The most players will be on diplomacy.  You will not see them from entrenchment/regular sins lobby.  If you want to play multiplayer, your best bet at present is to use diplomacy.  That being said, player counts are not huge.  During prime time US hours, the averages range from 30-60 players on diplomacy.  You will get a game if you are patient but sometimes it takes a bit.  I believe there are still games to be had in regular sins and entrenchment but they are going to be fewer and you will have to host them yourself and wait for quite some time likely.

[_]-Greyfox

Thanks for responses.

So it looks like I have a good reason to buy the expansions then

Am going to play single player until I get more confident. 

I did play it in single player back in April 2008 on a 'naughty' not paid for version so never had the ability to play online.  However, having since purchased all the Galactic Civ IIs I have become very fond of the humour and excellent strategy of the games and want to support them.

Have just looked at expansions and so

'If you want to play multiplayer, your best bet at present is to use diplomacy'

really means I nead to get both Entrenchment and Diplomacy? 

First off, the best times to play online are during North American prime time, from say 4 pm to 10 pm U.S. Eastern Standard Time.

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons that go all the way back to the release of the game, this game just has low online player counts.  The largest reason is probably that 98% of all purchasers only ever played it in single player and had no interest in multiplayer.

Player counts on the Sins/Entrenchment server seems to average about 35-40 during those times I mentioned.  You will not see players who are currently playing games in the chat Lobby, only people who are not currently playing.  The nice thing about the Sins/Entrenchment server is that you are more likely to find newer players there.  However, it seems like most of the people only play against AI and not human opponents, so players are left to do 1v1's, 2v2's, and 4 man free-for-alls.  Occasionally a 3v3 might fill.

It doesn't seem like too many people are playing Entrenchment now; I think that almost all of the Entrenchment people purchased Diplomacy.

The situation is a little better on Diplomacy where the average player count seems to be around 45 people.  I did see the number reach 70 earlier this week.  On Diplomacy you will find more people who are willing to play against humans.  It isn't too hard to find 2v2's and 3v3's if you are willing to wait a little while.  There are also a couple 4v4 games every night and sometimes a 5v5.  It's easier to find and fill the 4v4's and 5v5's on the weekends.

So, the question becomes, should you spend $20 to purchase Diplomacy?  I guess that depends on how valuable the money is to you and what you are looking for.  If you want to play the game in online multiplayer against human opponents then Diplomacy is your best bet but I really don't know if it's worth $20 to be able to do that today.  I mean, who wants to spend $20 for the privilege of waiting around for an hour hoping that a 4v4 will fill.  Also, because you are a new player to this game, you will find that the game has a learning curve and that you will be absolutely demolished by the experienced pro players who know all the tricks and tactics and what players are likely to do.  I'm not sure that's worth $20.  I think you'll be better able to evaluate Diplomacy's value to you after you have played regular Sins online against human opponents for about a month.

Quite frankly, as much as I love the game and as much as I want to see it succeed, I really cannot recommend that anyone spend more than $10 on Sins or the expansions right now.  I think that Sins itself is worth $10 if only to play it in single player and to play vanilla online, but it's hard to justify any expense beyond $10 now.  I'd probably see things differently if I were one of the single player only people, but I'm online multiplayer against humans only.

Also, I am increasingly under the impression that Ironclad has lost interest in Sins and would like to wash its hands of it, as ridiculous as that sounds.  I know that Stardock's people will deny this, but we have not heard (at least I think so) one peep out of Ironclad since the last patch and it almost seems as though they have lost interest and enthusiasm for Sins.  I'm not sure if that should have anything to do with a purchase decision, but if it didn't discourage me from purchasing Sins and/or its expansions, it certainly wouldn't encourage me.  It's really strange that Ironclad would not want to actively participate on this forum and keep fans informed about their current project(s), but that seems to be the case.  It leads me to blindly speculate that there is some sort of a business issue or dispute going on behind the scenes.

Gosh DirtySanchezz that has to be the longest reply I have recieved to a forum question!

I am in the UK and checking EST time now looks like it is running at +4 hours to me so that would mean I will see the most players from 8pm to 2am in the morning from my little island.

Is there any way of me seeing what the player count is for diplomacy without logging on without the expansion installed?

I'm going to be putting some solid hours into Sins today and what I hope is I'm going to love it and think well I might as well get the two expansions to improve the single player experience.

The price of the main game just dropped to $10 or £7 in real money so maybe that will get an influx of new players?

Lastly, I can't find any setting on this forum to notify me when this post has been replied to - is there such on option?

The question of the value of the expansions is all relative.  For someone who only intends to play single player and has no interest in online multiplayer the question of value is completely different.  Entrenchment was a good expansion and added a lot to the online multiplayer game, but I don't know if it's worth $10 right now simply because few people seem to be playing Entrenchment online--people are playing either regular Sins or Diplomacy from what I can tell.

The reason why I keep making the distinction between single player and online multiplayer is that if you become used to playing it against human opponents you might lose all interest in playing it in single player against the AI.  I personally can't play this game against the AI any longer; it's just not interesting that way to me.  However, I might be an extreme case since I am an online multiplayer fanatic and have little interest in playing just about any game in single player.

Perhaps I will check here and there throughout the day and update this post with the player counts.

12:00 pm U.S. EST or 5:00 pm in the UK:   5 people online for regular Sins, 9 people online for Diplomacy (I'm excluding myself)