I have a feeling that many of the recent players took one look and then went away, which is kind of sad in a game like this. Basically, they will starve and that's it. I don't think AI will survive till the end anymore with the recent updates, but I'm watching the recent games.
Well, to balance that out, some of the later games have 9-10 people ready right now, and the one with 10 still has 17 hours left.