You join empires cause the population is almost 20. You wanna play a nice game of empires. this is what you get instead all the things wrong with empires in 1 picture. Low pop Stacked Spectators
add 2 scunts as only players on one team that picture is deep, the only thing missing is that one scout has negative score
Given what's going on right now (small pop booty bay), I'd say it's more related to the previous round draining all the players too much to commit to another one so quickly afterwards.
on VIPER downfall always seemed to get very few players who would play. Most sat in spectate. I am not sure why but it happened more times than not.