There are less players at all times these days, those times when eu1 and eu2 were almost always full or after eu4 appeared it had 160+ players on and EU1 was still full are long gone, now there are rarely more than 100 players on EU1 (even between 18:00-22:00 GMT, that should be the peak hours), <50 on EU2 and 50-60 on a siege server (EU5 or 6). I guess many people are waiting for a fresh strategus start to give them a purpose for the crpg grind, others have exams and others have GTX because of the new patch (DaveUKR).