[Amhazair]

Settings are quite often standard, with the most likely to change site frequency (often increased to 40 or even 50 in the later ages) and independents (sometimes to 6 or 7) Research, gold, resources, supply are rarely changed from the standard settings. 15 provinces/player seems to be the average, though there are enough games with more or less.

All of the above is obviously an average. From time to time you'll see games with wildly different settings being organized. (I've seen independents 0 with easy research for example, for quick & early wars)

I think that there are somewhat less games being started right now because the mega-game is sucking in a lot of players (62 to be precise) and because others might be planning their hollidays. Even so, new games start up fairly regularly, so while I can imagine you're just about ready to chew through a wall wanting to start out on a MP game (I know I did when I started out) you should be able to find one starting relatively soon.