takes a LOT of patience to play online.
My general strategy is to open ICO and check if a game is starting, then if not, I minimize the program and surf the net for a 5-10 minutes then check back. Then I pass the ~20 minutes or so between joining a game and actually getting started by playing on my iPhone. Just sitting there staring at the screen waiting for players would be totally unrealistic --even during peak hours a game would take waaay too long for any normal human attention span to wait for. Overall I think that is the main reason that ICO is so wildly unpopular among the relatively huge # of people who own Sins. Many other RTS games have simple auto-matching systems online that make starting games nearly instantaneous.
FYI, I did buy Diplomacy recently, just so I can play wherever there are more players. I still think it's too bad that it exists though, and that it will only end up hurting the online community by fracturing it further.
