I reinstalled this and was goofing around the last few days - I am BAD at this game.
Furthermore, after the new update EVERYONE is getting queued anyways. It's an incentive to buy their membership - so you don't have to wait in their 10 minute queue. Every continent that wasn't locked today had 33% pop for every faction, and I still had to wait. You could chalk that up to a flood of players checking out the new update though too.
Your best bet is just to pick the continent with the lowest NC pop to get as many players as you can on your continent.
